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| Sunday, 21 July 2002 |
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SEL LIPI : Saris and vocational education Alas, whenever our public servants try out any useful innovation, it is nipped in the bud. The latest example comes from the cradle of Sri Lanka's civilisation. After a raid by the Flying Squad on a leading school in Anuradhapura, the Principal has been interdicted and three teachers transferred. It is alleged that the three teachers had been taking part in a sale of sarees in a classroom during working hours. Isn't it clear what was actually happening? For decades, Sri Lanka's legislators and administrators have been trying to solve the problem of unemployable educated youth. Reams of paper (some of them White Papers) have been expended on explaining what is wrong with the present system of education and offering methods of reforming it. The root of the problem lay in our colonial history. Britain produced thousands of classical scholars who served in the colonies as administrators; their chief qualification appears to have been the ability to exchange Greek epigrams and Latin puns. They provided role models for the emerging 'Brown Sahibs', who continued in the same spirit even after independence. Then there were the clerks, the careful copiers-out of documents and rows of figures, the memorisers of difficult rules and regulations, the vital cogs in the machinery of colonial government and commerce. The colonial education system was geared to producing these two types of literati, and this system continued after the departure of the British. Of course we modified our classics somewhat, substituting Pali and Sanskrit for Latin and Greek. And we decided to mass-produce scholars, stamping them all in the same mould (like those ebony elephants that our artisans so lovingly carve, exactly alike). The students were forced into learning by rote (or 'by-hearting', as we so quaintly called it). The result has been many generations of youth proficient in Mediaeval Sinhalese Cosmology or Bharatha Natyam Mudras or Art Criticism, who are only really suited to teaching further generations of students the same subjects. The international lending agencies have pointed out, ad nauseum that we are not producing the technicians and managers so essential to the running of a complex modern society. What we require are dynamic new methods of teaching the students viable vocations. Individual initiative must be tended like a weak seedling; skills must be developed that will make the students part of an aggressive, entrepreneurial polity. Obviously, the Principal of the aforementioned school had decided to impart to the students the very same entrepreneurial qualities that the IMF and World Bank insist upon. Indeed, the teachers had gone to the extent, in the classroom of giving practical lessons in the economics of the marketplace. And what commodity is bound to move the imagination of students of commerce more than the saree? Wasn't this, surely a pragmatic, innovative and enterprising endeavour? It seems to this writer that the Principal should have been made a Deshabandu and the three teachers should have become at least Vidya Jyotis. Instead they have been punished. Truly, a prophet is not without honour, save in his own country. O Tempora! O Mores! - Gotabhaya |
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