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Advice my mother gave me, founding Sujatha Vidyalaya and a national honour
(Excerpted from Chosen Ground: the saga of Clara Motwani by Goolbai Gunasekera)
Mother had frequent staff meetings so that she could guide us in teaching methods to her liking. I give below some of her rules, which I now pass on to my own younger teachers at Asian International. What she taught then, holds good even now. And what did she teach me?
1. Begin all your classes standing. Never sit as you enter a class. You must dominate and show you mean business.
2. Do not talk too loudly. A teacher with too strong a voice will irritate pupils and they will begin tuning out.
3. “Always be perfectly turned out. (By this mother meant all-round neatness, not high fashion. One morning Mother was electrified to find Indrani Mendis, a former Games Captain just recently turned teacher, wearing a hipster sari. Indrani had a lovely figure and the hipster looked stunning. Nonetheless, Indrani will never forget what followed. Mother made her drape the sari all over again in her office with the minimum of bare skin showing. Nowadays I should think that would be considered an infringement of one’s personal rights! No one thought such traitorous thoughts then. Indrani now teaches at Asian International, and still has her good figure.)
4. Give your class one written assignment a week under test conditions. They must do the work in front of you, otherwise much of the work done at home will be actually their parents’ doing.
5. Corrections must be done within two days, or else a child will lose interest in the result of the assignment.
6. If a child is doing really badly all the time, try giving her a slightly better grade than she deserves. She will then make that better grade on her own the following time.
7. A child’s energy curve soars when praised. Try to do this more often than giving her a scolding which will probably have no effect.
8. If a class is noisy never say, “Don’t talk, class.” Pick out one of the children and say, “Don’t talk, Nimi.” The whole class will stop talking just to hear what you are going to say to that one child. It is a ploy I have often used.
9. If you do not know the answer to a question, never bluff. Tell the child you do not know, but you will look it up at home and tell her the following day.
10. Never try to fool a child. It cannot be done.
11. Be perfectly prepared before you attempt to take a class.
12. Never read from the textbook. You should know what is in it.
13. Give unexpected one-word answer tests. Children will never know when one is coming and will therefore listen all the time.
And so on. The list was even longer, but these are some that I remember. Certainly the teachers at BLC (Buddhis Ladies College) and I were highly successful, as our excellent results proved. My English Literature results at the O-Level were only rated ‘Most commendable’ in Mother’s parlance, while the word ‘Superb’ sprang to my own mind.
Teachers under Mother practically memorized their textbooks, as she had a disconcerting habit of turning up in classrooms with a deceptively kind smile saying:
“Now you just continue with your lesson, while I sit here quietly at the back and learn something new.”
None of us was fooled. It was a tactful way of checking whether we knew our texts or not.
‘One morning I was teaching Arthur Conan Doyle’s novel The White Company to the O-Level Literature class. It was the Government text for that year, and its plot is set in Europe, in the Middle Ages. Medieval History had been my forte at University, so while Mother sat calmly at the back of the room I wickedly switched the subject-matter of my lesson, and gave the students a little background history of the Middle Ages.
Most fascinating to girls of that age is the Droit de Seigneur, which literally meant that the nobility of Europe had the right to sleep with the wife of a tenant farmer on his wedding night. The all-girl class was somewhat shocked, very thrilled and full of questions.
Mother sat through it all and then left, saying, “An interesting lesson!” to me. A few minutes later her peon handed me a note which read: “See me when free.” I assumed I’d gone too far and resigned myself to a lecture. Obediently, I trotted off to her office to face the music. Mother was all smiles and for once, full of praise.
“That is one lesson the girls will never forget,” she told me. “Frankly, neither will I, but that is hardly relevant. What pleases me is that such a lesson may get them reading History on their own in search of equally strange facts. That was good teaching , darling.”
I walked on air the rest of the day.
My old schoolmate, Smith College-returned Susheela Paul, also a teacher with me at BLC, had her entire class gaining Distinctions and Credits at the O-Level in Botany one year. Mother’s paean of praise had Susheela quite overcome. Susheela married Chari de Silva (who eventually became Chairman of Aitken Spence) and stopped teaching to bring up her family. Strangely, Mother did not protest at losing her fine teacher. Mother always felt family life should come first. One morning Susheela came to school but asked for leave midway through the morning.
“Is it urgent?” Mother asked.
