The English Language Initiative marks first anniversary

BY J. B. Muller

TODAY marks the first anniversary of the launch of the English Language Initiative by a group of caring and concerned citizens with the greater interest of Sri Lanka at heart.

It may perhaps go unnoticed by the larger majority of people but it is a significant occasion for these proactive and dynamic 'change agents' attempting to arrest the slide into social and economic oblivion.

The core group of co-workers strongly believes that for Sri Lanka to survive as a viable entity that it should be strong and able to hold its own within the community of nations-internationally as well as regionally.

The core group also strongly believes that the only way for this county to preserve its unique, age-old culture and ethos is to join the community of nations as an equal, proud of its great and ancient heritage that was based on the universal principle of never-ending change as a constant.

That constant also postulated a detached evaluation of the ground realities and an adjustment to those realities in keeping with the eight factors of "rightness:" Understanding, thoughts, speech, action, livelihood, effort, mindfulness and concentration. Knowledge is the key to these universal factors that beget the rest.

Three realities

In this day and age we should be able to cast aside our essentially pre-colonial and nationalistic mind-set that views English as an alien language. It isn't. No language is alien. language is a means of communication and of transmitting knowledge.

Our longstanding colonial hangover that English was the language of one of our colonial overlords should be cast aside as Britain is no longer our overlord. Time and circumstance have made the language of the British the most widely used international language in the history of mankind. That is the first inescapable reality.

English is also the language of pure research in many branches of human knowledge and the foremost vehicle of modern science and technology. That is the second reality.

Then, the post-modern world sustains itself within the matrix of an intricate complex of trade-commerce-business-finance, and banking. That complex which involves trillions of transactions every day is conducted in English. That is the third reality.

Breaking English monopoly

Therefore, these 'realities' make it imperative that we function in that international environment and its medium of communication: the English language, utilizing it as a 'tool.' Certainly, in the not too distant past it was used as a 'weapon' of domination to hold in subjection those who did not know the language.

To some considerable extent, that is still true to this day as little 'islands' of privilege, represented by the so-called International Schools exist in cocooned exclusivity.

The monopoly exercised over English-medium education by those schools must be broken if an even playing field is to be crated and sustained. Every child should be able to receive his or her education in the international medium of instruction and in the other two indigenous languages of Sinhala and Tamil.

Instead of making the monumentally myopic mistake of 1956 in replacing English as the 'Official' language of the newly-independent Ceylon, the number of schools teaching in the English medium should have been steadily increased until every school (currently about 10,000 in the national schools' system) taught in the English medium with the indigenous languages of Sinhala and Tamil being compulsory to all schoolchildren without distinction.

If this had been done and if the Sinhalese and Tamils were all able to communicate with each other in all three languages many tragic things that happened, (such as Emergency '58) would not have happened. The country's history would have followed a different tangent and the tragic situation that now obtains would never have occurred.

Today, an unconscionable 'class' system of the English-educated 'Haves' and the vernacular-educated 'Have-nots' is being perpetuated through this pernicious dual system of education. It is a wholly unfair system that has disadvantaged the greater majority: Sinhalese, Tamils, Moors, Malays and Burgers, depriving them of upward mobility in the socio-economic structure.

More, better English needed

The wise course to follow is not harass these schools or close them down but to support the widespread training of teachers to teach in English such as the Train-the-Trainer Programme being launched by The English Language Foundation shortly.

What is needed is more English and better English everywhere and especially at the periphery. This, more than anything else, would begin to wipe-out the prevailing inequity. It would also reduce the burning bitterness and resentment that exists amongst the student population and their helpless, powerless parents.

Governments, since 1956, have vacillated on the issue of English-medium education and have failed to take a firm and binding decision on behalf of the country and its student population.

As a result, education has become confusion worse confounded as desperate, ad hoc measures to correct the situation were taken. This only exacerbated the situation as successive Ministers of Education countermanded their predecessors' policies and instructions.

The result is that thousands of university graduates and school-leavers are unemployable through no fault of their own! This is a tragic, even criminal waste of precious human resources.

The educated, instead of being an asset, have become a huge headache, a liability to government. These young people are also a potent factor in social unrest and instability as the country is being overtaken with galloping poverty.

Poor poorer, rich richer

As Chamber of Commerce chairman Deva Rodrigo observed recently, the "Poor are getting poorer and the rich, richer" (at the expense of the poor, of course). That, if anything, is a serious danger signal of future chaos as the country descends towards ungovernability and a total breakdown in the delivery of even simple public services.

The way to unravel this enormous problem and begin to effect viable and sustainable damage control measures is to support the English Language initiative that is marking its first anniversary today.

The initiative coalesced into 'The English Language Foundation' on 15th. September 2004 and that Foundation is shortly launching an epochal 'Train-the-Trainer.' This programme seeks to place professionally trained trainers in schools to train teachers in a 7,000-word vocabulary of English that is adequate to communicate effectively.

The programme has merited Rotary support under its international literacy programme and is further being supported by the Information and Communications Technology Agency, ICTA, as it would utilize ITC to assist teachers to teach English in a manner that would enable the pupil to function effectively in the modern technological environment.

It should be stated quite explicitly that the 3-T programme supplemented and strengthened by ICT will in no way harm or weaken the country's indigenous cultures or languages and, by extension, other facets of the country's unique ethos and particular milieu.

In fact, it would strengthen the country's heritage by providing pupils with the tools to surf the Internet and gather as much knowledge as they could digest. It is opening a door on the wide world outside Sri Lanka and broadening horizons beyond any that could be imagined, say, by children attending schools in either Tanamalvila or Talaimannar or any where else.

Thus, without any political affiliation or sponsorship whatsoever, the Foundation will pursue its 3-T Programme and produce professionally-trained trainers who would be deployed throughout the Island. Within a decade, the entire country will possess a homegrown human resource in both professional trainers and effective schoolteachers able to teach their charges in the English medium.

The country's private sector would be enabled to hire personnel able to function in the English language; mail would be sorted faster and reach people quicker; the wheels of the economy will begin to turn; prosperity will be created and a million things begin to happen. It is this remarkable transformation that the core group of 'change Agents' is now causing to happen.

Together, with the private sector and civil society, they, and you will make an extraordinary difference!