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Extract of speech delivered at the St. Peter's College - Prize Giving Day, 2003, by the Archbishop of Colombo Most Rev. Dr. Oswald Gomis.

As some of you know on assuming office as Archbishop I spelt out the priorities of the archdiocese and surfaced some matters that would need our urgent attention. Among these one of the most urgent is education. I do not need to elaborate the reasons why education has to be taken seriously not only by us as a Christian community but by the country as a whole. These reasons are obvious. But it has also become incumbent upon as a Catholic community to work out seriously our program in this field if we are to save our society from the imminent danger that it would have to face in the not too distant future. If I may venture to say so, this is an obligation incumbent upon all those who believe in religion - on all those who believe that society is built upon religious, moral and ethical values.

We are being sadly exposed to a culture that has as its base not the human factor but simply the profit motive. We are being brainwashed by the global media, and even some of our own media generously contributing, to a culture of indecency, violence and selfishness. In the name of freedom and democracy an unbridled liberty and licence is being widely propagated throughout the world an our country is fast absorbing this so-called value system to the detriment of everything that we have so far held sacred and good. The human factor, the values of our traditional family life, indeed the very factor of life itself is threatened. The fact that today the murder rate in this country has risen to more than three a day, not to talk of other crimes like abortion which is very conservatively estimated to claim more than 500 innocent lives a day is ample testimony to prove what I say.

It is therefore the duty of well-meaning citizens of this country to work together to resist this disastrous trend and one effective way possible is by a total revision of the education system that has now gone out of the grip of religious motivation. As for us Catholics - you all know that there is a big clamour for Private School education. That itself is proof of the conviction of so many parents that these schools are trying to give a more value based education to their children. But the fact remains that humanly speaking there is no way possible to meet that demand for entrance. You will admit that it is impossible to put a lorry-load of goods into a wheel-barrow. Therefore the only possibility is to expand the schools to the widest possible so that at least more such applicants could be accommodated.

What I propose is nothing new but simple common sense and what our great predecessors like the venerated Fr. Maurice Le Goc did over seventy-five years ago. Your very school is a product of that vision and foresight. I trust you will not mind my reminding you that this school began as a branch school of St. Joseph's. (I do not say so with the customary satire of the jeering Josephian especially when they are on the verge of defeat at the Josephian Peterite), but I say so with the pride of a Peterite who perhaps could now say that the 'child is father of the man'. Today there are thousands who have passed through the portals of this school who are doing yeoman service in the various walks of life and are held in very high esteem not only here in the country but even elsewhere in the world. You have so many men of high esteem and excellence of whom you could be justifiably proud. Therefore I trust you will appreciate the needs of your own brothers and sisters and extend your fullest cooperation to the program we have ventured to propose.

In this context I feel it's my duty to congratulate St. Peter's for her initiative to have begun a branch school at Gampaha. You do not know what a great service you have done for the poor children over there. But for St. Peter's these children would have been like the "flowers that were born to blush unseen". What you have done, be assured, will bring immense blessings on your school. I thank specially Fr. Joe Wickremasinghe for this great feat and I could tell you that this initiative was an inspiration to others. I hope the example would be more emulated especially by those who think that education is fringe affair in their priority for the so-called social apostolate which, with due respect I shall not venture to describe here.

Today it is imperative that we should concentrate more and more on education. While the whole country is talking of free-education I wonder where this is to be found. I know that even children in rural schools in the under-developed areas like the North Central Province have to go regularly for tuition every afternoon including the weekends to complement their class work. I do not know whether this is to complement or really to implement. Whatever that may be they cannot be satisfied and they cannot face the race of the public exam without tuition. And tuition is not free. It has to be paid for lavishly. Now what does this mean? In the morning the Government is wasting money on the classes and the children are wasting time, in the afternoon the parents are spending heavily while the children are expended to exhaustion. So, where is free education?

This is why I say that something has to be done and done soon to remedy this situation. Something has to be done to make the school curriculum more effective so that the child really gets what it deserves and what the Government is spending for during the regular school hours. Regular supervision of the teachers (including the Principals) is an imperative. And the appointment of teachers totally independent of political interference is vital. As for our Private Schools I feel and feel sincerely that there is much more that we could do. It is time that we correctly align our priorities conscious also of the poor and the helpless around us in our society. What is essential is the need to insist on knowledge and formation for the child and to provide facilities for these.

We need to expand these facilities for as many children as possible before we think of other luxuries. Most of you parents know with what difficulty you got your son into this school. Now think of the others. No doubt we need to improve the facilities but let us concentrate on the essentials because this is virtually a struggle for the basics on the part of many who are struggling to enter these schools. So the things we need first are good education and good formation in good classrooms. The rest could follow later. Otherwise it would be a case of "to him that hath more being added, and from him that doth not have even what he has being taken away."

We could think of expanding the facilities we have already to many more others. There is always the possibility of expanding our school network to the field or tertiary education by providing evening classes for our own school-leavers and others who would like to follow classes to acquire further qualification in the fields of profession - such as economics, accountability, law, computer science etc. We could help those who do wish to acquire language education like English, French and German. We could conduct diploma classes for them so that they would still be within the framework and environment of a Catholic school than be thrown into the bin of business tutories.

In the traditions of learning, good education has always been forthcoming as a product of the school and the church or temple working together. This was so in Europe and this was so in our own land. The secularization of education has always worked out to the detriment of the formation factor of the child and eventually of society. The West which boasted of the great Renaissance and noble culture is today reaping the harvest of a moral decadence. The same will be true, if not already true, of our own country unless remedial steps are taken without any further delay.

We hear in many quarters of changes in education. This is necessary and naturally it would be the onus of the Government and others responsible to charter a course of productive education. We leave that to those responsible in the State sector. Whatever form that takes it is imperative that education also has the formative segment. And formative education cannot be given without emphasis on religion be it Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism or Islam.

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