Support education with honesty and commitment
In an article submitted to one of last week’s The Island Prof. Rajiva Wijesinha had promoted a more sustained involvement of the military in Sri Lanka’s rural education. In an unusually uncritical assessment in the militarization of ideological fronts, Wijesinha takes as his model of reference a Pakistani venture; and sees its suitability to Sri Lanka’s now less free educational domain. Counter essays were quick in coming and in an edition of the same paper, later that week, Ravindra Jayananda writes back raising negative concerns that can arise through focused militarization of education. Jayananda shows that the Pakistani model – a country which has faced debilitating effects of the heavy military presence in public and administrative spheres – is undesirable as a prototype and further aruges to show how a field such as education should have a central master.
However, in my view, Wijesinha’s opinion should be assessed not in isolation, but in the wake of where our education and higher education is being driven to at present. While we see an overall destabilization of resources, agendas, policies, etc., which (as it is often accused) have “unsettled” the twin spheres in question the governmental involvement in preserving the academy as a bastion of the welfare state is becoming less and less of a priority. In the professorial politician’s own words, our education system, for the past “few months” is in a “crisis” – and it is partly as a remedy to this diagnosis that the fetishized Pakistani school programme is eagerly proposed. The “crisis” Wijesinha locates in our secondary and tertiary education, however, cannot be related to in the singular – nor can we speak of them in abstract, for successive governments over the past two decades or so and the inertia of their educational policies are catalysts of this multi-faceted breakdown. The developments of the last few months are merely the eruption points of a surging volcano.
Placing the crises in the current context, as this is written, the Ministries of Education and Higher Education, alongside the ministers under whose purview they are stationed have become the most hated and most ridiculed examples of bureaucratic impotency. Today, under the inefficiency and arrogance of these state-appointed agents, crises have engulfed multiple fields which are directly connected to education. These include the setting of syllabuses, the provision of course material, the quality of programmes, issues related to the setting of papers, evaluation of answer scripts, credibility of exam results, the payment of lecturers, monetary allocations for education, infrastructural facilities, et al. A close examination shows that the accelaration of these crises have taken place since the last cabinet shuffle, even though the roots of decay, as mentioned earlier, can be traced further back where necessary.
Unearth the authors
The innocuous suggestion that our education is in crisis, requires us to take a step back and unearth the authors of these crises, for we are dealing with a field that demands responsibility and credibility. Similarly, what measures have been taken to locate the agents and bureaucrats who have caused this debilitated tilt and what remedial processes are suggested? In short, has the government genuinely made an entry into negotiating with these crises? These are fundamental and obvious questions and they field issues one must compulsorily address before handing the rural education over to a third party for its “lack of quality.”
If one is to take the ongoing trade union action engineered by the Federation of University Teachers Association (FUTA) as a symptom of the crises in question, the government’s response to this had, for the main, been dubious and lethargic. In fact, the discussion table had to bring in ministerial heavyweights outside the educational portfolios for talks to progress; and even then, we are still suspended in mid air with strenuous progress being made. Into its third month, the Minister of Higher Eeducation can still be seen making appearances on TV channels and public meetings issuing scathing and dehumanizing statements that would not help the spirit of a positive negotiation. With this absence of commitment and negotiative impetus the entry of the third, powerful minister (who has shown a keen interest in the prolonging debacle) has become inevitable.
Wijesinha’s locating of the Pakistani military-run type school, in the context of Lankan education, invites several objections. Why one must insist on a “military-run” school as a prototype has to be fundamentally questioned, while being amused at Wijesinha himself, who is a proxy of the government which downplays the FUTA proposal that lobbies for a 6% GDP allocation for education. Is Wijesinha’s thesis stimulated by the fact that more than 20% of the budgetary allocations are already made to the Ministery of Defence and Urban Development? Or is it that in such a megalomaniac proposal there is enough impetus to extend the militarization of education which the government, at different capacities, has already gleefully undertaken? My feeling is that Wijesinha (though it is sad to admit that a one time Liberal Party stalwart would think this way) chooses not to be critical of the disastrous and irrevocable outcomes that may issue from regimental education. The treatment of ideologically controlled, socially enclosed Pakistan as a totem is a betrayal of critical and reflective scholarship.
