VIEWPOINTS

LESSONS TO BE LEARNED IN THE THIRD ROOM

Wijith DeChickera sees policy makers and the public making a mouthful meal of education policy in Sri Lanka that offers food for thought

When considering national conditions, it’s natural to think of political dimensions first; and if one is more discerning, dig deeper into the economic soil. While the political status quo leaves something to be desired, more can be hoped for now compared to last year.

Comparisons are odious; but better a bankrupt nation struggling to bridge multiple deficits while pursuing a much misunderstood ‘bailout programme’ than on the streets in force or down at the barricades of violent frustration, which was once spewed by people not only fed up with but furious at abject policy-making.

However, then as now, it’s economics that makes a difference to ordinary citizens’ lives, offering a barometer of a nation state’s health that once – in the first blush of post-independence nationhood – harboured great potential to be a model postwar dominion.

There is a third sphere that’s equally important for the well-being of the present citizenry, offering a bulwark (over political leadership presenting itself at polls next year to become national saviours or above even programmatic economic reforms) – that is the state of education in Sri Lanka today.

The crisis in education predates the COVID-19 pandemic, and chronic closure of schools and universities under a plethora of spurious lockdowns, enforced through ‘police curfews.’

And the resultant limbo into which a ‘lost generation’ of children and undergraduates were thrust made policy makers awaken to grim reality only later. As Emeritus Professor of English at the University of Peradeniya Dr. Arjuna Parakrama says: “If we learnt one lesson at all, it is – never close the schools.”

Analysing a shocking survey released in March, the senior academic points to a new class of illiterates who are ‘left behind’ – and will leave the country lacking on its laggard way forward: only eight percent of Year 3 children passed the criteria for literacy and numeracy.

“This is not the fault of the children at all,” asserts Parakrama, citing a plethora of other problems bedevilling education policy and praxis in Sri Lanka today.

The arbitrary and prolonged closure of schools during the pandemic – symptomatic of a top-down approach in decision making – precluded especially poorer children (lacking access to internet facilities and online classes) from essential spaces for not only learning academic matter but also being socialised, forming healthy bonds of friendship and experiencing childhood’s joys.

There is “a further dismantling of free education” with the digital divide whereby schoolchildren in the rural periphery were marginalised – an estimated 45 percent of students could not avail themselves of teaching for want of a laptop or smartphone.

The social contract that free education underpins is unravelling – especially with the emergent mindset that education is an ‘investment’ rather than a ‘right.’

Investment implies there must be an ROI. In the absence of jobs to meet the educational qualifications of thousands, it’s often wrongly assumed there has been a ‘dumbing down’ of undergraduate-graduate cadre whose calibre is subsequently questioned.

Of a cohort of 302,000 students who entered the education stream at Year 1 level in 2004, 45,000 have dropped out by the O-Levels.

Of the 257,000 who sat that exam, 80,000 failed to qualify for the A-Levels. And of the 177,000 who faced the A-Levels, a staggering 120,000 missed making the grade for tertiary education.

Parakrama sees this culling from over 300,000 cohorts down to a mere 57,000 – largely middle-class students with access to and being able to afford tuition – as “an entrenchment of the neoliberal agenda.”

He yearns for restoration of our tradition where anyone’s sons or daughters could make it to the top under free education, Sri Lanka’s longstanding blessing.

Despite lip service being paid to that inestimable boon, which previous generations benefitted from, we continue to make of the marketplace a god rather than maintaining the groves of academe as an equally accessible place of equitable education.

There is more...

A ‘tuition culture’ whereby student absenteeism – especially in the final year of A-Levels – is startlingly high.

Not properly funding Mahapola scholarships, which are the backbone of aspiring (and arguably better) rural students; but paying the higher (interest component of) fees of richer private stream students who borrow against their higher education.

Invasion of the sacred civil space of classrooms with religious and ethnic bigotry; and even allocation of state funds to schools based on caste rather than a secular values-based education curriculum or syllabus.

Poor perks for underpaid, under-trained, under-respected teachers – an inverse nod to the priority given to the role of that invaluable vocation. And suspension of the school feeding project on the grounds that government lacks funds. On the latter, quoting Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen, Parakrama says: “Stop all development projects; start feeding your schoolchildren properly; then your country will develop.”

A third of children under the age of four are malnourished or stunted, putting Sri Lanka among the 10 worst countries in the world.

Food for thought as well as a call to repave the road ahead!

Will policy makers beyond the educationist pale sit up and take note in the interest of Sri Lanka’s future?