Free education and season ticket

by Fr J.C. Pieris

Given the bankrupt state of the country and the collapsed economy; lack of any regular work for the daily wage earners and poverty of over 65% of population thanks to the Rajapakses; often, children cannot afford even the season ticket to travel by bus/train to school. For free education to be truly free the season ticket must be made a free ticket for commuting to school and back.

NPP, please take note, when you are drafting a new constitution.

The following article by a retired director of education, T.M. Premawardana, translated by me on the 07 December 2016 will elucidate the necessity of correctly including free education in the constitution.

“Free education was born in our country after a broad consultation of the opinion of the people and making the proposals accordingly. The majority of the governing body of those days opposed it. Then a group led by Dr E.W. Adikaram went around the country creating in the people an awareness of the situation. The awakened people in hundreds of thousands signed a petition and sent it to the speaker. People began to send telegrams to the members of the State Council demanding they raise their hands for free education. Finally with Buddhist monks leading them the people went on foot to the State Council. The gallery was brimming over with people pro free education. That day the bill was passed unanimously without even a show of hands.

After the time of C.W.W. Kannangara, changes were made to free education so often and arbitrarily without any consultation of the people that we now have no free education in our country. If these arbitrary changes were not made to free education the following ought to or could have happened.

Every school would have equally trustworthy and respected principals and teachers.

Teachers would be helping students to acquire knowledge, attitudes and skills needed to be good citizens for whom ‘humaneness’ is top priority.

All teachers would be bilinguists. They would be able to teach either in Sinhala and English or Tamil and English.

All students who have passed Grade 9 would be able to speak, write and read in two languages making our society bi-lingual.

All small children would have their primary education in a school within walking distance and they would be independent schools under a principal and a staff of teachers.

Every District Secretariat division would have either one or more fully equipped Central Colleges not second to Royal or S. Thomas’ College as some were those days even better.

There would be no competition to admit children to schools.

The education system would have developed not only academically but also in technical studies and in professional training to reach university levels. The children of poor families who pass the scholarship examination would receive an attractive bursary of board, lodging and all the facilities up to university level. Today they receive a paltry amount, less than twenty rupees for a day.

An eleven-year-old child would have only 45 minutes of home work for a day. A child between 17-18 years would not have more than two hours of homework for a day.

There would not be a business of tuition classes. The creators of free education have shown the ill effects of tuition and extra teaching by private tutors have been categorically rejected by them.

It would not be possible for selfishness and frustration to develop so much in so many children.

It would not have been possible for non-communicable diseases like diabetes, depression and obesity to increase as in the present.

Parents would not have to pay anything more than the SDS membership fee and the facilities fees.

Children of farmers’ and workers’ families would be educated and reach a high quality of life like in the developed countries.

Up country Tamils would be socially equals with other communities of the country.

Our mothers would not ever go to Middle East to work as domestic maids.

Sri Lankans would go abroad only to work as professionals.

Like in the old times our society would treat teachers and doctors as gods.

There would be no need for teachers to become tuition masters and doctors to practice privately.

When our country became independent, we were second in education only to Japan and our country would have been truly the knowledge hub of South Asia.

Race, caste and religious divisions would have vanished. By now Sri Lanka would have won a few Noble prizes. A number of Asian countries who were behind us at the time of independence have won Noble prizes.

Even this short list reveals what progress our country and the people could have achieved in the modern world if free education was protected.

Under these circumstances the public representations committee on constitutional reforms (Lal Wijenayake [LW] committee) received requests from the people to constitutionally protect free education. The LW committee has proposed the peoples’ requests as shown below:

1. Every person has the right to education which shall be directed to full development of the human personality and the sense of its dignity and the strengthening of respect for democracy, human rights and fundamental freedoms.

2. The right to a primary, secondary and tertiary education at the cost of the State. Also the LW committee has given as a directive principle of the State that “Free education, free health and public transport should be maintained as public services without allowing them to be subjugated to private interests that dominate the market.”

The LW committee also says: “We are of the view that the right to education should be included as a fundamental human right and should recognise Sri Lanka’s tradition of free education.”

But the proposals of the parliamentary subcommittee on fundamental rights to be included in the future constitution are contradicting the recommendations of the LW committee. The following are the recommendations of the subcommittee on education.

1. Every person has the right to education.

2. Primary and secondary education shall be compulsory and shall be provided free by the State.

3. Tertiary education shall be provided free by the State to all on the basis of capacity and equitable opportunity, which shall be progressively realised.

4. Nothing in this Article shall exclude the right of a lawful guardian of a child acting on that child’s behalf or of any adult to select an education provided by a private institution of education whether denominational or otherwise.

Accordingly, the parliamentary subcommittee on fundamental rights has rejected the first sentence of the LW committee. Thus they have completely set aside the goal of education. The right to education has been made baseless. According to the universal declaration of human rights the goal of education is as follows.

“Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace.”

Also, the subcommittee has rejected the second sentence of the LW committee – The right to a primary, secondary and tertiary education at the cost of the State. By this they have cut off the very tap root of the right to free education.

Apart from those the fourth recommendation of the subcommittee could be interpreted to mean that a lawful guardian of an adult has the right to select for that adult, an education provided by a private institution of education whether denominational or otherwise. This is a negation of the fundamental human right to freedom in the universal declaration of human rights. This could even be a recommendation to bring back the feudal system of denying an adult the freedom of choice.

In this manner they are planning to crucify the right to free education through the constitution itself even after Sri Lanka Human Rights Commission has advised the government on the need to respect the people’s opinion and international conventions.

The same Commission had presented to the President, Prime Minister and the members of the constitutional council, a document titled, “The Need to incorporate Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in the Future Constitution of Sri Lanka” The following quote is taken from this document.

“The constitution-making process must necessarily recognize the views articulated by the public in the public consultations process (2016) demanding the constitutional protection of rights such as the right to education, an adequate standard of health, housing and fair conditions of labour in the future Constitution.

Failure to do so is also a violation of legal obligations undertaken by Sri Lanka, particularly under the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966). Sri Lanka's improving human rights record will be sullied by such a failure and would seriously undermine public confidence in the future Constitution.” Finally, if not to regret in the future of the wasted opportunities, the Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka pleads with the people to raise their voice and make a strong demand from the government to include all the human rights unequivocally in the future constitution. At this juncture if the people remain silent our new constitution itself will hammer in the last nail on the coffin of free education.”