Features

Let children touch science and mathematics

Published

3 months ago

2026/01/19

During my visits to several schools in villages and nearby semi-urban areas, I encountered a troubling contradiction at the heart of science and mathematics education. These subjects—meant to explain the natural world and sharpen human reasoning—were being taught almost entirely without laboratories, experiments, or meaningful connections to everyday life. Classrooms were filled with definitions, formulas, and copied notes, while practical spaces remained locked, underused, or treated merely as formalities for inspection days. Students could recite laws of motion or algebraic identities, yet struggled to explain why iron rusts, how soap removes grease, or why pond water turns muddy after rainfall. From the very beginning, science and mathematics were presented not as processes of understanding, but as exercises in memorisation.

This neglect is not confined to science alone; mathematics suffers from the same fate. Simple and powerful activities—verifying the Pythagorean theorem using paper cut-outs, understanding ratios by measuring everyday objects, exploring symmetry with mirrors and paper folding, or demonstrating probability through coins and dice—are rarely conducted. Concepts that should be visible and tangible remain abstract, intimidating, and disconnected from daily experience. As a result, students begin to fear mathematics rather than reason with it, and science becomes a collection of facts rather than a way of thinking.

What makes this situation particularly ironic is that learning through observation and experience lies at the very foundation of human knowledge. Aristotle argued that understanding begins with careful observation of the natural world. Galileo Galilei transformed science by insisting that truth must be tested through experiment rather than accepted on authority. India’s own intellectual heritage—from Aryabhata’s mathematical reasoning to Bhâskara II’s work on algebra and geometry—was grounded in logical demonstration and conceptual clarity, not rote repetition. Across cultures and centuries, great thinkers treated theory and practice as inseparable. Yet, in many modern classrooms, science and mathematics are taught as if understanding were optional. Ignoring this legacy is not progress; it is a retreat from the very traditions that shaped civilization.

The consequences of this failure extend far beyond pedagogy. When schools do not teach science and mathematics through understanding and experimentation, they inadvertently fuel the commercialisation of education. Students who fail to grasp concepts in classrooms are pushed towards private tutors, coaching centres, and question–answer guidebooks that promise examination success at a price. For families—especially in rural areas and low-income households—this creates severe economic pressure. Scarce resources are diverted towards tuition fees simply to compensate for institutional shortcomings. Education, instead of remaining a public responsibility, increasingly becomes a market commodity.

Worse still, much of this commercial ecosystem reinforces the same rote-learning culture. Coaching centres drill students in predictable questions rather than nurturing inquiry or critical thinking. The outcome is deeply troubling: families pay more, students understand less, and education rewards memorisation over reasoning. The inequality this system produces is stark. Elite urban schools often provide laboratory exposure and activity-based learning, while students in government and low-fee private schools are left behind. Science, ironically, becomes a privilege rather than a public good.

This reality stands in sharp contrast to India’s policy rhetoric. We speak proudly of scientific temper, innovation, and a knowledge-driven future. National campaigns celebrate start-ups, artificial intelligence, digital transformation, and scientific research. Yet in thousands of classrooms across the country, science is taught without experiments, curiosity, or context. Students memorise chemical reactions without ever witnessing a colour change or gas evolution. Mathematical ideas such as area, volume, and algebraic identities remain abstract because students are denied the opportunity to see, touch, and manipulate them. This contradiction lies at the heart of India’s learning crisis.

Over time, science and mathematics education have been reduced to examination performance. Laboratories exist largely on paper. Practical periods are routinely sacrificed in the name of “syllabus completion.” Hands-on learning is postponed indefinitely—sometimes until it is too late. For students from underprivileged backgrounds, the situation is even more severe. Access to functional laboratories is rare, and private coaching focuses almost exclusively on marks rather than meaning. This gap between policy promise and classroom reality is no longer accidental; it is structural.

The Constitution of India, under Article 51A(h), clearly states that it is the duty of every citizen to develop scientific temper, humanism, and the spirit of inquiry. The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 repeatedly emphasises experiential learning, conceptual understanding, and critical thinking. Yet despite these commitments, science education in most government and low-fee private schools remains theory-heavy and exam-driven. Laboratories are often maintained to satisfy inspection checklists rather than to stimulate learning. This is not merely an educational failure; it is a policy failure.

