IN ORDER OF IMPORTANCE

The pot is certainly on the boil before the Geneva UN Human Rights Council sessions this March, with sanctions being called for on Sri Lanka, from across the Palk Straits by TN Chief Minister Jayalalithaa in a move that seems to deserve no further comment due to its inanity. But there are other opinions that have also reached Geneva before the council sessions, and one of this is in the form of a letter dispatched by the Golden Key depositors to Navi Pillay the UN Human Rights Commissioner, calling for criminal prosecutions against Cecile Kotelawala and Shirani Bandaranayake for violating the human rights of the GK victims, of which already 26, they say, have committed suicide!

Meanwhile a former Sri Lankan envoy to Geneva also chips in to say that the UN Human Rights Commissioner's modus operandi is to resurrect the Darusman report, and interestingly she says that UN agencies work to such preconceived agendas that sometimes UN civil servants write the reports before they embark on a mission, (at whose behest it can be guessed)!

It is in these times that Sri Lanka faces the new round in Geneva, and apart from the agent provocateurs who salivate each time the sessions are around the corner, the ordinary people of this country are not put off their stride one bit by what is happening in that part of the world at this time of the year.

They have better things to think about, and despite seeming fault lines in the education sector for instance, with the recent Z score issue being one, there is news that the pass rate at the Advanced Level examination this time for instance was unprecedented.

There is a premium value attached to education in this country which in the first place has a high literacy rate which makes parents attach so much importance to education that the pressure cooker atmosphere created in the schools sector looks patently unhealthy at times.

The President of this country seems to be the most engaged leader we have had for decades, as far as education goes. He melts, as somebody said quite plainly, when he sees disadvantaged children - meaning that his kindness is heartfelt, and is not his political savvy at work. When a schoolchild on a Temple Trees visit was seen wearing torn shoes, he queried why, and now there is the new effort to provide footwear for schoolchildren that need them.

Perhaps then there are other areas that could do with more presidential attention. The hothouse atmosphere in educational institutions has robbed children of their childhoods, and since we need good citizens and not robots, there must be more attention paid to making childhoods less careworn.

Kids need down-time to do what kids are supposed to do such as float paper boats in the wrenching rain, or fly kites with the abandon that only children can know.

Secondary educational institutions in particular are beset with problems that have to do with intense competition, and peer pressure. Some of these situations are so ludicrous, that parents suffer more than students - for example, when it comes to parent-teacher issues, where in some schools, it is taken for granted that the teachers are given expensive presents at the beginning of the school year, with the quid pro quo guarantee that those who make the best offerings are paid back with the best marks for their children!

These are the issues that concern a majority of our people as opposed to the overblown over publicized issues of reconciliation and good governance.

Such an assertion will no doubt be met with the stock responses of insensitivity to minorities, for example, but the critics will be surprised that the majority of the minority are also concerned about the same issues that apply across the board to all -- how to appease the increasing demand for cash and contributions by school managements or by schoolteachers themselves. But then, we all have to be distracted by the sideshow called Geneva - or, may be it can be different this time around?