“Fairly,” Susheela had replied and went on to explain why she wanted the rest of the day off. Apparently Ladies’ College follows the custom of not releasing prize lists until the very morning of the prize giving itself. Susheela had just been informed that her little daughter, Sharmini (aged six or seven) had won the Form Prize. She therefore had just a few hours to rush home to get Sharmini into a starched uniform, white shoes and a red ribbon to match.
“Run along then, my dear,” Mother is supposed to have said, and congratulated Susheela on a clever daughter. I snorted angrily when Susheela gleefully reported all this to me. I was recalling Mother’s refusal to grant me similar privileges for any reason at all.
“No one must think I favour you, darling,” Mother said soothingly to me, as if any one would be that demented, seeing that I was the hardest worked teacher on her staff.
Although Mother’s contracts with the schools she headed always had a furlough clause written into them, she rarely took advantage of it, preferring instead to have my grandmother come to Sri Lanka. The result was that both my grandmother and my aunt Arline visited the island several times and made many friends here. They needed to do so if they wanted to see my busy Mother.
But now Mother needed a holiday. After ten years or so, BLC was doing very well indeed. Leaving me in charge of the school for six months, she departed for the US, not without much misgiving. Right up to the time she went through the Customs gates she continued to hand out advice to me on just about everything.
“I’ll manage, Mother,” I eventually told her in exasperation.
“Oh, I have no doubt at all that you will,” said Mother, proceeding nonetheless to prove that she didn’t believe it for a minute.
Disastrously for me, my more lenient approach to the length of school uniforms and generally relaxed administrative manner (I preferred to use the phrase ‘modern manner’) resulted in one of the senior students eloping with the Geography master. I did not have any desire to read Mother’s outraged letter to me more than once, and so I tore it up instantly. It was quite some time before Mother gave me so much responsibility again in subsequent schools, as her days at BLC were at an end – though at the time she did not know it.
Mother was expected to return to Colombo after about six months, but before she could do so a blaze of adverse publicity left Mother initially more puzzled than hurt. Religion was at the bottom of it all.
As a Theosophist, Mother had no difficulty in running Buddhist schools in the manner Buddhists wanted. She followed the philosophy, and was good friends with the Bhikkus of Vajiraramaya – notably Bhikku Narada and Bhikku Piyadassi.
She did not go to Church and make a display of her Christian beliefs. Neither was she a temple-goer. The only places of worship we visited as a family were the religious sites to which Father took us in India. In Sri Lanka we visited and worshipped at the Dalada Maligawa, the Madhu Church, the Nallur Temple (when we were in Jaffna), and at Kataragama when Father decided our souls needed a little burnishing.
The fact that Mother rarely went to Church was just that she had very little time for it when she first came to the island. Hers had not been a very church-going family back home in the States, in any case. Now, as she entered her fifties, Mother decided to take up the study of her own religion again. She was studying Islam at the same time, but no one talked about that.
In one of her regular letters to the Chairman of BLC, Mr. de Mel, she mentioned the fact that she was enjoying the Church services in her mother’s parish. Reacting as if he had been stung, Mr. de Mel told Mother that on no account would he tolerate a practising Christian at the head of a Buddhist school.
Mother might have mentioned that at that very moment Visakha Vidyalaya, a premier Buddhist school, was getting along very nicely with a Christian Principal at its helm, and no one seemed to mind. She was more puzzled than hurt by her Chairman’s dictum, especially because Buddhism was not a subject that was ever discussed between them. But her bewilderment soon turned to anger when she was told of the manner in which the news that she would not be returning was broken to students and staff of BLC.
Mr de Mel summoned the entire school to an assembly in the Hall. He then had a priest from the Vajiraramaya speak to the captive audience who sat silently aghast, while Mother was literally vilified in front of her pupils and her teachers for no reason other than that of going to Church.
Unfortunately, Bhikku Narada was not in the island at the time, and the priest who came to deliver this bombshell was not someone who should have been entrusted with this delicate and tricky situation. Quite unsuspecting of what was going to be said, I was in the Hall myself and heard, to my complete fury, this Bhikku speak against my Mother in the most unacceptable language possible. He spoke in Sinhala and a literal translation would make his words border on vulgarity.
I got up, and walked out of the Hall. The priest was by now in full spate and did not connect my exit with my Mother. He carried on. That evening my husband accompanied me when I visited the Vajiraramaya to personally tell the Bhikku what I thought of him.