Budgets are allocated for infrastructure, but there is little monitoring of actual usage. Teacher recruitment prioritises degrees over pedagogical skill. Training programmes emphasise documentation and digital compliance rather than experimentation and inquiry. Assessment systems reward correct answers, not curiosity, reasoning, or problem-solving. Under such conditions, expecting scientific temper to flourish is unrealistic.

I became acutely aware of this gap while interacting with school students in my own neighbourhood. Their curiosity was alive, their questions sincere—but their exposure to practical science was minimal. This realisation led to a simple initiative: starting a free, home-based science tutorial where children learn by doing. There are no fees, no coaching culture, and no examination pressure—only basic experiments using everyday materials such as bottles, wires, leaves, soil, vinegar, salt, and sunlight. The aim is not to produce toppers, but thinkers.

When a child sees an egg float in salt water, pressure is no longer an abstract idea. When turmeric changes colour in a soap solution, acids and bases suddenly make sense. When seeds germinate before their eyes, the science of life unfolds in real time, and biology becomes a living process rather than a printed chapter. When children understand air pressure through balloons and bottles, or observe how paper aeroplanes fly due to lift, airflow, and motion, physics comes alive. Similarly, in mathematics, children verify the Pythagorean theorem using paper squares, understand fractions and ratios by measuring everyday objects, explore symmetry through mirrors and paper folding, learn area and perimeter through cut-and-paste shapes, and grasp algebraic identities using square and rectangle models. Linear equations become intuitive when explained through balance models rather than memorised steps.

These moments of discovery leave a deeper imprint than any memorised answer ever can. Hands-on learning nurtures questioning. Children learn to observe carefully, make mistakes, and correct them—skills essential not only for scientists, but for responsible citizens. At a time when misinformation spreads rapidly, scientific temper is no longer optional; it is a social necessity.

Grassroots initiatives—free, home-based tutorials and community experiments—quietly demonstrate what formal systems often fail to deliver. Using low-cost, everyday materials, they restore the joy of discovery and the habit of inquiry. They remind us that education is not confined to institutions; it thrives wherever curiosity is allowed to breathe.

However, voluntary efforts cannot substitute for systemic reform. Schools must reopen laboratories not as showpieces, but as living spaces of learning. Mathematics laboratories must function alongside science labs to make abstract ideas visible and intuitive for students from Classes 6 to 10. Teacher training must prioritise experimentation over evaluation. Practical work must carry real academic weight, not token marks. Laboratories must be audited for functionality, not mere existence.

If India truly wants innovators rather than imitators, science must return to children’s hands. Until policy moves from declaration to implementation, we will continue producing students who know answers but do not understand how knowledge is created. A nation cannot innovate on slogans alone. Science education must be reimagined as a lived experience, not a theoretical promise. Sometimes, real education begins not in institutions, but in small spaces where curiosity is given the freedom to grow.

by Dr Debapriya Mukherjee ✍️
Former Senior Scientist
Central Pollution Control Board, India

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Features

Political violence stalking Trump administration

Published

17 hours ago

2026/04/30

Sahan Weerasooriya

A scene that unfolded during the shooting incident at the recent White House Correspondents’ Dinner in Washington. (BBC)

It would not be particularly revelatory to say that the US is plagued by ‘gun violence’. It is a deeply entrenched and widespread malaise that has come in tandem with the relative ease with which firearms could be acquired and owned by sections of the US public, besides other causes.

However, a third apparent attempt on the life of US President Donald Trump in around two and a half years is both thought-provoking and unsettling for the defenders of democracy. After all, whatever its short comings the US remains the world’s most vibrant democracy and in fact the ‘mightiest’ one. And the US must remain a foremost democracy for the purpose of balancing and offsetting the growing power of authoritarian states in the global power system, who are no friends of genuine representational governance.

