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Struggle for independence and freedom in education -
Part III:
Common language to build unity
Gunapala WICKREMARATNE
Continued from yesterday
With the establishment of a large number of Buddhist and Hindu
schools, education of the young in accordance with the environment
suited to Buddha Dharma or Hindu religion became possible.
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Common language is vital as a medium of instructions. File
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“It is difficult to separate cultural education from the entire
process of education. Undoubtedly, all the activities of the school,
while giving the child specific knowledge and skills, must, at the same
time, if they are well done, develop their qualities of body and mind
which lead to the enjoyment of and the appreciation of the arts.
The cultivation of discernment and the judgment, of proper attitudes
to men and things, the recognition, acceptance and sharing of social
values which reform conduct, are implicit in any system of education
worthy of its name” (Final report of the NEC 1961 pg 48).
Buddhist families
These were the objectives of the founding fathers of C/Ananda, C/Nalanda,
K/Dharmarajah, G/Mahinda, Kv/Maliyadewa, MR/Rahula. J/Parameshwara,
J/Hindu, J/Chava, C/Vishaka, K/Mahamaya, C/Museus and many others.
Education in the Christian and Catholic denominational schools not
only facilitated proselytisation but it also created a class of English
speaking bureaucracy amenable to carry out the dictates of the imperial
rulers.
Except in the case of students coming from Buddhist families and
social backgrounds with close association of the priesthood of temples,
the others were removed from their indigenous cultural roots.
What was the result? It is comparable to what happened in India. The
view held by missionaries and by men like Charles Grant and Macaulay of
India was, that English medium in education created a class of persons
who would be, “Indians in blood and colour, but English in tastes, in
opinions, in morals and intellect.”
What was the prospect for the poor who had to attend school providing
education in the mother tongue? In general they had to be satisfied with
being, “hewers of wood and drawers of water”, while a handful of the
most gifted of them could aspire to be vernacular teachers.
This situation existed until 1956 when Swabhasha or the mother tongue
was introduced in stages as the medium of instruction up to the level of
university education.
National language
Over thousands of years the Sinhalese have evolved to be an
integrated nation, consisting of four major groups of people and
subsequently over the centuries a few more groups have been welded into
it, not through compulsion or conquest but through the medium of
communication and free movement. That is how the Sinhala nation has been
built up.
The process of integration was slow during the imperial rule with
almost clear cut demarcations of boundaries based on minor ethnic or
racial groups that promoted the principle of divide and rule.
Integration was facilitated through Buddha Dhamma based on a
concerned sense of continuity of interest arising from the experience of
all things, natural and spiritual as a meaningful unity through
self-realization.
The national language is one of the symbols of a nation. Language is
more important in the building up of a national character than any other
factor.
“An individual of an alien race may in his early infancy be
transplanted from his native soil and through the language of his foster
parents grow up as a member of the foster nation, sharing their
traditions and prejudices quite naturally.
The situation would be different if a boy of six years old were to be
transplanted in the same way. He would have his first impressions of the
world and of himself interpreted in his native tongue and the language
of her foster parents would be foreign to him. The longer any child was
under the influence of its native tongue the more difficult it would be
to grow naturally into the language.”
This becomes more complex as a well-developed language is part and
parcel of a highly civilized nation. The famous German philosopher in
his speeches to the German Nation in 1807, emphasized the importance of
the national language in education when he said, “Language forms men
more than it is formed by them”.
Original language
It is in the world of ides and relations that we encounter a great
difficulty in grasping the precise significance of a foreign word, for
in any original language the words denoting ideas and relations were
gradually built up from a simile based upon some sense impression and
changed the meanings through a process of linguistic adaptation.
For a person speaking the native language it is not difficult to
recover the connecting links between the original and the transferred
significance of the word.
Reasoning is essentially dependent upon the power to perceive
relations and to relate those relations to each other and then to one
another, so as to form a coherent and consistent system, that is to
comprehend a meaningful unity.
Karl Vossler in his, ‘The spirit of Language’ says:
“Many languages can be acquired, but only that one can be immediately
experienced which was used at the time at which one worked one’s way
from the stage of an infant to that of a member of a language community.
