‘Vidya Dadati Vinayam’ (Learning provides discipline)

By Usvatte-aratchi

These two quotations deal with discipline among students in places of learning, including schools. One of the main contentions of the protagonists of the Defence University is that students need to be disciplined. The Vice-Chancellor of the university shall be ‘a senior officer of the armed forces’, in the case of the Army, ‘an officer not below the rank of Major General’ (Article 10 (1) and (13). It will take a long while for a university graduate to rise to that eminence, if ever. The Board of Governors of the university shall comprise nine members, five, a majority from the armed forces. It is possible that seven of them may be from the armed forces (Article 18, 2). The quorum for a meeting of the Board is five, ensuring that those from the armed forces shall always prevail. It is probable that none of them may have been to university, much less hold a university degree. The Council will have an Adjutant who will also be a member of the Senate. The Senate is the highest academic body in a university (Article 23 (4) and what would a lieutenant colonel, who most likely would not have had a university education, do in an academic body? There is also going to be a headquarters battalion in the university. All these proposed provisions are evidence that the promoters of this venture hold that kevite balen enava nam nuvana adie – merate gonun pandindun vanu ata langadi (If a stick can create wisdom, oxen will soon be wise men in this country.) What marvels would this government not perform? One is that some gonun in government, who behave as if they were pandidun, may wear academic caps and gowns now. This proposed university will formalize that by statute. In contrast, most universities in the world are founded on the belief that knowledge grants discipline Vidya Dadati Vinayam. The proposed university will be built on the foundation that Vinayam Dadati Vidya, that discipline grants knowledge, that a rough stick on the back of undergraduates will make scholars and scientists of them. If only acid-tongued Rapiel Tennakoon were alive!

This quatrain has an interesting background. Rapiel Tennakoon, who wrote that, was one of the leading intellectuals, shunned by the university of Ceylon, in the 1950s. His output was prodigious: Vavuluva, De Vinaya, Sak Pubuduva, Ape Asun Kavi (687 pages) and many more. His edition of the Sidat Sangarava remains unexcelled. He is reputed to have written these four lines when he was the principal of a school (Sangabodi Vidyalaya?) in Nugegoda. There was a teacher who habitually caned students who made mistakes in his classes. Counsel had no effect on him. Tennakoon was not a violent man. One day, during tea break, Tennakoon went to his classroom and chalked that quatrain on the blackboard. We do not know what ensued. I propose that the motto of KDNU be Vinayam Dadati Vijja (Discipline grants knowledge). It would be appropriate if the theme song of the university were to give expression to that assumption. The framers of this piece of legislation seem to have missed that discipline has a meaning entirely different from what a sergeant-major bawls out on the field and an adjutant may enforce in a university campus. Physics, economics, linguistics and music are all disciplines taught at university. They discipline minds Vidya Dadati Vinayam. That is how good civil servants of yore carried on the governance of this country. That is how Leonard Woolf was able to impart impartial justice in Hambantota. The present confusion in governance is partly because those that truly rule this country have not had any intellectual discipline in them and do not care to seek the advice of those who have had and are not tainted by a record of serious crime. There is a large number of brilliant students who became celebrated teachers and distinguished Vice-Chancellors in this country: Arjuna Aluvihare, G.L. Peiris, Savitri Goonesekera, Narada Warnasuriya, Susirith Mendis and W.D. Luxman. Besides, there are distinguished scholars and scientists committed to the cause of learning and universities: G.H.Peiris, R.P. Gunawardena, Panduka Karunanayake and others. Why does not the government seek their counsel in framing this legislation?

A few nights ago, as I learnt later, a university teacher in the course of a TV talk show, remarked that the University of Ceylon, under Vice-Chancellor Jennings, was carried on under strict disciplinary order.