The trajectory of a hegemony is to expand control over the masses, contorting them to regimentation and straitjacketed modes. Under the current regime the military has been effectively used to monitor and direct public spaces and to “watch over” civil movement. In their capacity as an unquestioning labour force, the military has been readily deployed to appease the whims and fancies of the political VIP class, creating a “buffer tier” between the politically “chosen,” sacred sliver and the common citizen/law abiding commoner. In post-2009 Sri Lanka, the military presence has been meditatively infiltrated into general society, making traditional public spaces the ready preserve of the militant. From the diplomatic and foreign service, chairs of departments, presidencies of sports bodies, cricket ground maintaining forces, to the membership of provincial and local councils have been directly or indirectly brought under the influence of the military. Its latest act was the appointment of chosen school heads as Brevet Colonels – placing them under the direct authority of the military; who in turn is directed by the regime.
Reversing the programme
The concern of the committed educationist and policy maker, if at all, should be to raise an unequivocal voice in safeguarding the autonomy of education; and to preserve it from politicization and the infiltration of greedy, shortsighted politicos. Whether the Pakistani military school model can meet the cherished founding stones of our post-Kannangara ethics in scholarship has to be considered with care. My feeling is that the current regime is in the process of surely and neatly reversing the programme of the “visionary Kannangara” (whom Wijesinha, too greets in those very words), making education a commodity; while depriving the rural and the less priviliged of an equal ground for social mobility. One should be more social conscious and honest to one’s chair before making “crazy salad” statements. A politician, in the ethic of a statesman, may veil his prose with patriotic concern. But, the ugliness of the contorting notion of a regimented academy should not be veiled from us.
In an article submitted to one of last week’s The Island Prof. Rajiva Wijesinha had promoted a more sustained involvement of the military in Sri Lanka’s rural education. In an unusually uncritical assessment in the militarization of ideological fronts, Wijesinha takes as his model of reference a Pakistani venture; and sees its suitability to Sri Lanka’s now less free educational domain. Counter essays were quick in coming and in an edition of the same paper, later that week, Ravindra Jayananda writes back raising negative concerns that can arise through focused militarization of education. Jayananda shows that the Pakistani model – a country which has faced debilitating effects of the heavy military presence in public and administrative spheres – is undesirable as a prototype and further aruges to show how a field such as education should have a central master. However, in my view, Wijesinha’s opinion should be assessed not in isolation, but in the wake of where our education and higher education is being driven to at present. While we see an overall destabilization of resources, agendas, policies, etc., which (as it is often accused) have “unsettled” the twin spheres in question the governmental involvement in preserving the academy as a bastion of the welfare state is becoming less and less of a priority. In the professorial politician’s own words, our education system, for the past “few months” is in a “crisis” – and it is partly as a remedy to this diagnosis that the fetishized Pakistani school programme is eagerly proposed. The “crisis” Wijesinha locates in our secondary and tertiary education, however, cannot be related to in the singular – nor can we speak of them in abstract, for successive governments over the past two decades or so and the inertia of their educational policies are catalysts of this multi-faceted breakdown. The developments of the last few months are merely the eruption points of a surging volcano.
Placing the crises in the current context, as this is written, the Ministries of Education and Higher Education, alongside the ministers under whose purview they are stationed have become the most hated and most ridiculed examples of bureaucratic impotency. Today, under the inefficiency and arrogance of these state-appointed agents, crises have engulfed multiple fields which are directly connected to education. These include the setting of syllabuses, the provision of course material, the quality of programmes, issues related to the setting of papers, evaluation of answer scripts, credibility of exam results, the payment of lecturers, monetary allocations for education, infrastructural facilities, et al. A close examination shows that the accelaration of these crises have taken place since the last cabinet shuffle, even though the roots of decay, as mentioned earlier, can be traced further back where necessary.