To this day my respect for many priests remains low. The Bhikku concerned denied saying anything.
“I heard you myself,” I told him angrily.
“You must have misunderstood,” he replied blandly, not accepting any blame. “In any case, I was told to make sure nobody got upset that your mother was not returning.”
With the benefit of hindsight, I realized that Mr. de Mel had been trying to forestall a repetition of the Musaeus College walk-out. He need not have worried. Many years had passed since that time, and the situation was not the same. Mother was not in the island, and did not return until after my daughter Khulsum was born.
But what really made Mother wonder sometimes if her life’s work for the Buddhist girls of Sri Lanka had been worth the effort she put into it, was the behaviour of certain chauvinistic Buddhists who not only refused to speak to her, but also saw to it that the newspapers played up the story.
“Principal Sails Away,” ran one headline, while Letters to the Editor debated the issue endlessly. Close friends rallied to Mother’s defence. It deeply concerned Mother that I was left to face all this criticism alone. My sister would have done a far better job than I did of confronting those who chose to be judgemental. I was quite unable to think of suitable retorts to questions such as “Isn’t Buddhism good enough?” and other nasty little innuendos.
“Tell everyone Mother has returned to the religion of the Ancient Greeks,” Su said dismissively on the phone.
“The Olympian gods? That was hardly a religion.” “Exactly.”
“I can’t say that sort of thing,” I quavered.
“Try the Druids then,” she said unsympathetically, and rang off.
In the end, Mother herself took it all philosophically, in spite of pinpricks which were often more like stabs. It was a bad time for me in many ways. No one enjoys hearing things said about one’s parents, even when the matter was so trivial. My husband’s family rose nobly to Mother’s defence. They made the next few months bearable, for it was not pleasant to have one’s mother’s religious preferences debated by those who knew very little of the matter. The Gunasekara family are strong Buddhists. My sister-in-law, Lakshmini is a devout adherent, yet her sensivity in the handling of this entire episode, particularly of my wounded feelings, is something the Motwanis will never forget.
It was a matter of bad timing. Buddhists were becoming very protective of their faith, and Mother’s actions were taken as a kind of slur that they found hard to forgive. Yet there were those like Lakshmini who remained totally non-judgemental and accepted that religion is, after all, a private matter. Is it any wonder that she remains from then to now, my closest friend and confidant.
One hurtful incident involved a lady who had been one of Mother’s favourite pupils at Visakha. Lillian was a girl with no mother. Her father would, more often than not, delay to pay her hostel fees. Mother was very fond of Lillian and would often tell me what beautiful long hair she had. On Mother’s first furlough back to America (I was four years old at the time), Lillian was sitting for her Matriculation examination in Colombo.
Running true to form, Lillian’s father had not paid the fees and she was withdrawn from the exam. Hearing of this, Mother indignantly cabled the office and insisted that Lillian’s name be entered on the list of those being sent up. Lillian always remained a favourite with her, probably because she had no mother. When the Bandarawela evacuation began, Lillian was taken along in a student/teacher capacity, and Mother even arranged for her to be paid a small salary.
Yet Lillian did not repay Mother with loyalty … or even with sympathy. She was the first to be openly critical of her in public — and, of course, Mother was told of this, for there are always ‘friends’ who enjoy passing on hurtful gossip. That was one of the few times I have seen Mother weep. She smiled when she heard that well-known civil servants or other VIPs had not been at all kind, but Lillian (who was by worldly standards not a person of importance) … Lillian hurt her most of all. When Lillian died shortly afterwards of cancer, Mother wept again at her funeral. Less forgiving, I refused to accompany her to it.
When Mother’s old friend, Bhikku Narada of the Vajiraramaya, heard of the whole matter, he sent for me. I told him that I had vowed never to enter any temple again after my brush-up with the representative of his order, who had been so hurtfully libelous of my mother. But Mother visited him, and he was saddened that it could not have been he who had given that talk to the students of BLC.
Still, memories are very short. Within a year of returning to Sri Lanka, Mother was being asked to write a series of articles on education for the local papers. Everyone forgot about Mother’s religious preferences and she decided to return ‘home’ permanently and enjoy retirement with her newly born granddaughter, Khulsum, and us. She ignored my husband Bunchy’s sardonic smile at the word ‘retirement’. Surrounding herself with books, Scrabble boards and bridge-playing friends, she managed to get along nicely for two months.