Nothing could be further from the truth. I was an undergraduate at Peradeniya and during my first two years, Jennings was the Vice-Chancellor. I set off from Ramanathan Hall to the library quite early and Jennings was out on his morning walk about the same time. I walked on the tarmac and Jennings on the walkway from the Lodge towards HOH. We crossed each other a few meters from the celebrated lovers’ bend. Very occasionally Jennings threw a nod of recognition but for the most part, we ignored each other. Sometime in 1955, I sought an interview with him to find a solution to a problem I faced. I went to his office at the appointed time wearing my usual clothing, a short-sleeved white shirt and a white drill pair of trousers and a pair of brown shoes, the only pair I had. The secretary ushered me into his presence. Jennings got up and signalled me to the seat opposite him. We solved the problem in less than five minutes and the secretary was behind me to take me out. Jennings got up and bade me goodbye. I was nobody’s nobody, a scraggy youth from an obscure central school in the boondoggles, in the university on public funds. That university teacher alleged, entirely without foundation, that Jennings wanted a unitary and residential university to discipline students. I suspect there were three reasons. Jennings was an undergraduate on scholarship, at St. Catharine’s College, Cambridge. Jennings was the master of the college where I was a Research Student. You must experience college life to understand what it offers. Jennings probably wanted to reproduce some of it in the tropics. Hence the residential university where students and teachers would react with each other. It did not work quite that way. I was not a great social animal in Peradeniya but I found life in Peradeniya idyllic and was very sad when I did not do well enough to teach in the university. Britain had started, in that fateful year 1857, three universities in India. They were not unitary universities; the teaching was done in affiliated colleges. The university was a syllabus setting, examining and degree-granting organization, much like London University in those days. (London university changed that system a few years later; not India.) Even today, Delhi University has more than 75 colleges affiliated with it. That experience was not a happy one. In the 20th century, Britain went about setting up universities in several colonies. They established unitary universities in Ceylon, Malaya, Ghana and even in so large a country as Nigeria, a unitary university in Ibadan, with a Kingsman as Vice-Chancellor. I spent two comfortable nights in their guest house in 1978 or so and ate the most elaborate British breakfast, ever anywhere. There were no satisfactory residential facilities for about 1,000 students, 200 or so staff in and around Peradeniya. There was no practicable alternative to a unitary residential university in Peradeniya. The current practice of overcrowding in Halls of Residence makes slums out of them. I saw my old rooms in Ramanathan a few years ago and saw three beds in that room. My exhilaration when I went into a single room in a fresh hall of residence, I tried to write down in the novel Aluth Mathannga. In my time, two students, Gamani Iriyagolla and Robert (Batty) Weerakone took on Jennings at gatherings in the university. Neither of them received any reprimand and both turned out to be most valuable and exemplary public servants in different walks of life. Jennings wanted to build a good small university and he succeeded. What Jennings left behind was a good small university that had no chance of survival in a sea of demographic and social changes that engulfed this society in the late 1950s.

Let me go back to the theme after that digression. A university needs a regular inflow of students to go on. How many officer cadets would be ready to go to KNDU yearly? My evidence is that officer cadets are not recruited every year. Even among officer cadets, how many would be university material? It is important because other students would be selected from among those that scored high Z scores at the A’Level examinations. Many officer cadets either did not sit for the A Level examination or scored poorly at it. How would normal students and officer cadets work in the same class, say in mathematics or history, with such unequal intellectual abilities and attainments? It would be horrendous in physics or chemistry laboratories. That experiment is bound to fail. The armed forces probably wanted to train its officer cadets in disciplines they had formulated. That is fine if they could fit into a program in any university. There would not be adequate numbers to justify a separate defence university. It looks as if the framers of this bill wanted to steal a formal university when they wanted to establish a defence academy because there were not enough officer cadets year by year. Large countries from Japan to the US indeed have standalone military academies. I surfed the net for information on the US Naval Academy in Annapolis in Maryland in the US. They admit school seniors who scored in the first 2 percent of all students (1240 to 1460 marks out of 1600) in SAT each year. Eight percent of all applicants were accepted into Annapolis and 88 percent of the students graduated, an outstanding success rate in the US. These are all extraordinarily high in that country. For comparison, Harvard accepted five percent of applicants and 97 percent of them graduated. The idea of a university for officer cadets sits oddly with the sort of arrangements proposed in the Bill. One solution might be to run a Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) as in the US. Alternatively, the armed forces could either establish an academy of a suitable kind or wisely send officers to similar successful academies in Bangladesh, India or Pakistan. Either solution would be feasible and markedly more economical.

In my understanding, KNDU was a non-starter from the beginning. It was wise of the government to hold back the proposed legislation. It would be wiser to scrap the whole Bill, altogether. It would be wisest to consult the minds of suitable persons in our community before preparing a new Bill if any.

‘ātmabuddhiḥ sukhaṃ caiva gurubuddhirviśeṣataḥ’

‘One’s own mind gives comfort; teachers’ minds are exceptional’.