Kannangara and English education

Dr. C.W.W. Kannangara can be reckoned as one of our great men though he died minus grandiose felicitations that lesser men were accorded. His Central Schools were a complex creation, oscillating between many contrary features. The central schools built a bridge between English and Sinhala education. ‘Building bridges’ sounds familiar. In fact, I was ridiculed for using this phrase in a schoolgirl essay, in a book review. The venue was one of the Central Schools I attended in the last year of my school career. The distance from home was one kilometre.

The review I wrote was imposed on the whole class but mine was singled out not for cheers but for jeers. The master said with a sneer, "this is thinking in English and writing in Sinhala”. Later, at home I pondered on the criticism. Can I, born and bred in the wilds of Siyane Korale think in English? Can a few years of getting cocooned in a seaside school effusing a foreign environment change one’s medium of thinking? Maybe the master wished to rag the new comer.

Then came the day when the head of the school who also taught Civics in the University Entrance class, himself ragged me. Of course, he read out my Tutorial making me gleeful. The topic was ‘Theories on Monarchy’ and the medium was English.

After reading it he asked the class how it was. “Very good”, said a boy. After all the great man would not have bothered to read it if it was not good. “Very good”, sneered the head if it does not carry so many “by the ways”. Such practices can end up in nick names”.

Dr.C.W.W. Kannangara

Though the head overtly or covertly encouraged the nickname I never heard anyone using it on me. Over four years passed. By now I was a university final year student. Sir Christobell and Lady Obeysekera themselves, denizens of Batadole Walauwa who played God parents to many a child in the area chose me for an unrequested sponsorship.

Udarata Menike

I was once waiting on the platform at the Veyangoda Railway Station for the arrival of the Udarata Menike running via the Peradeniya campus station. A mother carrying a child approached me with another child hanging on to her. She had a smirk on her face.

“Aren’t you so and so?” She asked in English. “Yes”, I said.

“I was a classmate of yours. I remember the ‘by the way’ incident. Susil told me that the princpal was unfair to you”

“Generally the world had been unfair to me,” I was almost soliloquising. However, there were other immediate issues.

“Who is Susil?” “My husband now. It was a school love affair. It was a time when somebody had added romance into the school curriculum. Our school itself was called Magul Sakwala. Can you remember Susil?” Her English just flowed. Whenever a teacher was not there he made funny speeches using both English and Sinhala. “Remember?” “Ah, yes, now I remember.

I used to actually wonder at the attitude of these boys to English. They know their English for C.W.W. Kannangara had made it their medium of instruction but they did not mind laughing at it too. Perhaps they wished to show that they were not going to be slaves to it. In my earlier school, if anyone makes an error in English, the girls will cover their mouths and giggle. Here was a different approach. English is not our language but it has risen to be a world language. So, try to master even amidst jeers and giggles!

It needs better brains than me to evaluate which approach is better. It is all bungled up. In fact, when you care to analyse, even the way “The Father of Free Education set about it too was all so mixed up. One educationalist describes his innovation as neither Englished–oriented nor Swabasha oriented”.

Parish schools

The British colonial regime inherited features of the Portuguese and Dutch regimes such as the Parish schools. They ignored the native system of education. The Pirivenas were reviled as not worth mentioning. The concensus of the commission seems to be that we were an illiterate race whose illiteracy could be salvaged only via English education.

Changing the medium to English was their cry but fortunately or unfortunately, no English teachers were available for the wholesale language transformation. Along with this mess the class division got perpetuated.

A set of schools grew up to cater to children of the privileged class who could afford to pay fees. English was the medium. After school education they naturally enjoyed all the higher offices in the country, owning an English educated bureaucracy. The rest of the Sinhala and Tamil communities were forced to attend the vernacular or swabasha shools and English was a strange language to them. It was taught in a haphazard way depending on the availability of teachers.

The elite schools followed the public school system of England not only replete with a high standard of English but with all its ingredients such as associations, cadetting, the housing system and debating teams. They shut off the poor children. So, the rich children had all the fun, while the poor children had none.

A vast gap had to be filled to equalise the two sections. Ironically, the new Buddhist schools mostly the girls’ schools that came up too turned fee levying and shut all the new exotic and soul stirring features to children whose parents could not afford the high fees. So, inevitably the ‘Haves’ and ‘Have nots’ became a canker on the whole educational set up.Many a poor bright child just wilted in the vernacular school.

It was all an unfair muddle and Dr.Kannangara took a bold step. He initiated the central school system earmarking a few for his experiment. Not only was English introduced as the medium of instruction but also the features of the public school system were introduced.

He did another experiment. Under Colonel Olcott’s initiative a Buddhism-based education was experimented as a challenge to the missionaries. Observing Pansil in the morning and Buddhist talks bacame a major feature in the curriculum. All these features were introduced into the central schools.

A new type of students emerged out of the central schools. By the way, my friend whom I met at the station said Susil who used to make mock speeches using both languages is now a lecturer at an English teacher training college.

He pursues his studies still and had stopped laughing at English because he does not want to set a bad example.

‘I am the English teacher in our village school”

“Do you speak like this in English with him?”

“Never”, she giggled. ‘You are then like J.R. Jayewardene’s mother. I have read that she never spoke English with the family members. But she had studied at Ladies’ College.