Nation-building, the pressing need to revolutionise the education system

by Prof Rajeeva Wijesinghe

[Part 2]

I cannot argue against a government doing whatever is necessary, within constitutional frameworks, to defend its citizens from terrorism, but it is also important to eradicate the causes of terrorism, which means understanding and sympathy for those who feel themselves discriminated against, and efforts to promote equity, with restorative justice for those who have suffered from what they see as the hijacking of the state by others. I see no efforts to ensure this in Israel, but we must not fall into the trap of supposing that we can get away with that type of high-handedness, as I believe was planned through the proposed expansion of the army that the President stopped so swiftly.

Alternatives

But we must also be positive and, given the importance of education, and the relative deprivation of those in the North, it is essential to promote reforms that provide alternatives. I should note that this is important in the rest of the country too, and also for reasons of equity, but for the purpose of nation-building, we must make concerted efforts in the North. The recent incidents at Jaffna University make it clear that there is no time to lose.

What I have been talking about thus far relates to the work of the institutions in the forces that deal with secondary and tertiary education, but there are also other areas in which the military can take a lead. These include teacher training, where we have failed over half a century to produce teachers in essential subjects such as English and Maths and Science. Our failure rates in these are appalling, and the only remedy our authorities have is to lower the pass mark - or perhaps to allow the papers to leak, as happened so egregiously with regard to Science at the Ordinary Level Examination last month.

Successive Ministers of Education claim they will solve the problem of teacher supply and deployment, and successive Ministers of Education fail, only for their successors to follow in their footsteps. But it seems to have occurred to none of them, perhaps because their Ministry officials will not allow them to think outside the box, that perhaps the fault did not lie in their predecessors but in the system.

The National Human Rights Action Plan notes the need to look at alternative forms of teacher training - as well as curriculum development, another area in which we have not kept up with the rest of the well-educated world - but this is ignored in the latest proposals put forward by the ministry. They simply will not think of private sector teacher training, though the only rational argument against this - that high standards will not be maintained, which begs the question of their own standards - is easily dealt with by ensuring ministry certification is required for anyone entering the national system.

One reason is the old statistic socialist view that the private sector is only concerned with profits. So, we refuse to try alternatives, and continue with a system that relies now on expensive tuition classes - which entail transport costs too - while claiming that we are preserving free education.

Even though a group of religious educationalists has written to the President asking for authorisation to set up teacher training institutes that obviously will not be concerned with profit, no response has been received, doubtless because the vested interests that enjoy their monopoly of teacher training will not allow it. This is where the military can surely step in, for no one can accuse those who sacrificed themselves for the nation of simply wanting profits. If you were to start training, if only in English and Mathematics, you could provide teachers for your own personnel, but also for the nation at large. Doing this in multi-racial institutes, preferably setting these up in the North and East, would also allow for teaching practice and other services that would promote Reconciliation.

Reforms

Looking at these higher levels of education, I must also deal with another area in which reforms are urgently needed. One reason for the decline in efficiency and effectiveness with regard to public services is that we have not developed proper training systems for administrators. The planning and reviews the military engages in as a matter of course hardly happen in civilian life. The sheer lunacy we have been through with regard to legislation over the last couple of years, with vital bills having to be postponed because of problems in drafting, and neglect of simple constitutional requirements, suggests an abandonment of precision that bodes ill for the future.

I suppose this is understandable in a context when there are no penalties for mistakes, except possibly a transfer, which is also on the cards if one displeases anyone who exercises authority. It is therefore understandable that officials ensure career development by pleasing all those in authority, which means that, even when mistakes occur, they can be glossed over. In military life however, at least until recently, mistakes could lead to death - and even though even you did not have proper disciplinary structures in place to deal with the blunders that contributed to our losses at Elephant Pass and elsewhere, the threat presented by terrorism made it essential to have better decision making structures, with provision for consultation and coordination, than civilians enjoy.

Advanced Staff College

Unfortunately, in a world in which everyone has to be a general, unlike in the military, we find hardly any entrenched procedures for consultation in civilian life. The disaster that occurred with the purported Inter-Ministerial Committee to implement the interim recommendations of the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission is a case in point. That Committee never met, no one asked for its minutes, and no reports were issued, which as the LLRC has noted contributed to continuing problems.

Sadly, the same thing is happening now with regard to the LLRC Action Plan, since first we were told there would be a Task Force including Civil Society, then we were told that the Task Force would be confined to those who had formulated the plan, then we were told that those who had contributed seminally to making the plan a widely welcomed document would not be involved. No one is asking for records of progress, and I suspect there are none. Or perhaps I should say there is none, or very little, and suddenly someone will realise that it is almost March, and there will be a flurry of activity that will not succeed in pulling the wool over anyone's eyes - except those of the ostriches, whose heads are in any case buried in sand anyway.

I bring this up here, because this is of crucial concern to all of you. If our administration does not get its house in order, resentments will multiply, and you might have to face yet another insurrection, this one managed by extremely sophisticated manipulators abroad, who will be much more difficult to deal with than a ruthless terrorist in the jungles of the Wanni. Perhaps it is already too late, but I would urge the establishment immediately of an Advanced Staff College which is open to civilians too, to promote integrated systems of planning and management and above all reporting mechanisms.

