In The Island on January 20, Tillakaratne Lokubanda in his article “National schools, provincial schools, and international schools: A state-consented neo-caste system” wrote “After the 1956 Prime Minister S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike’s ‘Sinhala Only’ debacle, it took decades for the English language to become a factor in our children’s education ….”

In 1943, the State Council Committee on Education, headed by C W W Kannangara, made the following epoch-making recommendations, in the assembly of the State Council when they were originally presented.       Education should be free from Kindergarten to the University.    The mother tongue should be used as the medium of instruction in the Primary Schools.

English should be taught in all schools from the Standard Three.

Up to now, no government including SWRD’s went against those recommendations and, at least now we should stop bashing of SWRD and his ‘Sinhala Only’ (later changed) for poor standard of English language in the country.

Further, what SWRD did paved the way for generations of ‘non-English background’ children of All Races, even to rise to the top levels of positions in some world organisations, i.e. UN, NASA etc. .

The problem of “poor standard of English language in the country” and solution for it lie somewhere else, and who could not find those still, after so many decades, use SWRD as the scapegoat.

B Perera

It was indeed a sad day and a great loss for members of his family, relatives and friends when Dr. Disampathy Subesinghe breathed his last in hospital after a short period of illness.

Mallika and I came to know Dr. Subesighe six years ago when he wound up his assets in the United Kingdom and came to reside in Sri Lanka. Our two sons and grandchildren too came to know him and kept in contact with him.

After graduating from the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Colombo and serving in outstation hospitals in Sri Lanka, he and his wife (who was also a doctor) left Sri Lanka and migrated to the UK to serve in the National Health Services there. After roaming around for a while they settled down in Leeds and continued their medical careers. Unfortunately for Dr. Subesinghe, his wife succumbed while under the scalpel of the surgeon as the result of a medical misadventure. Thereafter, he had to see to the education of his son, Samitha and daughter Amali. He managed to coax Amali to follow the medical course as she had decided not to continue after the demise of her mother.

After having been in England for half a century, he decided to return to his homeland and just after the worldwide Covid 19 pandemic, he settled all his assets in the UK whilst being here as he decided to spend the evening years in his homeland.

It was at this time that my wife and I made friends with him as we were occupying apartments in the same condominium. That friendship we had was a Godsend as we will never come across a person like him in our lifetime. Even though he was having health problems of his own, he never hesitated to help a person whether he knew the person or not, with prescriptions for medication and in many instances with money.

We used to meet on and off in the evenings and his imparting the knowledge he possessed on any subject under the sun was education for others. He would discuss Buddhist philosophy, English literature, cricket, tennis, football, rugger, or any other subject. He knew almost all the players in these sports from the olden days to the current and also the results of various matches in these sports.

He was an avid reader who collected books on various subjects by well-known and other authors. After reading these books he would enlighten anyone who was interested in with an enlightening discourse on the subjects.

Dr. Subesinghe loved to talk with children, even those whose parents he did not know. This may have been because he worked as a pediatrician when he was in the UK.

He knew no limits when he helped persons who had pecuniary problems, and also who sought his help financially towards educating a child. It was not only people that he knew who received his attention. There were several persons from faraway places that he had helped, may be to undergo surgery, or towards treatment of eyes. The number of such instances is so much that it is impossible to mention them individually.

Another outstanding attribute of Subs (as we used to address him) was he never hesitated to fight for the rights of the downtrodden. He would help them by drafting letters or appeals for them and also get the assistance of lawyers to fight on their behalf. He could not stand injustice being done to people who were not in a position to fight back.

His passing has been great loss to many of his relatives and friends, and we will never come across a person like Dr. Subesinghe in our life again.

Whilst extending the deepest condolences to his son Samitha and daughter Amali we pray that his journey through Samsara be short and may he attain the supreme bliss of Nirvana!

HM NISSANKA

WARAKAULLE

A state-consented neo-caste system

by Lokubanda Tillakaratne
(First part of this article appeared in The Island yesterday (20 Jan.)

Some Thoughts as Solutions

Village school students do not seek to master the Bernoulli equations to fly jetliners. They want a head-start on their educational opportunities. Vigorous English learning opportunities and other available instructional tools to National and IS will help.