Therefore, the recent breaching of the security cordon surrounding the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in Washington at which President Trump and his inner Cabinet were present, by an apparently ‘Lone Wolf’ gunman, besides raising issues relating to the reliability of the security measures deployed for the President, indicates a notable spike in anti-VVIP political violence in particular in the US. It is a pointer to a strong and widespread emergence of anti-democratic forces which seem to be gaining in virulence and destructiveness.

The issues raised by the attack are in the main for the US’ political Right and its supporters. They have smugly and complacently stood by while the extremists in their midst have taken centre stage and begun to dictate the course of Right wing politics. It is the political culture bred by them that leads to ‘Lone Wolf’ gunmen, for instance, who see themselves as being repressed or victimized, taking the law into their own hands, so to speak, and perpetrating ‘revenge attacks’ on the state and society.

A disproportionate degree of attention has been paid particularly internationally to Donald Trump’s personality and his eccentricities but such political persons cannot be divorced from the political culture in which they originate and have their being. That is, “structural” questions matter. Put simply, Donald Trump is a ‘true son’ of the Far Right, his principal support base. The issues raised are therefore for the President as well as his supporters of the Right.

We are obliged to respect the choices of the voting public but in the case of Trump’s election to the highest public position in the US, this columnist is inclined to see in those sections that voted for Trump blind followers of the latter who cared not for their candidate’s suitability, in every relevant respect, and therefore acted irrationally. It would seem that the Right in the US wanted their candidate to win by ‘hook or by crook’ and exercise power on their behalf.

By making the above observations this columnist does not intend to imply that voting publics everywhere in the world of democracy cast their vote sensibly. In the case of Sri Lanka, for example, the question could be raised whether the voters of the country used their vote sensibly when voting into office the majority of Executive Presidents and other persons holding high public office. The obvious answer is ‘no’ and this should lead to a wider public discussion on the dire need for thoroughgoing voter education. The issue is a ‘huge’ one that needs to be addressed in the appropriate forums and is beyond the scope of this column.

Looking back it could be said that the actions of Trump and his die-hard support base led to the Rule of Law in the US being undermined as perhaps never before in modern times. A shaming moment in this connection was the protest march, virtually motivated by Trump, of his supporters to the US Capitol on January 6th, 2021, with the aim of scuttling the presidential poll result of that year. Much violence and unruly behaviour, as known, was let loose. This amounted to denigrating the democratic process and encouraging the violent take over of the state.

In a public address, prior to the unruly conduct of his supporters, Trump is on record as blaring forth the following: ‘We won this election and we won by a landslide’, ‘We will stop the steal’, ‘We will never give up. We will never concede. It doesn’t happen’, ‘If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.’

It is plain to see that such inflammatory utterances could lead impressionable minds in particular to revolt violently. Besides, they should have led the more rationally inclined to wonder whether their candidate was the most suitable person to hold the office of President.

Unfortunately, the latter process was not to be and the question could be raised whether the US is in the ‘safest pair of hands’. Needless to say, as events have revealed, Donald Trump is proving to be one of the most erratic heads of state the US has ever had.

However, the latest attempt on the life of President Trump suggests that considerable damage has been done to the democratic integrity of the US and none other than the President himself has to take on himself a considerable proportion of the blame for such degeneration, besides the US’ Far Right. They could be said to be ‘reaping the whirlwind.’

It is a time for soul-searching by the US Right. The political Right has the right to exist, so the speak, in a functional democracy but it needs to take cognizance of how its political culture is affecting the democratic integrity or health of the US. Ironically, the repressive and chauvinistic politics advocated by it is having the effect of activating counter-violence of the most murderous kind, as was witnessed at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Continued repressive politics could only produce more such incidents that could be self-defeating for the US.

Some past US Presidents were assassinated but the present political violence in the country brings into focus as perhaps never before the role that an anti-democratic political culture could play in unraveling the gains that the US has made over the decades. A duty is cast on pro-democracy forces to work collectively towards protecting the democratic integrity and strength of the US.