She enjoyed all this, but it was not in Mother’s nature to ‘retire’ and not be actively engaged in more strenuous educational work. When she was approached by Mr. Linton Kuruppu, the owner of a small school in the suburbs, who asked,her to transform it into a bigger and better Colombo school, she accepted the challenge. Thus, Sujatha Vidyalaya opened its doors in the fashionable Queen’s Road area in Colombo 3, and has been very successful.
Becoming wealthy through education was something that never entered Mother’s head. If she had been business-minded, she might have had a clause written into her contracts which gave her a percentage of the profits of the new schools she started, because there were profits. Mother never knew what they were, because she left finances to the Board.
I always told her that she had no head for business at all, for the owners of the Buddhist Ladies College and Sujatha Vidyalaya certainly did not make any losses while she headed them. Mother’s reputation, her genuine love for her students, her care and concern for all aspects of education, made her a legend in her time. Her name was a magnet that drew pupils to any school she headed, and the many thousands of children who passed through her hands were proud to say: “Mrs. Motwani was our Principal.”
While she was at Sujatha, the President of Sri Lanka at the time was J.R. Jayewardene. He instituted a system of National Honours which gave national recognition to citizens who had ‘done the state some service’. Mother was on that first list of recipients, and was the first person to be honoured in the field of Education. I was standing by her when the call came from President’s House, asking if she would be willing to accept the Deshabandu Award for her services in the education of Buddhist girls in the island.
It took some time for the President’s secretary to make Mother understand she was the chosen one. Mother was essentially a very humble person. It never occurred to her that she was considered important enough for a National Honour. I was always so proud to be known as her daughter and often told her so.
“It’s nice you feel that way, darling,” she would say, not really understanding that she had an awesome reputation. My husband and I were invited to watch her receive her award from the President’s hands. It was the first and last time I had a meal at the President’s House and it was a memorable occasion. Making the day all that much nicer for Mother, was the fact that Dr. P.R. Anthonis was also a recipient of a national honour in the field of Medicine.
Just before I married, Mother had needed to have very serious stomach surgery due to strangulated intestines. Before she went into surgery, she made my father-in-law-to-be promise that if she died he
would ensure my marriage went ahead (if not the reception). He promised, and it was perhaps a premonition of a mishap that made Mother extract that promise, for in the course of surgery, Dr. Anthonis told me later, he almost lost her.
Dr Anthonis was the foremost surgeon of the time in Sri Lanka. He still is! His gentle manner and almost aesthetically sensitive looks had endeared him to Mother at once. They became good friends. When the time came for Mother to settle her hospital bill she noticed there was no surgery charge. She queried it, and was told by the office that Dr. Anthonis had said he could never charge someone who had been nothing but a boon to his country.
It was a tribute he would pay her on two more occasions when she needed his services again. And so it was with much pleasure that these two people who had done so much in their respective careers for the people of Sri Lanka sat down to lunch together at the President’s House at the Inauguration of the National Honours List. Mother’s Deshabandu Medal and the Certificate of Honour she received at the hands of the President of her adopted country, are now treasured family heirlooms.
The Muslim holy month of Ramadan is set to begin on February 18 or 19, depending on the sighting of the crescent moon.
During the month, which lasts 29 or 30 days, Muslims observing the fast will refrain from eating and drinking from dawn to dusk, typically for a period of 12 to 15 hours, depending on their location.
Muslims believe Ramadan is the month when the first verses of the Quran were revealed to the Prophet Muhammad more than 1,400 years ago.
The fast entails abstinence from eating, drinking, smoking and sexual relations during daylight hours to achieve greater “taqwa”, or consciousness of God.
Why does Ramadan start on different dates every year?
Ramadan begins 10 to 12 days earlier each year. This is because the Islamic calendar is based on the lunar Hijri calendar, with months that are 29 or 30 days long.
For nearly 90 percent of the world’s population living in the Northern Hemisphere, the number of fasting hours will be a bit shorter this year and will continue to decrease until 2031, when Ramadan will encompass the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year.
For fasting Muslims living south of the equator, the number of fasting hours will be longer than last year.
Because the lunar year is shorter than the solar year by 11 days, Ramadan will be observed twice in the year 2030 – first beginning on January 5 and then starting on December 26.
Fasting hours around the world
The number of daylight hours varies across the world.
Since it is winter in the Northern Hemisphere, this Ramadan, people living there will have the shortest fasts, lasting about 12 to 13 hours on the first day, with the duration increasing throughout the month.
