Acquisition of knowledge and skills for advancement

Convocation address of Professor Kusuma Karunaratne, Professor Emeritus, University of Colombo at the graduation ceremony at Sri Jayawardenepura University recently.

From the beginning of mankind, human beings have continuously acquired skills and knowledge in their pursuit of advancement. Early humans learnt the skill of using stones and sticks to improve their manual abilities.

As time went by, they learnt agriculture and growing their food and they learnt to build monuments, temples, they invented the wheel that they used to transport heavy items and also for travel, using animal / horse-drawn carriages.

With the passage of time man learnt about the power of steam and built steam engines to do large scale work, which led to the Industrial Revolution.

Over the last century, there has been an unprecedented development in all forms of technologies and an amazing range of products covering the entire gamut of human activity such as, energy, transport, communication, travel, space travel, automation and computers to name a few.

All this development is the result of acquisition of knowledge and skills, in one form or the other.

The earliest form of the acquisition of skills and knowledge was by chance or experimentation. The early homo sapiens experimented with stones and pieces of sticks and learnt how to augment their manual power.

They found that with sticks they can do damage to a fellow being or an animal to a much higher extent than with their limbs and that too from a safe distance away from the intruder. This is well illustrated in the introduction to Arthur Clarke’s film ‘A Space Odyssy’.

As millenia went by, methods of acquisition of knowledge and skills advanced to little more formal methods. For example, we came across students being apprenticed or taught by teachers in their homes. Our early literature refers to stories of the “Disapamok Acharya” and their best students who, on graduation receiving a special award, the award being the daughter of the “Disapamok” in marriage.

Today, of course, this practice cannot be followed and as a poor substitute, the Professor might award a gold medal to the best performer among the students. The practice of students being taught at the master’s house was prevalent even in Europe. The famous teacher and philosopher Aristotle taught at his home in the verandah or in the garden which we know is referred to as the “Lyceum”.

Later in time, schools and teaching institutes were established first as private institutions and later as state schools as well. Today, every country has its own school system for mass education and the university system to educate and train at higher levels and also to train the professionals required by the modern society. Why have we established such teaching systems at mass scale in every country? That is because we value knowledge and skills, in fact there is a thirst for knowledge.

Most of us in Sri Lanka come from a Buddhist background. Those of you who have read the doctrine of the Buddha, you will know that according to Buddhism, knowledge is supreme, not only for the monks but for the laymen as well.

Here, I wish to narrate a story of a layman by the name of Dighajanu during the time of the Buddha. He went to the Buddha and said, “Venerable Sir, we are ordinary laymen leading family life with wife and children. Would the Blessed One teach us some doctrine which will be conducive to our happiness in this world and here-after”.

The Buddha tells him that there are four things which are conducive to a man’s happiness is this world.

* First, he should be proficient in whatever profession he is engaged in and should be skilled, efficient, earnest and energetic in his chosen profession.

* Second, he should protect his well-earned income.

* Third, he should have good friends (Kalyana mitra) who are faithful, learned, virtuous, liberal and intelligent.

* Fourth, he should spend his money reasonably.

Then the Buddha expounds the four virtues conducive to a layman’s happiness hereafter.

* He should have faith and confidence in moral, spiritual and intellectual values.

* He should abstain from destroying life, from stealing, from adultery, from falsehood and from intoxicating drinks.

* He should practise charity and generosity.

* He should develop wisdom.

From this, it is quite clear that in the Buddha’s teaching, acquisition of skills and knowledge and being engaged in intellectual practices and developing wisdom take centre stage for happiness here and for happiness hereafter.

Coming to more mundane levels, acquisition of knowledge has been practised and valued in other instances as well. I believe, most of you would have read this poem.

This poem truly expounds the value of the skill and knowledge one has acquired and the advantage that no one can take it away from the person.

Having extolled the value of knowledge, let us ask why we are so desirous of acquiring such knowledge. In the earliest of times, it is the monks and the priests who were engaged in the acquisition of knowledge for the purpose of reforming and directing society towards well being. The laity engaged in university level studies were the gentry and the wealthy and they studied for the sake of knowledge.

Today, hardly anybody in the University studies for the sake of knowledge. Students pursue university education for economic and social advancement. Students who study for professions namely, Medicine, Engineering, Architecture have their focus on the profession they will engage in after graduation.

Students in other fields too hope for some form of employment after graduation which is a reasonable expectation in every way. But it must be known that no country can provide jobs to all graduates. There is some form of graduate unemployment in every country. No economy can adsorb all graduates.

In developed countries the percentage of students seeking university education is about ten times higher than ours and of course, the percapita income of those countries is more than ten times that of ours. Compared with developed countries we should admit not 20,000 students but 200,000 per annum for university education.

This is clearly an impossibility, more a catastrophy. We do not have the infrastructure to take in such a vast number of students and we do not have a strong enough economy as in the west to accommodate such numbers of graduates in our economy. I have mentioned this only to compare the scale of things.

Even with an intake of 18 - 20,000 it is most unfortunate that we are faced with graduate unemployment mostly in the field of arts and commerce and social sciences. Let us look at the whole process.

Most of the arts, commerce and social science graduates are from rural and suburban areas. They are also relatively economically disadvantaged. The parents of such families expect to ameliorate their situation by sending the son or daughter to the university expecting good employment and reasonable income after graduation.

In some cases the children have been successful at the entrance examination but due to financial situation of the parents they were unable to proceed with their studies and ended up as unfortunates. Few decades ago we have come across several novels and stories highlighting this situation.

In the mid 70’s the Board of Governors of the single university system established a student loan scheme and students were provided with loans expecting them to settle the loan once they were employed after graduation. This benevolent scheme fell on the rocks as most students did not pay back the loans amounting to around Rs. 40 million, which amounts to, in today’s currency, about Rs. 2 - 4 billion.

Then came the brilliant idea from Lalith Athulathmudali who conceived the Mahapola Scholarship scheme. This scheme provided the poor students an outright grant for living during the study period and of course, the university education was free or in other words, paid for by the state.

This was a boon to the poor students though some non-deserving students too got the scholarships and the money was not put to good use. When majority of the students received the Mahapola Scholarship they completely forgot about the benevolent scheme and demanded the scholarship stating that the Scholarship was their due right, much to the dismay of the Mahapola officials.

The Mahapola Scholarship Scheme however benefited a large number of poorer students in that they were not denied University education due to lack of money. Having graduated, especially the non professional group of students were faced with the spectre of unemployment.

To be continued