Such structures can be modelled on those in India or in Pakistan, which have both managed to maintain high standards in their public servants. I have long suggested better cooperation with India in this regard, and I am told it is happening, but it seems on too small a scale to make the difference that we need. What I had hoped for was a Centre on the lines of those we find in India, with residential courses that would involve personality development and the building up of team spirit, development of public presentations skills, encouragement of analysis that is subject to criticism, and exercises in problem solving and decision making.

I believe the military is best equipped, given your recent experiences and the lack of commensurate experience in civil administrators, to take on the task of developing such a Centre and making it run efficiently. I need hardly add that tailoring courses for junior administrators in the North and East, who must be the backbone of the reconstruction and reconciliation programmes, will contribute enormously to the success of those programs.

Administration, it must be recognised, also requires planning, and this is also an area in which we must do better. Unfortunately, the Government decided, for reasons I cannot fathom, though I suspect the particular ambitions of individuals who are not used to working in formal structures contributed to this, to abolish the Ministry of Policy and Plan Implementation in 2010, along with the Ministry of Human Rights. The Peace Secretariat, which had been the most effective organisation to rebut malicious allegations against Government actions, had gone the year before, yet another victim to the empire building exercises I suppose any government that feels secure falls victim to.

COPE

The work of the Ministry of Policy and Plan Implementation was expected perhaps to revert to the Treasury, but that institution is too large to manage all its responsibilities effectively, as we find so often in the Committee on Public Enterprises (COPE), where we find that Treasury Representatives do not ensure the controls they are appointed to oversee, and that letters seeking permission get no response. The recommendation of COPE, that government Financial and Administrative Regulations be streamlined, has not yet been implemented.

Promoting reform cannot be left to those government institutions that need reform. It is for this reason that other countries have high powered think tanks, some independent, some sponsored by government, and feeding into government. In Sri Lanka however we have none of the latter sort, except the Institute of Policy Studies, and unfortunately we have no mechanisms for promoting debate, so that when its recommendations are not approved of by those in authority, they are forgotten. The other side of the coin is that most think tanks see themselves as being necessarily in opposition to government. One exception is the Marga Institute, which was established in the days before NGOs concerned with policy were fashionable, but it has suffered precisely because it does not allow itself to be swayed by fashion. Unfortunately, where the Government should be supporting such institutions, it ignores them, and is therefore overwhelmed by the activities of those agencies that see opposition to government as their raison d'etre - which in fact it sometimes is, because that is how funding is maximised.

Lack of professionalism

I believe the government should then encourage such independent institutes, and also establish others that function independently, with a commitment not to just support the Government, but to help government promote essential reforms, which those within government may find it difficult to identify. Again, in this regard, the military can take a lead, on the lines of the various institutions in India that are headed by retired military personnel. We have all benefited from exchange arranged by such institutions, but we have also all been embarrassed by the lack of professionalism of their Sri Lankan counterparts. The Bandaranaike Centre for International Studies, which Lakshman Kadirgamar was trying to build into a worthy counterpart to institutions in other countries, has collapsed into being a tutory, albeit of an advanced sort. Some of its students are bright and can contribute to policy discussions, but they have no forum for this.

Though I have tried, remembering what we tried to achieve when I served on the Board Lakshman Kadirgamar had set up, to promote policy discussions, the passive decision makers will not move, and indeed have managed to drive away two intellectually competent Directors. The Lakshman Kadirgamar Institute has seminars that pile several speakers into a short period, not permitting meaningful discussion. Its tone was set by its first seminar on Reconciliation, when no speakers were asked who might have critiqued what was going on. I am reminded there of what Pope wrote of those who sit attentive to their own applause, and think it proves their capability.

This is sadder because meaningful interactions, involving members of the armed forces, would help us develop policies that will help us in the wave of attacks we must expect in the coming year. In the Reconciliation Office I tried to set up a discussion group with politicians and civil society but, though the Ministry of Defence assigned young officers who contributed actively, the Ministry of External Affairs did not send anyone. More recently, at a seminar on Indo-Sri Lankan Relations in Hyderabad, I was deeply impressed by the presentation of the officer who attended - but I suspect that sort of contribution is never heard by our Foreign Ministry mandarins who of course know much better than those who have served in the North how to deal with problems that arise in that connection.

Think tank

Such a think tank could also be an information exchange centre, with immediate access to full details of situations that come under adverse criticism. Thus, recently, the admirable efforts of the army to recruit Tamil women were attacked in what seemed a malicious and misleading manner, but no explanations of what had really happened were put forward. Unfortunately if responses are not immediate, myths turn into truth, and cannot be erased. Let me conclude then by pleading that the forces, through Centres such as this and the Defence University, become the cutting edge in education and training that this country so sorely needs. Innovations are urgently needed in secondary and tertiary education, and in teacher training. We must develop capacity and ensure attitudinal change in administrators, to make them better able to engage in consultation and coordination, and to promote accountability. And we must set up think tanks that will allow for the fruitful exchange of ideas, while producing concept papers that will facilitate the reforms this country so urgently needs. In all these areas I believe the military can, and must, play a leading role.

Excerpts of the speech on education delivered recently at the Officer Career Development Centre at Buttala.

Concluded