Features
Education: Personal goals attuned to social progress
by Susantha Hewa
Education, for an overwhelming majority of students and their parents, is the one and only way for gainful employment, financial success, upward mobility and social recognition. Yet, it is just where education is made to function in its most utilitarian gear, grooming the individual for a livelihood. Education is also a handy tool for the fashioning of a cultured person who can contribute towards both individual and social wellbeing. However, in an exam-oriented, competitive system, which is primarily designed to provide workers to run the economy, the above broader function of education naturally gets underrated and overlooked. This has produced two factions debating about the primary function of education: whether it should prepare individuals for jobs or guide them to be refined citizens, who can contribute towards social progress.
It’s no good eternally arguing whether education is for jobs or, alternatively, for making students to be good, intelligent citizens as well as furthering overall social progress. We often seem to think that these targets are mutually exclusive, which may not be the case.
Those who favour job-oriented education seem to consider ‘inculcating values’ as too naïve and wishy-washy. Conversely, those who overemphasize education’s role of value-inculcation seem to dismiss job-oriented education as starkly materialistic. Both parties seem to look at these two broad aims of education with some bias. However, the fact is, those seemingly opposite aims need not be contradictory. Education can be made to meet both these ends: employability and the inculcation of values for individual fulfilment and social cohesion. There is nothing to prevent proficient employees being broad-minded citizens and vice versa. What we need is the political will and the pooling of expertise of all interested parties including educationists, economists, psychologists, administrators, academics and professionals of arts and sciences to achieve both personal and collective goals.
In fact, education plays a crucial role in promoting self-fulfillment as well as social advancement. All beings are naturally self-centered and continuously look for opportunities for self-gain. Hence, it’s not strange that today, for each person, education appears to be one of the safest means of achieving their personal goals – wealth, comfort and social recognition. There is nothing reprehensible at all in it. After all, as a means of achieving those desirable things in life, education is more society-friendly than most other options available, specially, for those who don’t rely much on education: deceit, profiteering, theft, money laundering, sale of liquor and dangerous drugs and, last but not least, dabbling in politics. So how can we condemn those who pursue education for moving from “rags to riches”?
One may say that education should not be seen as a magic formula for prosperity and that learning is too sacred a pursuit to be regarded as a key to material success, power and social status. However, such a view often fails to recognize that education, in its different forms, serves as the best bet for securing a decent livelihood for many people in a civilised world and also, that it has taken the place of the brute force characteristic of primitive life which happened to be a relentless struggle for survival. As such, if one condemns education being used as a way to personal success, one may do it at one’s own peril, for the alternative paths available may turn out to be starkly antisocial.
In fact, our aversion towards higher education being used as a way of producing “employable graduates” seems to come from our disapproval of it being used to sustain a profit-oriented economy which divides education as ‘useful’ and ‘useless’ according to how it serves to maximise profit of a handful of elites while leaving an overwhelming majority in dire poverty. Further, we forget that ‘employability’ assumes that derogatory sense only in a context where the economy absorbs graduates to maximise profits of a few.
There would be nothing sinful about being groomed to be employable, if we happened to be living in a world where economic growth were an indicator of individual happiness and social wellbeing. George Monbiot, the author of “Out of the wreckage; a new politics for an age of crisis” captures the sense of cynicism of the average citizen living in a consumerist society, when he says, “Defined by the market, defined as a market, human society should be run in every respect as if it were a business, its social relations reimagined as commercial transactions; people redesignated as human capital”. The idea of ‘employable graduate’ should not be thrown out with the noxious bathwater of extreme competition and individualism.
The low estimation of humanities and social sciences in higher education is not an indication of their so-called irrelevance. The discriminatory attitude cannot be easily got rid of since it is the corporate interests that decide their ‘value’ in a competitive society. It is due to this that the disgruntled voices about arts stream subjects being neglected continue to fall on deaf ears. It would be an uphill task to raise them to the level of the subjects favoured by the business world. So far as the economic growth of a country remains to be just impressive statistics on paper without them reflecting the physical and mental wellbeing of the common people, the humanities and social sciences are going to look lacklustre in the eyes of those who call the shots.
Questioning, researching, analyzing and critical thinking that are often marketed to assert the importance of the so-called ‘soft subjects’, as against hard sciences, are not likely to cut much ice with those who want education to simply spawn workers, including professionals, to keep the economy going and huge profits flowing into their hands. In such a setting that workers, both skilled and unskilled, are not paid for their questioning or critical thinking skills cannot make headlines.
