School education in Sri Lanka at a crossroads?

 August 21, 2020

It is indeed no secret that all stages of education for children, adolescents and young people in Sri Lanka are in quite a state of disorder and chaos, being completely unable to produce a totally worthwhile learning experience at the present time. Vast reams of factual material are presented to students as a composite of the curricula which have assumed an ‘essential to know’ type of exalted status. These goings-on have produced generations of children and young people who have been converted to by-hearting zombies who can recall and even blurt out things like the way parrots do. There is intense stress for the students, hardly any free-time, and a life further complicated by the necessity to attend ‘Tuition Classes’. As a result of all this, the general attitude, the mannerisms, the values and even the behaviour of our young people remain as a plethora of things which perhaps leave a lot to be desired.

We could justifiably be proud of the provision of free education as virtually a birth right to each and every child of this island nation. Free education was the brain-child of that great visionary and statesman Dr C. W. W. Kannangara. He fought a great and valiant battle to provide this facility to all the children of our country, irrespective of mundane consideration such as ethnicity, colour, caste, creed, religion or wealth. The writer of this article is ever so conscious of the fact that anything and everything that he has achieved so far is a tribute to our priceless free education system. In the present context, that system should stand out as the best of the very best to fulfil the lofty ideals of our populace. However, providing policy changes to facilitate and even make a great endeavour that much better is one thing but the actual provision and ensuring of the proper implementation of those are another. On paper and in the drawing boards, free education is a fantastic thing but in reality, is it such a fabulous thing in its implementation today in this pearl of the Indian ocean?

When one looks critically at education, one realises that there are some very important and specific goals of education. It should equip the students to be life-long learners. Education is not merely learning things in school. It should make students to be passionate about learning, be able to think critically and solve problems. They should develop the ability to think out of the box and be able to look at many things from different angles. A good education should provide them the ability to be able to work independently as well as with others. They should inculcate a sense of integrity, have self-respect, be creative, care for others and sustain an admirable desire to give something back to the community at large. They should have the moral courage to persevere and be able to use the world around them well. Each student should cultivate the abilities to speak well, write well, read well, and work well with numbers. The end result would be a population of young people who would truly enjoy their life and their work.

A pertinent question at this stage is whether the current portals of school education, the systems in place, the content of the school curricula and even the higher educational facilities promote the path to achieve these goals and produce a better set of people in this country. If one was to be quite honest, the answer to that question is a resounding “no”. The Executive President of this country during his recent walk-abouts and conversations with the general public was quite concerned to remark to some unemployed University Graduates that even their tertiary education did not empower them to secure gainful employment. The new Minister of Education has been reported to have remarked very recently that the entire system of education needs a very close examination followed perhaps by some degree of revamping of the entire system.

The school curricula of the current system are far too top-heavy with loads of information and stuff that is not going to be all that useful in later life. Just as an example, some of the higher grades of students are forced to learn the minutiae of genetics that even a medical doctor is perhaps not expected to know. When one looks at the academic content of these curricula, it is quite apparent that most of it is not tailor-made for the average student. Of course, some with high Intelligence Quotients (IQs) would lap them up but what is generally not appreciated is that the content should not be aimed at only the high-flyers. To compound the situation further, students, even little children, are forced to carry large numbers of books in very heavy school-bags, to and from school, every day. The deleterious health effects of carrying improperly loaded and very heavy school-bags are another associated problem.

All subjects taught in educational institutes from school levels to higher educational portals need to have a judiciously selected core content of a ‘must know’ category. Such content must be very carefully assembled to provide a generally well-rounded ‘essential to know’ set of information. Then surrounding this hub on each topic are the ones that are to be labelled as ‘nice to know’. As implied by the label, these would not fall into the mandatory category.

It is heart-breaking to see a very young child, with the outlook of just a glorified baby, being subjected to virtually an unbearable amount of pressure and stress right from the time the child enters the Kindergarten. This latter term is equated to synonyms like Pre-school, Play-school, Play Group and even Nursery. The painful reality is that these are far from what is implied in the terminology. Children and young people have no time for play or other extra-curricular activities. When examination time comes up, they become totally unbalanced psychological wrecks. The expectations of teachers, parents and the society in general are way up in the skies, through a medium of testing that does not examine the total holistic make-up of the child.

As an example, it is quite pertinent to point out that in Japan, little children from about 5 years of age, right up to about 10 years, are taught totally different things in school. Special curricula have been designed to enhance their cognitive abilities, life-skills, mannerisms and behaviour. Serious stuff is not taught during these times and loads of play time are provided. Some learning occurs through play through carefully constructed manoeuvres. Serious academic pursuits are started only after this initial period. Many would frown on such a system but it must be one of the best in the world as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in its world renowned Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) reviews, has listed Japan as the top country in the world. In addition over 50 per cent of Japanese students get on to tertiary education.

The Sri Lanka College of Paediatricians (SLCP), the ultimate academic institution of all Consultant Paediatricians of the country, have initiated discussions with the Ministry of Education regarding the need to review the current curricula of the schools. The Paediatricians are not experts in education but are acclaimed authorities on mental and physical development of children, cognitive behaviour of children, the psychological make-up of children and every possible health issues of children and young people. As a start, they have suggested providing more play time for all children in schools and to increase the interval duration. They have also suggested to take steps to carefully examine the content of the curricula and to weed out all the unnecessary stuff. Almost all Consultant Paediatricians in SLCP have children or grandchildren and they are well aware of all the problems of children as well as the trials and tribulations that they are subjected to in childhood and youth. It is hoped that the powers-that-be would take what the Paediatricians say with all the respect that is due to people who have the welfare of our children in their heart of hearts.

From a personal perspective, one laments the fact that the current generation of students and young people do not have either the education, or for that matter even the life, that people of my generation had. School then was an absolute delight. Everybody just loved to go to school. Our teachers took it upon themselves their profession of imparting knowledge as a God-given sacrosanct duty. We got on so well with our friends. There was plenty of time for play. ‘Tuition’ was the last resort for someone who was really bad at something. If one had difficulties with a subject or some topic, others who were good at it would rally round you to lift you up. Some of us rioted a bit as well in school, but in the most non-offensive way. The entire education process, right up to the tertiary level, was geared towards character-building and producing decent citizens for the future. The beauty of all this was that everything was provided free of charge or at a nominal rate in the Private Schools. Alas, what we have today is most lamentably a near-complete violation of everything listed above.

When a young person leaves school, we want him or her to have the basic life skills that will help the person to get along in the adult world. It is the basic stuff that too many schools forget about in their rush to cram in a plethora of sciences, several social studies, a number of maths, and so on. We also want that young one to be the kind of person who will keep building on what he or she got in school as well as one who will keep developing skills, keep learning and keep growing. Each of us, if we live to be 80 years old, spends only about 15 per cent of our lives in school. Considering that the other 85 per cent is spent “out there”, the only really substantial thing education can do is to help us to become continuous and lifelong learners. We will later learn without textbooks and tests, without certified teachers and standardized curricula. We will become learners who love to learn. To me, this is the ultimate goal of education. In that context, I can only echo the memorable words of W. B. Yeats, the Irish poet and one of the foremost figures of 20th century literature, who said, “Education is not the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire”. That fire would be the burning desire to learn, learn, and learn even more and more, right throughout a productive and rewarding life.