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| Wednesday, 24 November 2004 |
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The social revolution through English - will it succeed or flounder? - Part 11 (Continued from November 20) by S. Ratnajeevan H. Hoole, Chairman, Standing Committee on the Teaching of English, University Grants Commission At the Seminar on New Directions in English Teaching in celebration of the 25th anniversary of the UGC, 9 November. Great darkness In this great darkness that has engulfed us, I see clouds with a silver lining. We are inexorably moving towards the reintroduction of English and putting it in its rightful place as an international language and a link language. A re-introduction of the English medium in schools is today rarely opposed. Suddenly I find the Pettah merchant's son or daughter going to an international school and bettering the traditional upper classes in English, manners and yes, carriage too. Suddenly there are Tamils, Sinhalese and Muslims studying together in the same classroom. After so many years of discrimination, war and hatred, we are at the threshold of peace. The process involves talks on substantive issues. I want you for a moment to think what the talks would be like without the English language. Certainly it would be possible to have talks through translators. But there would be no possibility of establishing personal rapport that way. Rapport and the trust that comes through that rapport are essential ingredients to risk taking in our bold strides on the path to peace. For these new beginnings to be consolidated, English teachers are badly needed. Some 40 years of the mother-tongue experiment having gone badly wrong, now we have few teachers who can competently teach English or in English. Producing them in the requisite numbers is your job - our job, my job. Attires All this is not to say that the dangers are behind us. In the previous generation the men of the old elite switched to national dress with markers to show that they were not local. Today they wear trousers and the kurta that says at once "I am local but not the real local." But - oh, oh - drivers and the MPs' body-guards are also now wearing the same. So it is now a coloured kurta. Today women are also players. Like with men, it is neither the Western dress nor the Eastern sari that they wear. It is something intermediate with markers like the fall on the right shoulder. This reminds of my copy of Fowler from 1924 that I inherited when an old uncle gave away his books. Fowler differentiates the word lavatory from toilet. He says that everyone used lavatory so the upper classes took up toilet as a stylish word of more recent French origin. The hoi polloi soon caught on and they too switched to toilet. When this was recognized, the upper classes went back to lavatory which was the stylish word when Fowler penned his essay. So it is with the nose stud. All women wore it. Then the modern woman declared scarring the body as primitive and stopped wearing it. Soon the hoi polloi too gave up the nose stud realizing that their nose studs gave them away as ordinary folk. And today, stylish ladies including a dear niece with a doctorate from Harvard sports the nose-stud. Odd accent Today the bloodies and the buggers are gone from this effete class, but an increasing use of an odd and grating accent that is not Ceylonese or British or American is often seen in contrast with the older generation that managed to study in the West without picking up an accent. The idea of a Sri Lankan English with "Yes, no?" is authenticated and promoted so that they may have something to talk about in the West and at the same time ensure that when it is taught to the poor they would be automatically shut out of the elite classes while they teach own children standard English at home. As with the old elite, they see themselves as socialists working for the oppressed although they are far removed from the oppressed. As with the previous generation, a nationalist outlook marks them apart more than a socialist or egalitarian one. I am very mindful that there are some of us from privileged backgrounds who resent the new classes coming up through English. I see before my very eyes a replay of the old game. As new classes are pushed up like the Pettah merchant's children whom I mentioned, I see the old privileged opposing this social mobility on some pretext or the other. Even in the organization of this event I saw certain signs that pointed to the prevalence of class prejudices that worked against the upward mobility of the aspiring classes. For instance, political authorities who function in English and from the top schools were welcome as honoured guests. But those who do not function in English were deemed to bring standards down. The organizing committee stood firmly for principle. The majority of teachers have their hearts in the right place. That is why we have no political authorities here today. And I am thankful for that. New dawn As people with fluency in English, you are at once the solution to our inveterate woes and the very problem that prevents the realization of that solution. Today we are at a new dawn. Which way it goes depends a lot on you; on us. The UGC and the Standing Committee on the Teaching of English will do all we can to help. Special admissions for English teachers already in service and those who have passed English as a subject at the GCE A/L have been put into place by the UGC. Although these schemes may not conform to the normal admissions requirements, they are right because they serve an urgent national need. I congratulate and thank you, Prof. Mendis, on your foresight despite the risk of being attacked for doing what you do. So also I must congratulate you for your moves in incorporate English Instructors acquiring the right qualifications as lecturers in our universities so that more students may be taught in the English medium. They in turn will service the English medium classes in our schools. Unfounded fears Some of us are worried about standards for whatever reason. I assure you that these fears are unfounded. Take for example the cricket analogy. If every schoolchild must play in a big field with a proper pitch, with hard-ball, imported bat, gloves and all that, only a few would play. Standards would be seemingly high. For it is proper cricket that they play. But cricket would be confined to elite families with children in elite schools. When a few try, the statistical probability is that the best eleven we select will not be of international test standards. We would not be in the big leagues. On the other hand, if thousands play cricket batting with a stick as Don Bradman did, standards would, on the face of it, seem low. But through the process whereby thousands try and the best are selected, standards would rapidly rise. Through the selective process, the best would come up to play ICC cricket - and our team is the best example of that truth. So it is with English. Let everyone learn English at the lower level. To that end churn out as many teachers as you can even if standards are sacrificed a little. Then the net would be cast wide. We will catch many talented students who would then do the required things with Shakespeare and Milton and all that. At cross-roads We are at the cross-roads. Will the present movement towards the re-introduction of English fail or will it blossom? Let us not make the same mistakes that the previous generation made. Serious suggestions have been made on avoiding the pitfalls. For example, the late K. Nesiah of Peradeniya's Department of Education has suggested that English should be taught by getting every student to study in the mother-tongue while selecting just 3 subjects to be taught in the English medium. Taking this route might be a sound alternative to going fully into English and provoking a nationalist revolt that aborts the promises that English offers. But these things are to be thought through carefully by experts and quickly. In the 1950s we had social re-engineering that failed. Let us learn from our failures. Let us imagine and engineer, or to use Walt Disney's phrase that attracts me as an engineer, let us imagineer a Sri Lanka where English empowers and does not divide. (Concluded) |
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