Unearth the authors
The innocuous suggestion that our education is in crisis, requires us to take a step back and unearth the authors of these crises, for we are dealing with a field that demands responsibility and credibility. Similarly, what measures have been taken to locate the agents and bureaucrats who have caused this debilitated tilt and what remedial processes are suggested? In short, has the government genuinely made an entry into negotiating with these crises? These are fundamental and obvious questions and they field issues one must compulsorily address before handing the rural education over to a third party for its “lack of quality.”
If one is to take the ongoing trade union action engineered by the Federation of University Teachers Association (FUTA) as a symptom of the crises in question, the government’s response to this had, for the main, been dubious and lethargic. In fact, the discussion table had to bring in ministerial heavyweights outside the educational portfolios for talks to progress; and even then, we are still suspended in mid air with strenuous progress being made. Into its third month, the Minister of Higher Eeducation can still be seen making appearances on TV channels and public meetings issuing scathing and dehumanizing statements that would not help the spirit of a positive negotiation. With this absence of commitment and negotiative impetus the entry of the third, powerful minister (who has shown a keen interest in the prolonging debacle) has become inevitable.
Wijesinha’s locating of the Pakistani military-run type school, in the context of Lankan education, invites several objections. Why one must insist on a “military-run” school as a prototype has to be fundamentally questioned, while being amused at Wijesinha himself, who is a proxy of the government which downplays the FUTA proposal that lobbies for a 6% GDP allocation for education. Is Wijesinha’s thesis stimulated by the fact that more than 20% of the budgetary allocations are already made to the Ministery of Defence and Urban Development? Or is it that in such a megalomaniac proposal there is enough impetus to extend the militarization of education which the government, at different capacities, has already gleefully undertaken? My feeling is that Wijesinha (though it is sad to admit that a one time Liberal Party stalwart would think this way) chooses not to be critical of the disastrous and irrevocable outcomes that may issue from regimental education. The treatment of ideologically controlled, socially enclosed Pakistan as a totem is a betrayal of critical and reflective scholarship.
The trajectory of a hegemony is to expand control over the masses, contorting them to regimentation and straitjacketed modes. Under the current regime the military has been effectively used to monitor and direct public spaces and to “watch over” civil movement. In their capacity as an unquestioning labour force, the military has been readily deployed to appease the whims and fancies of the political VIP class, creating a “buffer tier” between the politically “chosen,” sacred sliver and the common citizen/law abiding commoner. In post-2009 Sri Lanka, the military presence has been meditatively infiltrated into general society, making traditional public spaces the ready preserve of the militant. From the diplomatic and foreign service, chairs of departments, presidencies of sports bodies, cricket ground maintaining forces, to the membership of provincial and local councils have been directly or indirectly brought under the influence of the military. Its latest act was the appointment of chosen school heads as Brevet Colonels – placing them under the direct authority of the military; who in turn is directed by the regime.
Reversing the programme
The concern of the committed educationist and policy maker, if at all, should be to raise an unequivocal voice in safeguarding the autonomy of education; and to preserve it from politicization and the infiltration of greedy, shortsighted politicos. Whether the Pakistani military school model can meet the cherished founding stones of our post-Kannangara ethics in scholarship has to be considered with care. My feeling is that the current regime is in the process of surely and neatly reversing the programme of the “visionary Kannangara” (whom Wijesinha, too greets in those very words), making education a commodity; while depriving the rural and the less priviliged of an equal ground for social mobility. One should be more social conscious and honest to one’s chair before making “crazy salad” statements. A politician, in the ethic of a statesman, may veil his prose with patriotic concern. But, the ugliness of the contorting notion of a regimented academy should not be veiled from us.