People in southern countries like Chile, New Zealand, and South Africa will have the longest fasts, lasting about 14 to 15 hours on the first day. However, the number of fasting hours will decrease throughout the month.
[Aljazeera]
Education reforms have triggered a national debate, and it is time to shift our focus from the mantra of memorising facts to mastering the art of thinking as an educational tool for the children of our land: the glorious future of Sri Lanka.
The 2026 National Education Reform Agenda is an ambitious attempt to transform a century-old colonial relic of rote-learning into a modern, competency-based system. Yet for all that, as the headlines oscillate between the “smooth rollout” of Grade 01 reforms and the “suspension of Grade 06 modules,” due to various mishaps, a deeper question remains: Do we truly and clearly understand how a human being learns?
Education is ever so often mistaken for the volume of facts a student can carry in his or her head until the day of an examination. In Sri Lanka the “Scholarship Exam” (Grade 05) and the O-Level/A-Level hurdles have created a culture where the brain is treated as a computer hard drive that stores data, rather than a superbly competent processor of information.
However, neuroscience and global success stories clearly project a different perspective. To reform our schools, we must first understand the journey of the human mind, from the first breath of infancy to the complex thresholds of adulthood.
The Architecture of the Early Mind: Infancy to Age 05
The journey begins not with a textbook, but with, in tennis jargon, a “serve and return” interaction. When a little infant babbles, and a parent responds with a smile or a word or a sentence, neural connections are forged at a rate of over one million per second. This is the foundation of cognitive architecture, the basis of learning. The baby learns that the parent is responsive to his or her antics and it is stored in his or her brain.
In Scandinavian countries like Finland and Norway, globally recognised and appreciated for their fantastic educational facilities, formal schooling does not even begin until age seven. Instead, the early years are dedicated to play-based learning. One might ask why? It is because neuroscience has clearly shown that play is the “work” of the child. Through play, children develop executive functions, responsiveness, impulse control, working memory, and mental flexibility.
In Sri Lanka, we often rush like the blazes on earth to put a pencil in the hand of a three-year-old, and then firmly demanding the child writes the alphabet. Contrast this with the United Kingdom’s “Birth to 5 Matters” framework. That initiative prioritises “self-regulation”, the ability to manage emotions and focus. A child who can regulate their emotions is a child who can eventually solve a quadratic equation. However, a child who is forced to memorise before they can play, often develops “school burnout” even before they hit puberty.
The Primary Years: Discovery vs. Dictation
As children move into the primary years (ages 06 to 12), the brain’s “neuroplasticity” is at its peak. Neuroplasticity refers to the malleability of the human brain. It is the brain’s ability to physically rewire its neural pathways in response to new information or the environment. This is the window where the “how” of learning becomes a lot more important than the “what” that the child should learn.
Singapore is often ranked number one in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) scores. It is a worldwide study conducted by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) that measures the scholastic performance of 15-year-old students in mathematics, science, and reading. It is considered to be the gold standard for measuring “education” because it does not test whether students can remember facts. Instead, it tests whether they can apply what they have learned to solve real-world problems; a truism that perfectly aligns with the argument that memorisation is not true or even valuable education. Singapore has moved away from its old reputation for “pressure-cooker” education. Their current mantra is “Teach Less, Learn More.” They have reduced the syllabus to give teachers room to facilitate inquiry. They use the “Concrete-Pictorial-Abstract” approach to mathematics, ensuring children understand the logic of numbers before they are asked to memorise formulae.
In Japan, the primary curriculum emphasises Moral Education (dotoku) and Special Activities (tokkatsu). Children learn to clean their own classrooms and serve lunch. This is not just about performing routine chores; it really is as far as you can get away from it. It is about learning collaboration and social responsibility. The Japanese are wise enough to understand that even an absolutely brilliant scientist who cannot work in a team is a liability to society.
In Sri Lanka, the current debate over the 2026 reforms centres on the “ABCDE” framework: Attendance, Belongingness, Cleanliness, Discipline, and English. While these are noble goals, we must be careful not to turn “Belongingness” into just another checkbox. True learning in the primary years happens when a child feels safe enough to ask “Why?” without the fear of being told “Because it is in the syllabus” or, in extreme cases, “It is not your job to question it.” Those who perpetrate such remarks need to have their heads examined, because in the developed world, the word “Why” is considered to be a very powerful expression, as it demands answers that involve human reasoning.
