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| Sunday, 26 January 2003 |
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Edwin Gonsalkorale: educationist in agriculture by A Special Correspondent Mr. Edwin Gonsalkorale, one of Sri Lanka's foremost educationists during the first half of the last century passed away at his home in Nawala two months after his 100th birthday. Mr. Gonsalkorale, an English trained teacher, and an education inspector during British colonial administration, specialised in Agriculture education. He is remembered for the enormous contribution he made towards making agricultural teacher training a state of the art teaching methodology during his tenure with the Department of Education in Sri Lanka, then Ceylon. His Jewel in the Crown was the Agriculture Teacher Training School in Mirigama, one of the most sought-after teaching institutions during the 1940's and 50's. This school was a veritable paradise, a farm of excellence, and a self-sufficient oasis that boasted of all the vegetables one could think of, an abundance of flowers of all descriptions and an animal husbandry with a dairy that even New Zealanders could have been proud of. Mr. Gonsalkorale and his students created this Garden of Eden, and they could not have asked for a better location to learn their skills and nor could they have asked for a better teacher to teach them, one who always led by example, his hands probably the dirtiest, always the first to get into a paddy field to till the soil. In 1947 in recognition of Mr. Gonsalkorale's contribution to agriculture development in Ceylon, he received the highest honour that could be bestowed by the British administration at the time, the Fellowship of the Royal Horticulture Society. He was also awarded the coronation medal in 1954. Mr. Gonsalkorale was born in Hikkaduwa in 1902 and was educated at St Aloysius College in Galle. He was a rarity in his village Hikkaduwa, then a small hamlet, being one of the very few persons to join the British government service, and even rarer, to become an English trained teacher. In a short period of time, he was to become an Education Inspector, and served in many parts of the country before retiring as the Principal of the Mirigama Agriculture Teacher Training College in 1958 consequent to a disagreement with the then Minister of Education Mr. W. Dahanayake on a matter of education policy. Mr. Gonsalkorale's reputation for expertise in the field of agriculture teacher training went beyond the shores of Sri Lanka, and he received offers to work in Tasmania and Seychelles, but he turned down both offers because he considered he had unfinished business in his own country. Mr. Gonsalkorale made a brief comeback to agriculture education in 1965, as an Advisor to Mr. IMRA Iriyagolle, Education Minister in Mr. Dudley Senanayake's government of 1965-70. Again, due to a disagreement on education policy, he resigned this post after a brief period. He had however, made his contribution towards policy development in Mr. Senanayake's Government, and the resurgence in food production and the drive towards self-sufficiency in rice, were the efforts of the likes of Mr. Gonsalkorale. A man of high principles, honesty and integrity, Mr. Gonsalkorale was not lured by plums of high office, and chose to resign rather than compromise his position or capitulate under pressure, demonstrating his convictions and strength of character. In retirement, Mr. Gonsalkorale continued his pioneering agriculture work in the jungles north of Puttalam, where new land allotments were being made available by the Government of Mr. Dudley Senanayake for food production. Later in life, Mr. Gonsalkorale involved himself in community development activities in Nawala and continued to pursue his love of agriculture closer to home. Mr. Edwin Gonsalkorale leaves behind his wife Anulawathie and seven children. May he attain Nibbana! |
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