The great social leveller on crash course

Education has been the cheapest means available to climb the social ladder, in Sri Lanka. Hence it is no wonder giving education to a child is considered as the primary function of a parent.

Anyone can climb the ladder, provided the parents have a minimum income to support the family and send their child to school and probably to tuition classes. Children also value education equally and are ready to make sacrifices.

Education has helped a large number of people to free themselves from the clutches of the caste system, which still comes into play in marriage and social events, though in a limited manner. Likewise, when money and power became equally suppressing factors, again education comes to the rescue; with education anyone could acquire money and power to a certain extent.

In a society, where resources and opportunities are limited, education becomes the qualifying factor to access both resources (including know-how and information) and opportunities (jobs).

Education, in that sense, has been a great social leveller. Any attempt to tinker with education is, therefore, treated with suspicion and contempt.

But as a result, the education system has been quite stagnant for a long time. It is becoming outdated at an alarming rate that it is losing its power as a great social leveller. However, many who vowed to resist any attempt to tinker with education do not realize that they are fighting a losing battle. If they win they are the people who will really lose.

The private sector is, sometimes, not keen in absorbing the products of education. Some companies prefer the failures of the system because they have the attributes which the companies would not find in those who successfully go through the system. For instance, some private firms look for people who play rugby than university graduates.

There are numerous reasons why the education system does not produce the required quality. Let us look at the system in detail.

The purpose of education has been to equip students with knowledge about different subjects. Many facts and figures are memorized by students only to be coughed out at the exam to get marks. When one looks at the growing syllabus you find more and more facts added each year. The student is not to infer different perceptions out of the facts and figures but the already-made inferences are given to be memorized again, like the facts. Knowledge is transferred but not competency.

The system makes knowledge available through standard text books and does not appreciate other sources. Different schools of thought about a subject are not encouraged but a single school of thought is given to be memorized.

Learning is done through reading notes and textbooks but rarely are students directed to engage in activities that provide better learning opportunities. Explicit knowledge is given importance over the implicit knowledge. Students who cannot play a single drum beat can name different drums at the end of a Fine Arts course.

Students are not supposed to question the teacher. It will be taken as a threat or a challenge. A lesson or two will be taught to the students so that he/she will never dare to do the same. Students are supposed to learn without making mistakes. So when an incomplete answer is given they are pulled up and humiliated. They are classified as idiots or lazy. Pressure is exerted so that they will not make a mistake again. But this stifles their initiative. Students are scared not only to question but also to answer. Dialogue is thus replaced by monologue. Students become passive recipients of the flow of facts and figures poured out monotonously.

The world is divided into different subjects and each subject is treated separately in the school system. The economics teacher tells the students that there is fish around the island which is a valuable resource that could be extracted while the Buddhism teacher says that killing animals is bad. Students get used to giving answers looking at the subject or the teacher and build up compartments around the subjects and teachers. The uni-disciplinary approach is cultivated early in life which prevents them perceiving an issue in all its forms and facets.

Students are classified as good or bad; capable or incapable. Students who are capable and obedient are good (white) and others are bad (black). It is either black or white; no shades of grey. Once classified and labelled, it is difficult to remove the classification or the label. Once bad is always bad.

School is considered a place where students are disciplined and controlled. Their hair has to be cut to a particular length. They have to wear a uniform that has strict specifications. They are supposed to do what they are told by the authorities and nothing else. There is little room for arguments and different opinions.

Dissent is taken seriously and treated with venom. It is not a place where different abilities and different attributes could be sharpened.

The idea of the school is to convert different students to a uniform one. It is a factory where a standard product is produced in mass scale. It is not seen as a garden where thousands of different plants could grow and different flowers could blossom.

It is presumed that teachers know everything. That is why they have been recruited as teachers. Once recruited, only a very few feel that they should acquire additional knowledge. Many don't appreciate that the knowledge changes; old knowledge is discarded and new knowledge is adopted. Hence the teacher always tries to be in the driving seat. The students become passengers in the journey.

It is rarely felt that the students could take turns in the driving seat under the guidance of the teacher to learn better.

In exams, quite often the knowledge in the form of facts and figures is checked. More often, what is measured is not what students know but what they don't know. The exact answer, according to the authority, is looked for -- not the possible answers one could imagine.

While any education system has inherent weaknesses on its own, the environment also has created challenges. Opportunities available for learning are widening with World Wide Web, offering many alternatives. There are also books, off-line e-learning methods and media that have taken over education from schools. Tuition classes have mushroomed and nowadays you will not find a student who passes the A/L without attending tuition classes. There are private and international schools that have come up to provide alternative learning forums. There are foreign universities that offer degree and post-graduate programmes either directly or through local franchises. There are local institutions that provide alternative education opportunities, especially in the field of IT and English, where schools have failed to make any significant impact.

These issues, either in parts or probably in full, have or might have been discussed in many forums and some changes in the education system had been made as a result of those deliberations, but without any substantial results. One reason is that they have not addressed all the issues but some issues. For example, they want children to be less competitive in exams and to focus on broader personal development. But they are still not doing anything to lower the competition; by providing wider access. The other reason is that they are reluctant to disturb the social leveller.

So without taking the bull by the horn, educationists have taken it by the tail to end up in disasters. The result is that education is getting less and less government funds, forcing schools to tax parents. The products of our education system get frustrated day by day and do not know what to do about it while the economy does not get the human resources that are expected.

Earlier we thought the damage could be kept to a minimum. Getting late might cost us another upheaval, on top of the current crisis, which one could attribute partially to the incomplete education system as well. The intervention necessary cannot be planned only by educationists themselves or politicians added to it, but by a larger multi-disciplinary group, representing all stakeholders.

It also requires not only overall vision but also political will to make the necessary changes in the sphere of education. Whether we will see such in this decade is a billion rupee worth question. However that should not bar us in pushing the reforms through. One day the cry will be captured, if not now.

This is with reference to Dr Tara de Mel's article "Stop tinkering education" in The Sunday Times of December 2, 2007. Although Lalith Athulathmudali was keen on promoting tri-lingual proficiency in schools and making it compulsory for Sinhala medium students to learn Tamil and vice versa, we are still short of teachers to teach languages in schools, according to a Colombo University study funded by GTZ.

Let’s hope the new Education Secretary Nimal Bandara will fulfil Mr. Athulathmudali's dream by making it compulsory to learn all three languages -- Sinhala, Tamil and English. This will bring together students of all ethnic groups together in our schools, paving the way for communal harmony and an end to the war.

At the present rate Universities and National Colleges of Education train teachers competent in Sinhala/Tamil this country will never be able to achieve this objective. Teachers, work books, syllabi and training material to teach a second language must be provided by the state, allocating a fraction of the war budget. INGOs also can come forward to help the Education Ministry to make our schools tri-lingual if they genuinely wish to end the ethnic conflict.