Professor J. E. Jayasuriya - eminent Sri Lankan educationist

Dr. W. A. de Silva

EDUCATION: On February 14, we commemorated the late Professor John Earnest Jayasuriya, the eminent Sri Lankan educationist on his 88th birth anniversary. To mark the occasion, the sixteenth annual memorial lecture in his honour was to be delivered by one of his distinguished pupils, Professor S. Sandarasegaram, this evening at the Sri Lanka Foundation Institute. Over the last sixteen years this annual lecture has evolved to be the rallying point for his former students, colleagues and friends as well as admirers to pay tribute to his memory and recall his services.

The name of Professor J. E. Jayasuriya should not sound strange to any Sri Lankan citizen even remotely connected to the world of education, not excluding those generations of former school students whose proficiency in mathematics was founded on Ganita Nawodaya, Veeja Ganithaya and Seeghra Jyamitiy, his trilogy of mathematics textbooks for all classes of the secondary schools ranging from Standard 6 to S.S.C. as then named.

A great educationist and a scholar of national as well as international repute, colossus-like he strode the Sri Lankan education scene in the twentieth century. He was an exemplary gentleman abounding with truly human qualities.

Accompanying his public servant further as a child he criss-crossed the island having his early education in a number of schools in different parts of the country. Ananda Vidyalaya, Nawalapitiya, Dharmasoka College, Ambalangoda and Wesley College, Colombo being among them. Needless to say he always excelled at his studies and was placed second in the island in order of merit at the Cambridge Senior Examination in 1933.

After a brilliant career at the Ceylon University College, he graduated with first class honours in Mathematics in 1939. Very soon after graduation he accepted the challenge of serving as the founder principal of Dharmapala Vidyalaya, Pannipitiya, in effect, choosing education as his profession.

This was the time that the then Minister of Education C. W. W. Kannangara was pursuing his pet project of establishing Central Schools in all parts of the island to enable students who complete their education in primary schools to obtain a quality secondary education.

To lead these schools as Principals he would have none but the best whom he selected after careful scrutiny and it was young Jayasuriya whom Kannangara hand-picked to head Matugama Central College in his own constituency of Matugama. Mr. Jayasuriya joined the Department of Education of the University of Ceylon as a Lecturer in 1952. He was appointed Professor in 1957 in succession to Professor T. L. Green thus gaining the distinction of being the first Sri Lankan Professor of Education.

Throughout the entire period from 1957 to 1971 he functioned as Head of the Department of Education and during certain periods he also served as Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Acting Vice Chancellor.

During this period in addition to being engaged in teaching and research, he published a large number of books and articles dealing with different aspects of education. The Department of Education, established only in 1949, was one of the youngest academic Departments of the university then, but Professor Jayasuriya, before long was able to convert it into a prestigious centre of excellence where education became a subject of serious study and research.

Many of Sri Lankan leading educationist who today adorn important posts in National Commission, Universities, Ministries etc. received their early training under Professor Jayasuriya at Peradeniya.

In March 1961, the government of the day honoured him by appointing him Chairman of the National Education Commission, appointed to make a comprehensive review of the country's system of education and purpose necessary changes.

After the Special Committee on Education under the Chairmanship of C. W. W. Kannangara reported in the early 1940s during the State Council era this was the first time that a national commission was appointed to, report on the problems that had arisen in respect of the country's system of education.

The fact that Mr. Kannangara himself consented to serve as a member of this commission points to the respect and recognition that Professor Jayasuriya, still in his early forties, had already earned as the leading educationist of Sri Lanka.

The Jayasuriya Commission issued two reports, an Interim Report in October 1961 and the Final Report in July 1962. When the Government responded in February 1964 with a White Paper entitled Proposals for a National System of Education, many expected it to indicate the acceptance of the Jayasuriya Commission proposals in toto or in substance. However, like most others Professor Jayasuriya was greatly disappointed to note that the government had jettisoned the Commission's recommendations.

In a any forthright manner, he quite forcefully expressed "the limitations of the (White Paper) proposals from the point of view of planning a rational system of education that would on the one hand bring a good education within the reach of every child, irrespective of the economic condition or social status of his parents, and on the other hand, gear education to the economic needs of the country.

Basically an eminent university teacher as well as a leading researcher in Education who authored a number of books on Education, Professor Jayasuriya was prominent in various progressive sectors of national life, especially in matters relating to education.