Please re-consider

A planned move by the education authorities to make a pass in English at the GCE (O/L) exam a necessary qualification for admission to Advanced Level classes has understandably come in for flak by parents and the teacher unions alike.

They have asked Education Minister Susil Premajayantha not to deny students who fail in English at the GCE (O/L) examination an opportunity to enter A/L classes.

The concern of these segments are certainly justified given the current state of play governing English education in the country.

To begin with, the rural student who is brought up in the idiom of the village cannot be expected to do well in an English language paper particularly so when there is an acute dearth of competent English teachers in rural schools.

Does this mean that even if a student passes all other subjects undergoing much toil and hardship he is to be denied higher education merely due to a failure in English?

What the authorities should do is try to stem the large number of school dropouts. Placing a millstone round the necks of students by insisting they pass English is not going to help.

Besides there are enough obstacles at present preventing students entering university. The authorities should make sure they don’t add to them. It is also generally known that students in village schools don’t have the facilities such as good libraries, computers, reading material etc. to enhance their knowledge of English.

This certainly will give an unfair advantage to the their city counterparts most of whom may not even need to be tutored in English coming as they do from an elite milieu. Beside this it is also bound to exacerbate the gulf between the cities and villages giving rise to accusations of discrimination that fuelled insurgencies in the past well epitomised by the slogan Colombata kiri apita kekiri.

Blocking the path to higher education to a disadvantaged section merely on the question of competence in English is to say the least discriminatory in the context of the headway enjoyed by city based students and the denial of access to a quality English education to the rural youth.

It should be noted that these students may possess skills and talents that go far beyond what a sound English education could match which could be harnessed for productive purposes. Not all our professionals and experts in various fields today rose to their positions on their English proficiency. They succeeded by dint of hard work and perseverance and later acquired a sound English knowledge.

Sadly today English is insisted upon even at interviews overlooking other skills and aptitudes of youth. How much of these talented youth had fallen by the wayside as a result is anyone’s guess, not to mention their service to country.

Economically developed countries such as Japan and France have reached their positions in the absence of English. Their vast human resource pool which wrought wonders in those countries had no grounding in English.

On the contrary here we are still nursing a colonial hangover. English continues to hang like a genie to intimidate and discourage aspiring talent with the ‘Kaduwa’ mentality still ingrained in a vast segment of our population.

This is not to deny the importance of English in today’s technological driven society when the world is speeding along the Information Super Highway opening new frontiers of knowledge in an increasingly high tech world. English is the key to accessing this new world.

President Mahinda Rajapaksa who has realised it’s importance has propagated the teaching of English and IT knowledge to a wide segment of the population. This project is still in it’s initial stages and it is unfair to expect students in the rural areas to have developed English language skills overnight, particularly given their humble backgrounds.

Therefore it is prudent for this plan to be shelved at least until such time a proper assessment is made of the success of this program. In the meantime the authorities should train English teachers of quality and competence who will be up to the task.

We say this because English teaching is most schools have dropped in standards. The mushrooming English tutories have failed to step into the breach judging by the astounding failure rate in English.

What is needed is a coordinated effort to popularise English in the rural schools so that the subject would be attractive to the pupils. The method of English teaching too should undergo change with a more interactive form introduced.

Above all what is needed is to remove English from it’s label as a status symbol so that our rural youth would embrace the subject without intimidation or inferiority complex. This would also erase divisions in society caused by English and make it a common denominator of communications between all and sundry.

May be, the education authorities should reconsider their decision to make a pass in English language a necessary qualification for admission to GCE (A/L) classes.