Among the whole gamut of worrisome issues in education are: resource-depleted rural schools, heavy workload for both students and teachers, obsolete teaching methods, long school hours, dependency on tuition industry, lack of opportunities for students for recreation, disproportionate homework, tedium, teachers burdened with redundant paperwork, obsession with continuous testing and crippling exams, insufficient scope for creative work, aesthetics, sports, soft skills, segregation of schools on ‘ethnicity’ and lack of timely upgrading of content and teaching methods., etc. All these problems cannot be separated from economy and politics. It would be a hard job for those who are sincerely concerned about using education’s many capacities for promoting good and eliminating vice, because education cannot be prevented from being putty in the hands of those with personal and political agendas.
Obviously, those who are ensconced in power and affluence cannot be expected to suffer education serving in any way to undermine their positions. Prof. Alvin Toffler in his book “The Third Wave” (sequel to his book “The Future Shock”) writes, “schools produced, just as factories do, employees who could fit into the slots of the hierarchical structure of industrial societies by programming them through a ‘covert curriculum’ to be compliant, dutiful and diligent”. This may not be far from the truth, because greedy politicians and business magnates who control the economy will always want the prevailing system to go on with the least resistance. They wouldn’t want to tap the full potential of education to prompt students to question and challenge anything established including the present economic order favouring the elites.
The fact is, our education system primarily appeals to the individual’s sense of self-aggrandisement in a society, in which being educated is to become humiliated if what you have studied has no market value. Unlike the students of science, IT and commerce streams, the graduates of history, sociology, literature, etc. cannot help business magnates to fatten on their profits. Therefore, education in humanities and social sciences, which doesn’t equip students to find their convenient niches in a profit-oriented economy, wouldn’t be favourably viewed at all by the major players.
Therefore, it would be futile to think that enhancing the quality of education will bring about a just society unless the natural desires of the student are aligned with education’s capacity for uncovering the essential link between individual happiness and social progress. In other words, the more ambitious the student is to realize his dreams, the more momentum it should give for social advancement.
The present situation of arts stream subjects inexorably receiving stepmotherly treatment cannot be changed until there remains a strict division between arts and science subjects. And, it is only when the so-called economic growth is made to serve all the people and not a lucky few that the society will be able to create meaningful space for humanities and social sciences to play a role in society as important as the hard sciences. It goes without saying that the economy should be made people-friendly instead of remaining self-serving and profit-friendly. In his book “Ruptures in Sri Lanka’s Education: Genesis, present status and reflections”, Prof. Panduka Karunanayake correctly points out that “when local industries pick up and overseas ones open up to our workers, qualification inflation will ease – educationists can then fruitfully focus on the broader issues in education, including the inculcation of civic values, etc.” Although he is optimistic that the growth of economy, in its present form itself, will pave the way for educationists to step in to play a broader and more important role in education, the point he emphasizes here, among other things, is the importance of harnessing education to realise full human potential instead of it being woefully underutilised to providing livelihoods. However, what is undeniable is that what role we get our economy to play – whether we leave it in the hands of those VIPs for money making or use its massive potential to primarily serve society – will have a lasting impact on the whole education system.
It is only within a humane model of governance, which makes economic interests subservient to human interests that education can be made to foster social cohesion rather than furthering division and estrangement.
by Kaushalya Perera
Time has, by and large, stood still in the business of academic staff recruitment to state universities. Qualifications have proliferated and evolved to be more interdisciplinary, but our selection processes and evaluation criteria are unchanged since at least the late 1990s. But before I delve into the problems, I will describe the existing processes and schemes of recruitment. The discussion is limited to UGC-governed state universities (and does not include recruitment to medical and engineering sectors) though the problems may be relevant to other higher education institutions (HEIs).
How recruitment happens currently in SL state universities
Academic ranks in Sri Lankan state universities can be divided into three tiers (subdivisions are not discussed).
* Lecturer (Probationary)
– recruited with a four-year undergraduate degree. A tiny step higher is the Lecturer (Unconfirmed), recruited with a postgraduate degree but no teaching experience.
* A Senior Lecturer can be recruited with certain postgraduate qualifications and some number of years of teaching and research.
* Above this is the professor (of four types), which can be left out of this discussion since only one of those (Chair Professor) is by application.
