Editorial

What happened to school-going children like the idiom what happened to the man who fell from the tree and got gored by the bull.

For this entire week, secondary school principals, teachers, non-academic employees and external staff across the country have stopped online teaching, condemning the ham-handed action that subjected their union Secretary and other activists to mandatory quarantine after being arrested, and despite being granted bail for protesting against a proposed bill in Parliament and also demanding full vaccinations before schools reopen.

There is a gathering storm of protests countrywide. A general strike is being touted in some quarters.

Not all children have the necessary facilities or means for online learning during prolonged curfews, lockdowns and indefinite closure of schools. The media have repeatedly highlighted pictures of children on rooftops or trees trying to access signals. The digital divide sows a huge gap between the haves and the have-nots. A computer literacy survey reveals the stark facts: only 22.2% of households in Sri Lanka own a desktop or laptop computer. Around 1.67 million (7.8 per 100 people) are fixed internet subscribers while approximately 34.11% of the entire population had internet access in 2019.

When the previous Government wanted to give school kids laptops and greater Wi-Fi access, the then Opposition (now in Government) derided the project saying to give schools top “lats” (toilets) not laptops. Accessing smartphones for online learning in virtual classrooms posed difficulties for financially hard pressed parents as these don’t come cheap.

A survey carried out by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) in September last year titled “Online Learning in Sri Lanka; Higher Education Institutions during the COVID-19 Pandemic” stressed that providing laptops and uninterrupted, affordable, high-speed internet access, particularly for students in poor households or remote areas, is crucial to ensuring equal access to tertiary education. It didn’t need the ADB to say that. That was a given situation even pre-COVID which the then Opposition debunked.

The African continent is surging ahead with a UNICEF and ITU (International Telecommunications Union) partnered project to have internet connectivity of all schools around the world by 2030. Is Sri Lanka on board? Rwanda is an example to look at. Ravaged not so long ago by ethnic strife far worse than Sri Lanka has ever experienced, it has reportedly launched its own satellite to provide internet access to schools as an investment for the future.

Certainly, these virtual ‘smart classrooms’ will never be a substitute to traditional schooling. Children need to mix with peers, make friends for a lifetime and engage in sports and outdoor activities to become rounded persons — not spend their days glued to a screen thoroughly unfit to face the real world. But the Government has botched the school system making a bad situation due to the pandemic worse by antagonising teachers. Parents and children are not likely to take their side. They will urgently need a course correction if the situation is not to worsen.

The return of the Taliban and Afghanistan’s Buddhist heritage

SAARC itself is all but extinct but as it turns out, its next Secretary General must be from Afghanistan where political winds of change are sweeping its rugged terrain with the impending withdrawal of US troops next month. The Taliban with their brand of religious extremism is on the ascendency.

What must concern Sri Lanka, or at least the majority of its people, would be the reminder of Taliban’s excesses not long ago when they dynamited the world heritage Bamiyan Buddha statues carved into rock centuries ago when Buddhism influenced its people. The incident shocked the civilised world. Many other ancient Buddhist sites remain as part of Afghanistan’s – and the world’s cultural heritage.

The advent of US troops to Afghanistan was a mistake in the first place ostensibly based on the premise that Al Qaeda was responsible for the 09/11 bombings in America in 2001 having operated from Afghanistan. Earlier, America backed Afghan resistance fighters, the Mujahideens against the Soviet Union’s occupation of the country. They ejected the Soviets with a bloodied nose but these fighters shot the Americans with their own petard thereafter. Pakistan got caught in the cross-fire.

After 20 years and scores of deaths in an endless bloody insurgency, the US has decided to wave the white flag and withdraw militarily from their “longest war”, longer than the Vietnam War. But like what happened in Vietnam with the US withdrawal, it seems the Taliban is preparing to take control of all of Afghanistan. Those who ‘collaborated’ with the Americans will be left to face their wrath. Unlike in the case of Vietnam there will not be the thousands of civilians able to flee to the USA or Australia. They seem to be overflowing as refugees to neighbouring Pakistan.

In the many quirks of geo-political intrigue, countries like China otherwise at loggerheads with the US also seem reticent about the US pullout. They have begun investing in Afghanistan, both politically — as part of their ‘Belt and Road’ project and commercially — to exploit the trillions of dollars of copper, minerals and even oil facilities hidden in that country’s rugged terrain. How they plan to work with the Taliban is to be seen.

Reports indicate that though its negotiators in Qatar are promising a more benevolent Taliban administration in the future, its field commanders rampaging through cities burning girls’ schools and imposing their orthodox diktats are either not so informed, or are not listening.

From the campaign to wrest Buddha Gaya for the Buddhists to taking Buddhism to the West a century ago, and more recently, getting the UN to declare Vesak a holiday, Sri Lanka has been proactive in promoting and defending Buddhism worldwide. It behoves this Government that publicly proclaims Buddhism to be its ‘Northern star’ to galvanise international support to save the Buddhist heritage of Afghanistan. Pakistan, whose incumbent Government has shown a more secular face recently and also has some reach with the Taliban together with UN agencies like UNESCO, and even SAARC, are the people to garner this support.