Family relationships are changing - Prof. Marambe

BY Kandy south group correspondent

FAMILY relationships between young people and adults are changing. In many cases, adults no longer have the unquestioned authority they used to have.

Children and youth are becoming more independent, something that might well be regarded as a positive outcome of education - a question with respect to culture. Moral issues are changing, said Professor Buddhi Marambe, Dean of the Faculty of Agriculture of the University of Peradeniya.

He made these observations when he addressed the annual awards ceremony of Gateway College, Kandy held at the Earl's Regency Hotel in Kandy.

Prof. Marambe said that from above it could be surmised that the situation of students is changing in many ways, and so are the moral issues and values.

He said that the technology of education has changed and we are only starting to realise how much learning is being effected by development such as television, video, computers, CAI, CD-ROMS, data bases, the internet.

Changing technology could allow much greater individualisation but only if the basic approach to providing educational opportunities changes.

He also said that it has been recognised that secondary schools were dominated by preparation for tertiary education, especially the University. Tertiary education used to be route to economic and social status for a small number of well-prepared people.

The labour force into which young people are moving has also changed in important ways. The rhetoric of a high tech, high skilled world of entrepreneurship and creative jobs is belied by the data. Jobs are harder to get and to keep.

Prof. Marambe further said that the last decade has been an extraordinarily one for the economy of Sri Lanka. This has been a period when fundamental rules, the basic ways we do things have been dramatically altered.

For example, we have witnessed the peace agreement with the LTTE leading to a temporary halt of a war in the country, however there is a question as to whether or not we have 'Won the Peace'.

We have experienced that the rules of the World Trade Organisation being imposed on us, and many free trade agreements being signed. We have experienced more investments on education by the private sector. We have experienced natural disasters destroying the lives of our own people.

He said that in a brief period of time, our world has become substantially different. In the language of futurists, we have experienced a paradigm shift. Paradigm shifts signify dramatic collective change that upsets people's worlds because the assumptions, the rules they lived by, have changed.

When paradigm shifts occur, people have to learn new rules even while suffering from the effects of the old rules. To anticipate the future, we must look for signals of impending paradigm shifts. What are some of the signals that portend a paradigm shift in secondary education?

The cost of computer circuit components has been decreasing 25 per cent per year. Satellite teaching is increasingly viewed as a solution to productivity problems. A university research library is available at home through relatively inexpensive CD ROM technology.

He also added that economic global competition is increasing along with a corresponding concern among business leaders that students after secondary education and university graduates are not well prepared for the work place.

The magnitude of population shifts in age and ethnic identification is increasing with a correspondingly increasingly diverse student population. These signals imply a dramatic shift in the way we plan and deliver schooling in the next decade.

It may well be that some 60 to 80 per cent of instructional delivery may be conducted via computer, interactive multimedia and satellite technologies. But relatively few teachers who currently rely on classroom lectures, are prepared to design instruction using these technologies.

But looking at the other side of the coin, he said that critics say that quality of our education system has declined: standards have fallen, curricula are trivial, education systems are irrelevant, and so on. If Sri Lanka wants to maintain its standard of living, we are told, we must change the education system.

But he personally rejects this line of thinking. He believed that our schools are for the most part, better than they ever been: teachers are better prepared and as dedicated, except for a few hiccups with respect to use of technology, curricula are more challenging and so on.

The problems with secondary schools are not due to a decline in quality of education, but to changes in the world around the schools - changes that are not well understood even though pose fundamental challenges to schooling he concluded.

Director of Gateway College Dr. Harsha Alles also addressed the students while the Head Master of the school Asoka Herath read the annual report.