The Adolescent Brain: The Search for Meaning
Between ages 12 and 18, the brain undergoes a massive refashioning or “pruning” process. The prefrontal cortex of the human brain, the seat of reasoning, is still under construction. This is why teenagers are often impulsive but also capable of profound idealism. However, with prudent and gentle guiding, the very same prefrontal cortex can be stimulated to reach much higher levels of reasoning.
The USA and UK models, despite their flaws, have pioneered “Project-Based Learning” (PBL). Instead of sitting for a history lecture, students might be tasked with creating a documentary or debating a mock trial. This forces them to use 21st-century skills, like critical thinking, communication, and digital literacy. For example, memorising the date of the Battle of Danture is a low-level cognitive task. Google can do it in 0.02 seconds or less. However, analysing why the battle was fought, and its impact on modern Sri Lankan identity, is a high-level cognitive task. The Battle of Danture in 1594 is one of the most significant military victories in Sri Lankan history. It was a decisive clash between the forces of the Kingdom of Kandy, led by King Vimaladharmasuriya 1, and the Portuguese Empire, led by Captain-General Pedro Lopes de Sousa. It proved that a smaller but highly motivated force with a deep understanding of its environment could defeat a globally dominant superpower. It ensured that the Kingdom of Kandy remained independent for another 221 years, until 1815. Without this victory, Sri Lanka might have become a full Portuguese colony much earlier. Children who are guided to appreciate the underlying reasons for the victory will remember it and appreciate it forever. Education must move from the “What” to the “So What about it?“
The Great Fallacy: Why Memorisation is Not Education
The most dangerous myth in Sri Lankan education is that a “good memory” equals a “good education.” A good memory that remembers information is a good thing. However, it is vital to come to terms with the concept that understanding allows children to link concepts, reason, and solve problems. Memorisation alone just results in superficial learning that does not last.
Neuroscience shows that when we learn through rote recall, the information is stored in “silos.” It stays put in a store but cannot be applied to new contexts. However, when we learn through understanding, we build a web of associations, an omnipotent ability to apply it to many a variegated circumstance.
Interestingly, a hybrid approach exists in some countries. In East Asian systems, as found in South Korea and China, “repetitive practice” is often used, not for mindless rote, but to achieve “fluency.” Just as a pianist practices scales to eventually play a concerto with soul sounds incorporated into it, a student might practice basic arithmetic to free up “working memory” for complex physics. The key is that the repetition must lead to a “deep” approach, not a superficial or “surface” one.
Some Suggestions for Sri Lanka’s Reform Initiatives
The “hullabaloo” in Sri Lanka regarding the 2026 reforms is, in many ways, a healthy sign. It shows that the country cares. That is a very good thing. However, the critics have valid points.
* The Digital Divide: Moving towards “digital integration” is progressive, but if the burden of buying digital tablets and computers falls on parents in rural villages, we are only deepening the inequality and iniquity gap. It is our responsibility to ensure that no child is left behind, especially because of poverty. Who knows? That child might turn out to be the greatest scientist of all time.
* Teacher Empowerment: You cannot have “learner-centred education” without “independent-thinking teachers.” If our teachers are treated as “cogs in a machine” following rigid manuals from the National Institute of Education (NIE), the students will never learn to think for themselves. We need to train teachers to be the stars of guidance. Mistakes do not require punishments; they simply require gentle corrections.
* Breadth vs. Depth: The current reform’s tendency to increase the number of “essential subjects”, even up to 15 in some modules, ever so clearly risks overwhelming the cognitive and neural capacities of students. The result would be an “academic burnout.” We should follow the Scandinavian model of depth over breadth: mastering a few things deeply is much better than skimming the surface of many.
The Road to Adulthood
By the time a young adult reaches 21, his or her brain is almost fully formed. The goal of the previous 20 years should not have been to fill a “vessel” with facts, but to “kindle a fire” of curiosity.
The most successful adults in the 2026 global economy or science are not those who can recite the periodic table from memory. They are those who possess grit, persistence, adaptability, reasoning, and empathy. These are “soft skills” that are actually the hardest to teach. More importantly, they are the ones that cannot be tested in a three-hour hall examination with a pen and paper.