The concept of national language as an experienced language as
opposed to a foreign language which has been learnt, rests on the
natural fact that this ascent occurs once in the lifetime of each
person.”
For those who speak their own living language, with an uninterrupted
natural growth, more confusion results with people adopting a foreign
language as a medium of instruction in the schools. Before entering a
school or half-way up the school pupils who have acquired proficiency in
the mother tongue, have built up a vocabulary covering most of the
objects of sense impressions and their daily activities.
At school they have to superimpose on this basis a language of ideas
and abstract relations expended entirely in a foreign medium.
Their minds become split into two water-tight compartments - one for
ordinary things and actions expressed in their mother tongue, and
another for things connected with school subjects and the world of ideas
expended in a foreign language. As a result they are unable to speak of
their home affairs in the school language and about the learned subjects
in their mother tongue.
An important side of the study of language is the study of
literature, in the study of which emotional training is more direct and
more easily developed.
It has to be admitted that the national culture can be developed only
on the basis of the national language congenial to the psychology of the
integrated people of Lanka.
Educational changes during the period 1939-1968
Throughout the long history of Lanka from the earliest to the present
- to be specific - May 18, 2009, when the terrorist forces determined to
establish an independent Eelam or a Tamil State were wiped out by the
valiant forces under the leadership of the present President, at the end
of a thirty year war, we have faced foreign invasions of different
kinds, types and modes. As described earlier it was the universal Buddha
Dharma, that ensures freedom of thought.
The glorious traditions of the Buddhist educational system and the
integrated common language of the people that provided the unity and
strength to the nation - an integrated nation, free to further
integration through communication and living together.
During this period the educational changes of a far-reaching nature
were:
i) The introduction of the free education system.
ii) The abolition of the denominational education, while preserving
the right to religious education in the schools that provided such
education to the students prior to, the “Assisted Schools and Training
Colleges (Special Provisions) Act No. 5 of 1960” (Vide article 6-c).
iii) The substitution of the national languages in place of English
as the medium of instruction. It meant that nearly 75 percent of the
population could aspire to receive their education to the highest levels
with the provision of facilities to the remote rural villages.
(iv) The teaching of English as a second language has been encouraged
and has retained its popularity along with a program to provide
specially trained teachers. According to statistics published by the
Education Ministry - 2007, the categories of schools are as follows: See
table
The quality of education and the management efficiency level, depend
on the teachers and principals of the schools.
If the former BTS and privately managed schools that have been
recognised as national schools, are brought under Boards of Management
representing the Education Department, the respective OBAA and the SDSS,
with powers to select the principals and qualified teachers, as in the
case of the former assisted non fee levying 36 schools cited above, the
educational standards can be further enhanced.
Subsequent to the implementation of the free education scheme, the
Central schools established with all physical facilities including
hostels and playgrounds etc., it has to be recalled that there was a
special Central school unit headed by a senior Assistant Director of
Education responsible for the selection of teachers and principals to
those schools.
The Parivenas should be developed to meet the historic mission of
conserving and the dissemination of the Buddha Dhamma in its purest form
for the benefit of mankind.
Ancillary subjects to assist such dissemination should be included in
the curriculum. The management and administration should be by an
independent board consisting of pious and erudite monks.
(a) Government schools
1 AB schools (with GCE A/L Arts, Commerce and Science) 680
1 C schools (with GCE A/L Arts, Commerce only) 1,884
Type 2 schools (with GCE O/L only) 4,204
Type 3 schools (with classes up to 6 or 8 only) 2,910
Total 9,678
National schools 328
Navodaya schools* 511
Provincial schools 8,839
Total 9,678
l Selected for development on the basis of local AGA divisions
(b) Private schools
l Fee levying - 37
l Assisted non-fee levying 36 (under Act No. 65 of 1981 - Teachers’ salaries are paid by the Government effective from 01.01.1980).
(c) Parivenas
Mulika 421
Maha 184
Vidyayathana 53
l Selection of principals and staff by boards of management of the denominational schools.
Concluded
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