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Free education and obligations

Free education has been both a boon and a bane for our country ever since it was introduced.

A boon because it gave so many of our people an opportunity to realize their full potential. Today many of those who helm the nation are the products of free education. A bane because there is a growing realization among the intelligentsia of this country that the curricula set for our students does not prepare them sufficiently to cope with modern life.

To compound matters it is clear that the government does not have the resources to provide uniformly good education throughout the country. Favoured schools in city centres have flourished and boast many facilities for students while in villages students still attend classes under trees and do not have computers let alone access to the internet. In some extreme cases, particularly in the North and East, the free schoolbooks given by the government reach students only at the end of the academic year rendering them useless.

There is an urgent need to increase allocations if we are to bring our educational system up to acceptable standards. This is mostly because the country's wealth has been frittered away on numerous unproductive ventures including the two-decade old war. Yet, as we wrote before, the system continues to produce men and women of ability who are much needed for the development of the country.

But keeping these people in Sri Lanka where they were educated at the taxpayers' expense is proving to be a tough task.

Our sister paper the Sunday Observer reported yesterday that the Ministry of Health, has launched a crackdown on the medical personnel who obtained government scholarships to go overseas but have failed to return. According to this report some 65 medical specialists have absconded recently and the Ministry now wants to prosecute the people to signed as guarantors of their return.

Every individual has a right to seek his fortune, whether he does so in his land of birth or otherwise and increasingly many people will consider themselves as global citizens.

Therefore individual countries certainly cannot force their citizens to remain within their shores. These countries must try their best to keep their citizens at home by ensuring that skilled people can serve themselves and their country well.

At the same time those who benefited from free education and indeed went overseas with the help of the government do have a moral obligation to return and serve their countrymen at least for the period they are bonded to do so.

The very fact that they have fled in this manner shows that the education they received, while giving them the necessary skills to perform in an international environment, has not instilled in them the values that would have pricked their conscience hard enough to make them come back home and pay their debt to their motherland.

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Copyright 2001 The Associated Newspapers of Ceylon Ltd.
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