A personal addendum
As a Consultant Paediatrician with over half a century of experience treating children, including kids struggling with physical ailments as well as those enduring mental health crises in many areas of our Motherland, I have seen the invisible scars of our education system. My work has often been the unintended ‘landing pad’ for students broken by the relentless stresses of rote-heavy curricula and the rigid, unforgiving and even violently exhibited expectations of teachers. We are currently operating a system that prioritises the ‘average’ while failing the individual. This is a catastrophe that needs to be addressed.
In addition, and most critically, we lack a formal mechanism to identify and nurture our “intellectually gifted” children. Unlike Singapore’s dedicated Gifted Education Programme (GEP), which identifies and provides specialised care for high-potential learners from a very young age, our system leaves these bright minds to wither in the boredom of standard classrooms or, worse, treats their brilliance as a behavioural problem to be suppressed. Please believe me, we do have equivalent numbers of gifted child intellectuals as any other nation on Mother Earth. They need to be found and carefully nurtured, even with kid gloves at times.
All these concerns really break my heart as I am a humble product of a fantastic free education system that nurtured me all those years ago. This Motherland of mine gave me everything that I have today, and I have never forgotten that. It is the main reason why I have elected to remain and work in this country, despite many opportunities offered to me from many other realms. I decided to write this piece in a supposedly valiant effort to anticipate that saner counsel would prevail finally, and all the children of tomorrow will be provided with the very same facilities that were afforded to me, right throughout my career. Ever so sadly, the current system falls ever so far from it.
Conclusion: A Fervent Call to Action
If we want Sri Lanka to thrive, we must stop asking our children, “What did you learn today?” and start asking, “What did you learn to question today?“
Education reform is not just about changing textbooks or introducing modules. It is, very definitely, about changing our national mindset. We must learn to equally value the artist as much as the doctor, and the critical thinker as much as the top scorer in exams. Let us look to the world, to the play of the Finns, the discipline of the Japanese, and the inquiry of the British, and learn from them. But, and this is a BIG BUT…, let us build a system that is uniquely Sri Lankan. We need a system that makes absolutely sure that our children enjoy learning. We must ensure that it is one where every child, without leaving even one of them behind, from the cradle to the graduation cap, is seen not as a memory bank, but as a mind waiting to be set free.
by Dr B. J. C. Perera
MBBS(Cey), DCH(Cey), DCH(Eng), MD(Paed), MRCP(UK), FRCP(Edin), FRCP(Lond), FRCPCH(UK), FSLCPaed, FCCP, Hony. FRCPCH(UK), Hony. FCGP(SL)
Specialist Consultant Paediatrician and Honorary Senior Fellow, Postgraduate Institute of Medicine, University of Colombo, Sri Lanka.
Joint Editor, Sri Lanka
Journal of Child Health]
Section Editor, Ceylon Medical Journal
Standing on the southern tip of the island at Dondra Head, where the Indian Ocean stretches endlessly in every direction, it is difficult to imagine that beneath those restless blue waves lies one of the greatest wildlife spectacles on Earth.
Yet, according to Dr. Ranil Nanayakkara, Sri Lanka today is not just another tropical island with pretty beaches – it is one of the best places in the world to see blue whales, the largest animals ever to have lived on this planet.
“The waters around Sri Lanka are particularly good for blue whales due to a unique combination of geography and oceanographic conditions,” Dr. Nanayakkara told The Island. “We have a reliable and rich food source, and most importantly, a unique, year-round resident population.”
In a world where blue whales usually migrate thousands of kilometres between polar feeding grounds and tropical breeding areas, Sri Lanka offers something extraordinary – a non-migratory population of pygmy blue whales (Balaenoptera musculus indica) that stay around the island throughout the year. Instead of travelling to Antarctica, these giants simply shift their feeding grounds around the island, moving between the south and east coasts with the monsoons.
The secret lies beneath the surface. Seasonal monsoonal currents trigger upwelling of cold, nutrient-rich water, which fuels massive blooms of phytoplankton. This, in turn, supports dense swarms of Sergestidae shrimps – tiny creatures that form the primary diet of Sri Lanka’s blue whales.
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- “Engineers of the ocean system”
“Blue whales require dense aggregations of these shrimps to meet their massive energy needs,” Dr. Nanayakkara explained. “And the waters around Dondra Head and Trincomalee provide exactly that.”
Adding to this natural advantage is Sri Lanka’s narrow continental shelf. The seabed drops sharply into deep oceanic canyons just a few kilometres from the shore. This allows whales to feed in deep waters while remaining close enough to land to be observed from places like Mirissa and Trincomalee – a rare phenomenon anywhere in the world.
