Attack On Students & The Larger Crisis
By Harini Amarasuriya –November 5, 2015
Dr. Harini Amarasuriya
Last week’s brutal attack by police on protesting HNDA students, exposes yet again, the severe problems in the country’s education sector. Images of riot police chasing after students and beating them with poles, and the bloodied faces of young female students, has created a furore and to a certain extent, a backlash against the police action and indeed the government. The government has responded as every government in the past has done: the appointment of committees to conduct inquiries. Of course, the fact that this time around the new Police Commission has also initiated an investigation and the reconstituted Human Rights Commission has received a formal complaint from the students is reflective of at least some positive changes. Yet, the true test of the intentions of the newly elected government can only be assessed based on their responses to the conclusions of the various inquiries and their actions in the weeks and days to come.
My intention here however, is not to go into the specifics of last week’s incident or its aftermath. Rather, I want to locate this particular incident within the larger crisis in the education sector. Recently, I met a group of school students, mostly from International Schools at a workshop to which I was invited. On that very day too, university students were on a protest and they marched past the hall where I was conducting the workshop. Ironically, I had been invited to speak on education and equity. One of the participants at the workshop stated that university students should not be protesting – that their job was to study. They should not be wasting tax payers money but instead, just knuckle down and get on with what they were really supposed to do: study. Reading some of the comments on social media, especially the English language social media regarding the HNDA incident, certainly, this is a common point of view. Student protests are described as disruptive and unnecessary. The traffic jams and inconvenience due to the protests were strongly condemned. By and large, the response to student protests was disapproving. State universities and university students were viewed extremely negatively.
In a parallel universe, there are advertisements galore offering various degrees and courses in all types of private ‘universities’ ‘campuses’ ‘colleges’ ‘institutes’. The pictures accompanying these advertisements show happy and smiling young people, dressed in the latest fashions, carrying all kinds of electronic devices looking ready to take on the world, armed with their ‘globally competitive’ degrees and certificates. The contrast between the images of the HNDA students and the ‘students’ featured in these advertisements could not be greater. One set of images represent chaos, violence, disorder; the other, stability, fulfilment and satisfaction.Read More
