Pauline Hensman’s “Better way to English”

What better time than now, when we have been told that an "Anglicised urban teaching elite has ideologically dominated and misdirected the English teaching enterprise of our country", to focus public attention on the work of an outstanding educationist who devoted her entire life to the teaching of English in our land

by Shelagh GOONEWARDENE and Prof. Yasmine GOONERATNE

Pauline Swan made her first appearance in print when she and her elder sister Rosine contributed a series of fine line drawings of plants and flowers to the classic Textbook of Botany, written by Mrs Susan Pulimood and her sister Anna K. Joshua. This was a school textbook, used island-wide until the switch-over from English took place. Her great talent as an educator, however, was expended in other fields of study, notably English and Theology.

Born on 1 December 1922, the second child of James and Erin Swan of Colombo, Pauline was educated at Bishop's College, and it was from there that she entered the University of Ceylon. At the University she met her future husband, Charles Richard Jeevaratnam Hensman, her senior by one year. Dick Hensman was reading for an Honours degree in English under E.F.C. Ludowyk and Hector Passe, and like him Pauline was a friend and contemporary of Regi Siriwardena, Basil Mendis, and the poet Patrick Fernando.

Following their graduation, and their marriage in 1947, both Pauline and Dick Hensman entered upon careers as teachers, he at St Thomas's College, Mount Lavinia, she at Bishop's College, where they both taught English and English Literature, and encouraged their students to interest themselves in drama and theatre. They collaborated on the first of their many publications, A Better Way to English, which promoted a more creative approach to the writing, study and teaching of English than had previously been the case.

Together they established the Community Institute in the early 1950s. This initiative, far ahead of its times and the distinguished fore-runner of both Marga and the International Centre for Ethnic Studies (ICES), promoted study and discussion on the direction of post-independence Ceylon, and published several issues of the journal COMMUNITY, predecessor of The Thatched Patio, Polity, and many others.

It was at this period of Pauline Hensman's life that the present writers, together with their classmates at Bishop's College, first encountered the remarkable teacher to whom they owe not only their success in these subjects at university level but also, to a great extent, the formation of their serious interests.

Her example, and the standards and principles she maintained shaped their outlook on life, and have in many cases been handed down to their own students and their children. Pauline's prowess as a teacher was only one aspect of her greatness as a human being. We are accustomed to accepting known historical figures who have come down through the ages in various spheres of human endeavour as great, but we very seldom look closer to home at people in our own lives and realize on reflection that this same accolade can be bestowed on them. Pauline was one of these.

Many of Pauline's achievements were hidden from public view by her reserve, her natural modesty and her total lack of self-praise. Those whose lives she touched were indeed fortunate to experience and benefit from the analytical mind she brought to the teaching of literature, and later, from the ground-breaking studies she made in theology. She was a Christian and a dedicated member of the Anglican Church, but this did not prevent her from studying and becoming deeply aware of the spirituality and substance of the other religions in multi-cultural and multi-religious Sri Lanka. She was particularly well versed in Buddhism having delved into the Mahavamsa and the teachings of the Buddha, apart from knowing the major events of his life in considerable detail and the history of the arrival of Buddhism in Sri Lanka.

She was a passionate believer in, and defender of the rights of women, the equality of women with men and their God given right to work as equal partners.

She found the theological foundation of this belief in the equal treatment given by Jesus Christ to the female disciples and to women in general; particularly those scorned by the Jews as belonging to inferior communities like the Samaritans. This acceptance of women contradicted all the established patterns of relationship in the patriarchal Jewish society of his era, two millennia ago.

The solid basis of her contribution to theology was a penetrating study of the Bible to which she brought certain brilliant personal gifts: a searchingly analytical intelligence and a profoundly serious interest in pursuing truth and learning. Also, as she herself said, she applied the rules of Practical Criticism to Bible studies and social transformation.

These rules which she taught to her students of English and English Literature as essential to their successful study and practice of the discipline. The guidance she gave them in discerning what was valuable from what was not, they discovered in later life were applicable to many aspects of real experience; separating truth from falsehood, fact from fiction and reality from illusion. The principles she taught and lived by often went to the heart of the matter in practical life as well as emotional life, by critically analyzing the use of words which are a crucial means of communication between human beings.

Pauline Hensman's major concerns became the flaws and injustice of rampant capitalism, the exploitation of the poor, the weak, and the marginalized, the ruthless pursuit of power by those in control of a country's resources which rendered so many powerless, unable to direct their own lives in ways that would benefit families, communities and the country itself, the erection of barriers relating to superiority and subordination of different nations, ethnicities and skin colour, classes and castes, religions, cultures and languages.

Having also taught children, and provided remedial teaching to children with learning difficulties in certain English schools, she became aware of the psychological and human needs of children from infancy which meant providing orphans (and even children with indifferent parents in homes) with much more than food, shelter and clothing. Above all, she traced the importance of love (which was usually not forthcoming) in order that these children grow to be well rounded adults.

Where poor children in Sri Lanka were concerned, she searched out all the statistics which showed that their nutrition was insufficient to enable them to develop properly at the most important stage of their growth. In other words, a great majority were malnourished. She did not merely research and theorize but urged individuals, concerned groups and institutions to take initiatives to change these situations by implementing practical solutions which would effect social transformation.

From the mid-seventies to the late eighties, Pauline Hensman became a sought after leader and presenter at international and national seminars, conferences and church-based discussions on all these and related issues. Some of her presentations include the following:

Children with and without a Future (written for International Children's Day). Published in Broadsheet, June 1976.

World Food Day. Prepared for The Women's Theological Fellowship, 1984.

A Biblical Reflection on the National Situation. Report to the EATWOT Asian Women's Consultation, Manila, November 1985.

Let my people go - the Theology of Resistance. Presented at Workshop on the Theology of Race: 'Racism, Resistance and Reconciliation', Colombo, July 1987.

Violence against Women: A Sri Lankan Christian Perspective. Based on a talk given at the Women's Workshop on 'Violence against Women and against Nature', in Lewella, March 1993.

The Bible and Woman. Talk at Interfaith SAARC Seminar, 'Issues of Women', Sri Lanka 22-27 April 1991.

Pauline's children (Rohini, Jim and Savitri) and her grandchildren (Shakuntala, Murad, Marianne, Chandra and Ravi), their spouses and partners Jairus, Beth, Vijayatara, Ammar, Leena, Paul and Simon, and her great-grandchildren Amlan and Zinedine, were all extremely important to her. Most dear, of course, was Dick, the beloved friend and loyal partner in so many joint endeavours, whom she survived by two years.

We will always remember Pauline as a great humanist, teacher and friend. She was the strongest and most disciplined woman we have ever met, for she practised what she preached. Her quiet, but strong personality is recollected with deep affection and gratitude whenever her former students think or write about her, and it has been celebrated in fiction by one of them. Her own publications are still available to those who wish to read and benefit from them and we will leave the last word to her:

"I passionately believe in the causes I have been espousing, and perhaps this book will be at work when I no longer am." These words are in the Preface to her book, To Mercy, Peace and Love published in 1993 in Sri Lanka.