Dr. Nanayakkara’s journey into marine research began not in a laboratory, but in front of a television screen. As a child, he was captivated by the documentary Whales Weep Not by James R. Donaldson III – the first visual documentation of sperm and blue whales in Sri Lankan waters.
“That documentary planted the seed,” he recalled. “But what truly set my path was my first encounter with a sperm whale off Trincomalee. Seeing that animal surface just metres away was humbling. It made me realise that despite decades of conflict on land, Sri Lanka harbours globally significant marine treasures.”
Since then, his work has focused on cetaceans – from blue whales and sperm whales to tropical killer whales and elusive beaked whales. What continues to inspire him is both the scientific mystery and the human connection.
“These blue whales do not follow typical migration patterns. Their life cycles, communication and adaptability are still not fully understood,” he said. “And at the same time, seeing the awe in people’s eyes during whale watching trips reminds me why this work matters.”
Whale watching has become one of Sri Lanka’s fastest-growing tourism industries. On the south coast alone, thousands of tourists head out to sea every year in search of a glimpse of the giants. But Dr. Nanayakkara warned that without strict regulation, this boom could become a curse.
“We already have good guidelines – vessels must stay at least 100 metres away and maintain slow speeds,” he noted. “The problem is enforcement.”
Speaking to The Island, he stressed that Sri Lanka stands at a critical crossroads. “We can either become a global model for responsible ocean stewardship, or we can allow short-term economic interests to erode one of the most extraordinary marine ecosystems on the planet. The choice we make today will determine whether these giants continue to swim in our waters tomorrow.”
Beyond tourism, a far more dangerous threat looms over Sri Lanka’s whales – commercial shipping traffic. The main east-west shipping lanes pass directly through key blue whale habitats off the southern coast.
“The science is very clear,” Dr. Nanayakkara told The Island. “If we move the shipping lanes just 15 nautical miles south, we can reduce the risk of collisions by up to 95 percent.”
Such a move, however, requires political will and international cooperation through bodies like the International Maritime Organization and the International Whaling Commission.
“Ships travelling faster than 14 knots are far more likely to cause fatal injuries,” he added. “Reducing speeds to 10 knots in high-risk areas can cut fatal strikes by up to 90 percent. This is not guesswork – it is solid science.”
To most people, whales are simply majestic animals. But in ecological terms, they are far more than that – they are engineers of the ocean system itself.
Through a process known as the “whale pump”, whales bring nutrients from deep waters to the surface through their faeces, fertilising phytoplankton. These microscopic plants absorb vast amounts of carbon dioxide, making whales indirect allies in the fight against climate change.
“When whales die and sink, they take all that carbon with them to the deep sea,” Dr. Nanayakkara said. “They literally lock carbon away for centuries.”
Dr. Ranil Nanayakkara
Even in death, whales create life. “Whale falls” – carcasses on the ocean floor – support unique deep-sea communities for decades.
“Protecting whales is not just about saving a species,” he said. “It is about protecting the ocean’s ability to function as a life-support system for the planet.”
For Dr. Nanayakkara, whales are not abstract data points – they are individuals with personalities and histories.
One of his most memorable encounters was with a female sperm whale nicknamed “Jaw”, missing part of her lower jaw.
“She surfaced right beside our boat, her massive eye level with mine,” he recalled. “In that moment, the line between observer and observed blurred. It was a reminder that these are sentient beings, not just research subjects.”
Another was with a tropical killer whale matriarch called “Notch”, who surfaced with her calf after a hunt.
“It felt like she was showing her offspring to us,” he said softly. “There was pride in her movement. It was extraordinary.”
Looking ahead, Dr. Nanayakkara envisions Sri Lanka as a global leader in a sustainable blue economy – where conservation and development go hand in hand.
“The ultimate goal is shared stewardship,” he told The Island. “When fishermen see healthy reefs as future income, and tour operators see protected whales as their greatest asset, conservation becomes everyone’s business.”
In the end, Sri Lanka’s greatest natural inheritance may not be its forests or mountains, but the silent giants gliding through its surrounding seas.
“Our ocean health is our greatest asset,” Dr. Nanayakkara said in conclusion. “If we protect it wisely, these whales will not just survive – they will define Sri Lanka’s place in the world.”
By Ifham Nizam
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