State universities cannot hire permanent academic staff as and when they wish. Prior to advertising a vacancy, approval to recruit is obtained through a mind-numbing and time-consuming process (months!) ending at the Department of Management Services. The call for applications must list all ranks up to Senior Lecturer. All eligible candidates for Probationary to Senior Lecturer are interviewed, e.g., if a Department wants someone with a doctoral degree, they must still advertise for and interview candidates for all ranks, not only candidates with a doctoral degree. In the evaluation criteria, the first degree is more important than the doctoral degree (more on this strange phenomenon later). All of this is only possible when universities are not under a ‘hiring freeze’, which governments declare regularly and generally lasts several years.
Problem type 1
– Archaic processes and evaluation criteria
Twenty-five years ago, as a probationary lecturer with a first degree, I was a typical hire. We would be recruited, work some years and obtain postgraduate degrees (ideally using the privilege of paid study leave to attend a reputed university in the first world). State universities are primarily undergraduate teaching spaces, and when doctoral degrees were scarce, hiring probationary lecturers may have been a practical solution. The path to a higher degree was through the academic job. Now, due to availability of candidates with postgraduate qualifications and the problems of retaining academics who find foreign postgraduate opportunities, preference for candidates applying with a postgraduate qualification is growing. The evaluation scheme, however, prioritises the first degree over the candidate’s postgraduate education. Were I to apply to a Faculty of Education, despite a PhD on language teaching and research in education, I may not even be interviewed since my undergraduate degree is not in education. The ‘first degree first’ phenomenon shows that universities essentially ignore the intellectual development of a person beyond their early twenties. It also ignores the breadth of disciplines and their overlap with other fields.
This can be helped (not solved) by a simple fix, which can also reduce brain drain: give precedence to the doctoral degree in the required field, regardless of the candidate’s first degree, effected by a UGC circular. The suggestion is not fool-proof. It is a first step, and offered with the understanding that any selection process, however well the evaluation criteria are articulated, will be beset by multiple issues, including that of bias. Like other Sri Lankan institutions, universities, too, have tribal tendencies, surfacing in the form of a preference for one’s own alumni. Nevertheless, there are other problems that are, arguably, more pressing as I discuss next. In relation to the evaluation criteria, a problem is the narrow interpretation of any regulation, e.g., deciding the degree’s suitability based on the title rather than considering courses in the transcript. Despite rhetoric promoting internationalising and inter-disciplinarity, decision-making administrative and academic bodies have very literal expectations of candidates’ qualifications, e.g., a candidate with knowledge of digital literacy should show this through the title of the degree!
Problem type 2 – The mess of badly regulated higher education
A direct consequence of the contemporary expansion of higher education is a large number of applicants with myriad qualifications. The diversity of degree programmes cited makes the responsibility of selecting a suitable candidate for the job a challenging but very important one. After all, the job is for life – it is very difficult to fire a permanent employer in the state sector.
Widely varying undergraduate degree programmes.
At present, Sri Lankan undergraduates bring qualifications (at times more than one) from multiple types of higher education institutions: a degree from a UGC-affiliated state university, a state university external to the UGC, a state institution that is not a university, a foreign university, or a private HEI aka ‘private university’. It could be a degree received by attending on-site, in Sri Lanka or abroad. It could be from a private HEI’s affiliated foreign university or an external degree from a state university or an online only degree from a private HEI that is ‘UGC-approved’ or ‘Ministry of Education approved’, i.e., never studied in a university setting. Needless to say, the diversity (and their differences in quality) are dizzying. Unfortunately, under the evaluation scheme all degrees ‘recognised’ by the UGC are assigned the same marks. The same goes for the candidates’ merits or distinctions, first classes, etc., regardless of how difficult or easy the degree programme may be and even when capabilities, exposure, input, etc are obviously different.
Similar issues are faced when we consider postgraduate qualifications, though to a lesser degree. In my discipline(s), at least, a postgraduate degree obtained on-site from a first-world university is preferable to one from a local university (which usually have weekend or evening classes similar to part-time study) or online from a foreign university. Elitist this may be, but even the best local postgraduate degrees cannot provide the experience and intellectual growth gained by being in a university that gives you access to six million books and teaching and supervision by internationally-recognised scholars. Unfortunately, in the evaluation schemes for recruitment, the worst postgraduate qualification you know of will receive the same marks as one from NUS, Harvard or Leiden.
The problem is clear but what about a solution?
Recruitment to state universities needs to change to meet contemporary needs. We need evaluation criteria that allows us to get rid of the dross as well as a more sophisticated institutional understanding of using them. Recruitment is key if we want our institutions (and our country) to progress. I reiterate here the recommendations proposed in ‘Considerations for Higher Education Reform’ circulated previously by Kuppi Collective:
* Change bond regulations to be more just, in order to retain better qualified academics.