Therefore, to alleviate Other Schools’ English Language instruction anaemia and augment their instructional environment, I suggest forming a volunteer corps of retired government servants/teachers near those schools who would take a few hours daily to conduct English learning activities in at least lower-level classes. Metaphorically speaking, we don’t need a Julliard-trained teacher to teach reading, listening, and writing simple sentences for 1st and 2nd graders. An example would be a retired corps of engineers, technical officers, or teachers.  Such opportunities will instill motivation and hope in those students.

Secondly, encouraging IS to loan their students and teachers during holidays for reading and writing sessions in a village school and earn credits or recognition, ambrosia for university admissions, or advancement. Employers love such individuals in their workforce, and foreign universities love having those students represent their student body.

To invigorate and stimulate rural school teaching and its learning capital, I suggest short-term teacher rotation among schools, particularly between National-class and non-national-class schools. Such ‘inter-caste’ activities—a teacher from a city school visiting a rural school—will no doubt introduce different teaching and learning cultures, particularly in the small school, and it will reawaken both parties. The government can support this idea by recognising and incorporating such visits into promotion or compensation opportunities. Thousands of research scholars visiting academic institutions between the U.S. and other countries attests to the value of such exchanges.

Teachers commuting to rural schools is an issue. For my brother, a special education teacher, now retired, in Netiyagama school above Mahakanadarawa tank, multiplying herds of elephants breakfasting on the road to school was a headache and diminished his enthusiasm.  I, too, experienced disruption caused by the difficulty of retaining good teachers in my rural school.  The government must address this shame soon.

I remember having no English storybooks to read and no one at home capable of conversing; I spoke to trees in my father’s hena to practise English.  I am glad those trees could not talk back hearing my gibberish.  My English teacher in the 1960s came from Horana, those days a light-year away from my village. He had had enough after a few bouts of malaria in the first two terms. Then he got a job as Grama Sevaka – the new title that replaced Arachchirala – and sailed back home, leaving us cold.

Even 60 years later, education and its support structure in National and Provincial schools have been stuck on two parallel orbits of duality.    The terse and indifferent answer from the President’s office to my call mentioned earlier and the nature of the 2 million unfulfilled request for the 20×20 pavilion and the 24 million swimming pool with blue waters show the two-tier ‘low-caste’ and ‘high-caste’ school ambiance we have been relegated to.

National School concept questioned

The instances of disparate and inconsistent educational support to schools across the board are grounds to re-examine the National School Concept.  Inaction by successive governments and education authorities to educate kids on an even playing field has allowed this absurdity to continue.  In 2008, the National Committee for Formulating a New Education Act for General Education saw this damaging incongruity and reported, “blatant disparity continues making the policy of equal education opportunity a travesty,” and proposed abolishing the National School system.  It further noted the non-existence of a ‘rational basis for allocation and distribution of resources to schools.’ However, the travesty continues unabated, and in 2023, the National Education Policy Framework, a Cabinet Committee, found problems with the National School idea and recommended its abolition.

An Urban-Rural Anecdote

Finally, like the familiar trope ‘which school you went to,’ we hear to set the table for a conversation, the following anecdote sums up the psyche of the Urban-Rural school caste divide I tried to explain.

Once, while visiting New York, I met a Sri Lankan who had brought his brother starting school in an university in New Jersey. The brother asked me where I came from.

I replied, “Mihintale,” located 220km north of Colombo.

Then he quipped, “Isn’t that far –

හරි ‍දුරයි නේද?”

I nodded, hiding my smirk. After chatting for some time, I casually asked, “Where did you come from?”

“Kirindiwela,” he replied.

Kirindiwela is a nondescript community closer than Mihintale is to Colombo.

His reply was not uncommon.  He was unaware that his distance calculus was stuck in a Colombo-centrist milometer.  His fringed and urbanised thinking denied him the ability to reckon that for two Sri Lankans meeting in New York, the distance difference between Mihintale/New York and Kirindiwela/New York is negligible and of the same order of magnitude!

Writer is the author of Ratasabhawa of Nuwarakalaviya: Judicature in a Princely Province. An Ethnographical and Historical Reading (2023), and Echoes of the Millstone (2015),