Free education and private universities:

English key to modern knowledge

W T A Leslie Fernando

Fostering English education by the present government should be appreciated. English is the key to modern knowledge. A knowledge of English is essential to master science and technology. However, there are some who advocate the medium of instruction in schools in Sri Lanka also should be changed into English.

Dr C W W Kannangara

There are also some who suggest that as a panacea for all ills in education, private Universities should be set up whose medium of instruction would be English. It is a pity that so many professors and University lecturers in the forefront to set up private universities and among them there are also those who have benefited by free education. They little realize that the setting up of private Universities would bring back English as the medium of instruction and would also fix the death-knell to free education.

Centres of education

In the past Pirivenas attached to the temple were the centres of education. Bhikkhus in Pirivenas as the upholders of religious tradition instructed the laymen a code of moral principles. The Sinhala culture developed under the benign influence of Buddhism.

Buddhism suffered a setback with the fall of the Sinhala regime and with the foreign domination. The Portuguese and the Dutch who occupied maritime provinces propagated the Christian faith and imposed Western culture on people. They destroyed Buddhist temples and places of worship and relegated Sinhala culture to the background.

The real setback became evident when the whole of Sri Lanka came under British domination. The patriotic Sinhalese never tolerated the British rule. They rose against them in the 1818 rebellion led by Weera Keppetipola and the 1848 rebellion under Gongalegoda Banda and Weera Puran Appu. The British brutally suppressed these rebellions. The British in their part took measures to suppress national sentiments. They confiscated the lands of the peasants under the Waste Lands Ordinance and sold them to planters for a song. As in other colonies the British made use of Christian missionaries for their imperial designs. They were given every encouragement to set up schools all over the country.

Christian missionaries

The missionaries disposed the rich traditions and culture of the natives under the names of civilizing people. Most of the higher strata in society who came under the influence of European missionaries abandoned our cultural values felt ashamed of them as primitive and slavishly imitated the West.

The plum of education was in the hands of the Christian missionaries and only four percent of the population could reach higher education which was in English at the beginning of the 20th Century. It was in this situation that Dr C W W Kannangara as the Education Minister initiated free education and changed the medium of education to Sinhala and Tamil.

When Dr C W W Kannangara introduced the Free Education Scheme he had to face severe opposition from the vested interests spearheaded by he Catholic Church. They did everything possible to sabotage free education and they were backed by the national press as well. Dr C W W Kannangara anticipated such opposition and was ready to face them.

Children should make use of free education. File photo

Some of the critics of free education especially the Catholic Church suggested that instead scholarships should be endowed to poor children selected by a competitive examination. This would have been mere patchwork to maintain the status quo. The rich with, money influence and better English would have outrivalled the poor in various fields. Dr C W W Kannangara and other sponsors of free education were too clever to be trapped in that manner. There were also some who lamented that there would be no youths to left to pluck the yield in their estates. This was the very type of inequality free education aimed to eliminate.

Dr C W W Kannangara and his supporters carried out vigorous campaigns all over the country. More formidable was the opposition to free education, more determined was Dr C W W Kannangara. In this endeavour he was backed by the Maha Sangha. They held meetings and answered all the accusations levelled against free education.

Free education

Dr C W W Kannangara and the sponsors of free education explained the benefits of free education to the masses and created a strong public opinion in its favour. Dr Kannangara then won over the members of the State Council and saw the Free Education Bill passed in it.

The Catholic Church that failed in its attempt to sabotage free education did not stop at that. Later it set up the Aquinas institution which prepared students for the London University in the English medium at a price to cater to the well to do. When Dr C W W Kannangara passed away in 1969 the then Rector of Aquinas proposed the Royal College should be named as the Kannangara Maha Vidyalaya. He was benumbed when the Minister J R Jayewardene quipped ‘why not your institution that bears a foreign name named as Kannangara institution? It is strange that in 2005 the Chandrika Bandaranaike regime supposed to be a progressive government conferred degree awarding University status to it - an institution set up to counteract free education!

To be continued