Features

22nd Anniversary Gala …action-packed event

Published

17 hours ago

2026/04/30

Sahan Weerasooriya

The Skyliners: Shanaka Viswakula (bass), Mario Ranasuriya (lead guitar), Daryl D'Souza (keyboards) and Kushmin Balasuriya (drums)

The Editor-in-Chief of The Sri Lankan Anchorman, a Toronto-based monthly, celebrating Sri Lankan community life in Canada, is none other than veteran Sri Lankan journalist Dirk Tissera, who moved to Canada in 1997. His wife, Michelle, whom he calls his “tower of strength”, is the Design Editor.

According to reports coming my way, the paper has turned out to be extremely popular in Toronto.

In fact, The Sri Lankan Anchorman won a press award in Toronto for excellence in editorial content and visual presentation.

However, the buzz in the air in Canada, right now, is The Sri Lankan Anchorman’s 22nd Anniversary Gala, to be held on Friday, 12 June, 2026, at the J&J Swagat Banquet Convention Centre, in Toronto.

An action-packed programme has been put together for the night, featuring some of the very best artistes in the Toronto scene.

The Skylines, who are classified as ‘the local musical band in Toronto’, will headline the event.

Dirk Tissera and wife Michelle: Supporting Sri Lanka-Canada community events, in Toronto, since launching The Anchorman
in 2002

They have performed and backed many legendary Sri Lanka singers.

According to Dirk, The Skylines can belt out a rhythm with gusto … be it Western, Sinhala or Tamil hits.

Also adding sparkle to the evening will be the legendary Fahmy Nazick, who, with his smooth and velvety vocals, will have the crowd on the floor.

Fahmy who was a household name, back in Sri Lanka, will be flying down from Virginia, USA.

He has captivated audiences in Sri Lanka, the Middle East and North America, and this will be his fourth visit to Toronto – back by popular demand,

Cherry DeLuna, who is described by Dirk as a powerhouse, also makes her appearance on stage and is all set to stir up the tempo with her cool and easy delivery.

“She’s got a great voice and vocal range that has captivated audiences out here”, says Dirk.

Chamil Welikala, said to be one of the hottest DJs in town, will be spinning his magic … in English, Sinhala, Tamil and Latin.

Both Jive and Baila competitions are on the cards among many other surprises on the night of 12 June.

This is The Anchorman’s fifth annual dance in a row – starting from 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025 – and both Dirk and Michelle, and The Anchorman, have always produced elegant social events in Toronto.

“We intend to knock this one out of the park,” the duo says, adding that Western music and Sinhala and Tamil songs is something they’ve always delivered and the crowd loves it.

“We have always supported Sri Lanka-Canada community events, in Toronto, since launching The Anchorman, in 2002, and we intend to keep it that way.”

No doubt, there will be a large crowd of Sri Lankans, from all communities, turning up, on 12 June, to support Dirk, Michelle and The Anchorman.

Features

Face Pack for Radiant Skin

Published

17 hours ago

2026/04/30

Sahan Weerasooriya

* Apple and Orange:

Blend a few apple and orange pieces together. Add to it a pinch of turmeric and one tablespoon of honey. Apply it to the face and neck and rinse off after 30 minutes. This face pack is suitable for all skin types.

According to experts, apple is one of the best fruits for your skin health with Vitamin A, B complex and Vitamin C and minerals, while, with the orange peel, excessive oil secretion can be easily balanced.

* Mango and Curd:

Ripe mango pulp, mixed with curd, can be rubbed directly onto the skin to remove dirt and cleanse clogged pores. Rinse off after a few minutes.

Yes, of course, mango is a tasty and delicious fruit and this is the mango season in our part of the world, and it has extra-ordinary benefits to skin health. Vitamins C and E in mangoes protect the skin from the UV rays of the sun and promotes cell regeneration. It also promotes skin elasticity and fights skin dullness and acne, while curd, in combination, further adds to it.

* Grapes and Kiwi:

Take a handful of grapes and make a pulp of it. Simultaneously, take one kiwi fruit and mash it after peeling its skin. Now mix them and add some yoghurt to it. Apply it on your face for few minutes and wash it off.

Here again experts say that kiwi is the best nutrient-rich fruit with high vitamin C, minerals, Omega-3 fatty acids and vitamin E, while grapes contain flavonoids, which is an antioxidant that protects the skin from free radical damage. This homemade face pack acts as a natural cleanser and slows down the ageing process.