* Update the schemes of recruitment to reflect present-day realities of inter-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary training in order to recruit suitably qualified candidates.
* Ensure recruitment processes are made transparent by university administrations.
Kaushalya Perera is a senior lecturer at the University of Colombo.
(Kuppi is a politics and pedagogy happening on the margins of the lecture hall that parodies, subverts, and simultaneously reaffirms social hierarchies.)
This week, too, the spotlight is on an outfit that has gained popularity, mainly through social media.
Last week we had MISTER Band in our scene, and on 10th February, Yellow Beatz – both social media favourites.
Talento is a seven-piece band that plays all types of music, from the ‘60s to the modern tracks of today.
The band has reached many heights, since its inception in 2012, and has gained recognition as a leading wedding and dance band in the scene here.
The members that makeup the outfit have a solid musical background, which comes through years of hard work and dedication
Their portfolio of music contains a mix of both western and eastern songs and are carefully selected, they say, to match the requirements of the intended audience, occasion, or event.
Although the baila is a specialty, which is inherent to this group, that originates from Moratuwa, their repertoire is made up of a vast collection of love, classic, oldies and modern-day hits.
The musicians, who make up Talento, are:
Prabuddha Geetharuchi:
Geilee Fonseka: Dynamic and charismatic vocalist
Prabuddha Geetharuchi: The main man behind the band Talento
(Vocalist/ Frontman). He is an avid music enthusiast and was mentored by a lot of famous musicians, and trainers, since he was a child. Growing up with them influenced him to take on western songs, as well as other music styles. A Peterite, he is the main man behind the band Talento and is a versatile singer/entertainer who never fails to get the crowd going.
Geilee Fonseka (Vocals):
A dynamic and charismatic vocalist whose vibrant stage presence, and powerful voice, bring a fresh spark to every performance. Young, energetic, and musically refined, she is an artiste who effortlessly blends passion with precision – captivating audiences from the very first note. Blessed with an immense vocal range, Geilee is a truly versatile singer, confidently delivering Western and Eastern music across multiple languages and genres.
Chandana Perera (Drummer):
His expertise and exceptional skills have earned him recognition as one of the finest acoustic drummers in Sri Lanka. With over 40 tours under his belt, Chandana has demonstrated his dedication and passion for music, embodying the essential role of a drummer as the heartbeat of any band.
Harsha Soysa:
(Bassist/Vocalist). He a chorister of the western choir of St. Sebastian’s College, Moratuwa, who began his musical education under famous voice trainers, as well as bass guitar trainers in Sri Lanka. He has also performed at events overseas. He acts as the second singer of the band
Udara Jayakody:
(Keyboardist). He is also a qualified pianist, adding technical flavour to Talento’s music. His singing and harmonising skills are an extra asset to the band. From his childhood he has been a part of a number of orchestras as a pianist. He has also previously performed with several famous western bands.
Aruna Madushanka:
(Saxophonist). His proficiciency in playing various instruments, including the saxophone, soprano saxophone, and western flute, showcases his versatility as a musician, and his musical repertoire is further enhanced by his remarkable singing ability.
Prashan Pramuditha:
(Lead guitar). He has the ability to play different styles, both oriental and western music, and he also creates unique tones and patterns with the guitar..
The JJ Twins, the Sri Lankan musical duo, performing in the Maldives, and known for blending R&B, Hip Hop, and Sri Lankan rhythms, thereby creating a unique sound, have come out with a brand-new single ‘Me Mawathe.’
In fact, it’s a very special milestone for the twin brothers, Julian and Jason Prins, as ‘Me Mawathe’ is their first ever Sinhala song!
‘Me Mawathe’ showcases a fresh new sound, while staying true to the signature harmony and emotion that their fans love.
This heartfelt track captures the beauty of love, journey, and connection, brought to life through powerful vocals and captivating melodies.
It marks an exciting new chapter for the JJ Twins as they expand their musical journey and connect with audiences in a whole new way.
Their recent album, ‘CONCLUDED,’ explores themes of love, heartbreak, and healing, and include hits like ‘Can’t Get You Off My Mind’ and ‘You Left Me Here to Die’ which showcase their emotional intensity.
Readers could stay connected and follow JJ Twins on social media for exclusive updates, behind-the-scenes moments, and upcoming releases:
Instagram: http://instagram.com/jjtwinsofficial
TikTok: http://tiktok.com/@jjtwinsmusic
Facebook: http://facebook.com/jjtwinssingers
YouTube: http://youtube.com/jjtwins
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