Towards a National Knowledge Society

Rohan MATHES

Presidential Advisor and Coordinator of the Presidential Task Force on ‘English and IT’ Sunimal Fernando said yesterday that President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s vision was to create a ‘Rural Knowledge Society’ and a ‘Rural Knowledge Economy’ as the bedrock on which a ‘National Knowledge Society’ would be built, with English and IT as its principle anchorage.

Addressing a press conference pertaining to the ‘Launch of the Year of English and IT and the formal declaration of year 2009 as the year of English and IT’ in the country, at the Presidential Secretariat, Fernando told journalists that a major drawback in the process of empowering the rural society, was a lack of adequate communicative or spoken English skills in them, despite the existence of 23,000 English teachers in schools and an additional 3,200 private tutoring institutes.

Much public resources had been spent in the process, with the product being a dismal failure.

“The President’s view was that a vicious and destructive socio-cultural and methodological problem was impeding the propagation of the English language skills.

English which was, is and still remains the jealousy guarded preserve of a privileged class and a cruel and heartless tool of social repression, should be transformed with urgency, but in measured steps no doubt, into an instrument of social uplift and empowerment of the poor,” he noted.

He said that as Secretary to the President Lalith Weeratunga quite rightly pointed out, it was a concept in a single phrase, ‘English as a Life Skill’ which gave the Presidential Task Force, its name, direction and identity.

Elaborating on the measures taken to transform President Rajapaksa’s concepts into actions, with the assistance of the English and Foreign Languages University of Hyderabad in India (EFLU), and the Board of Investment (BOI), for the English teachers of the 3,200 strong private tutoring sector, Fernando said that the ‘Distance Teaching of English’ would also commence shortly this year, in a 200 module Basic English Course, on national TV.

He mentioned about the measures taken to disseminate IT skills in the country by the Information Communication Technology Agency (ICTA) Sri Lanka, via the Secondary Education Modernization Project (SEMP), the Education for Knowledge Society Project (EKSP) and the Education Sector Development Grant (ESDG) program of the Education Ministry.

“The Rural Nenasala, Rural Knowledge Centre or Rural Tele-Centre program remains an outstanding achievement of the Government and a show-piece of the South Asian region,” Fernando said.

Secretary to the President Lalith Weeratunga, Chairman Infosys Narayana Murthy, Ranjith Fernando of the IT Task Force and Prof. A. Mauria of EFLU also spoke.