Are we educating our children in right way?

Need for rethink on Sri Lankan education

By Professor W. A. J. M. De Costa

Senior Professor and Chair of Crop Science, Faculty of Agriculture, University of Peradeniya

A few months ago, a former student of mine doing a PhD in Computational Biology in a top-ranked US university, while holding a teaching assistantship in the same university, called me. She was quite upset that the undergraduate students in her laboratory practical class had openly confronted her and told that her weekly quizzes were too difficult. On inquiring what was too difficult, they had said that her questions were not directly from their lecture notes or practical guidebook and that the students could not anticipate the type of questions that were coming. I knew that my former student spends a lot of time and effort in formulating questions for her weekly quizzes, making sure that her questions stimulate the thinking of students when searching for the answer and force them to apply the theory that they had learned in the lecture to solve a practical problem. However, the reaction of the students (she did not tell me whether the students who protested openly were a majority or not) clearly showed that they did not like being taken out of their comfort zone. While I was surprised that this incident happened in a top-ranked US university, it wouldn’t have surprised me in the least if it had happened in a Sri Lanka university. This would have been a common occurrence in Sri Lankan universities, if not for the semblance of outward respect (and a considerable measure of the fear of reprisal) for lecturers that is still maintained in Sri Lankan universities, thanks to the eastern culture. Nevertheless, it is an incident that begs the question whether the learning habits, that are nurtured by the system of education in Sri Lanka from childhood onwards, are in fact the right ones, both for the individual and for the country as a whole. Based on my experience of teaching in a leading Sri Lankan university for over thirty years, following a period of four years as an undergraduate in the same university, the answer to the above question is an emphatic ‘No’. What saddens and disappoints me is the observation that the learning habits of the students as well as the teaching habits of the lecturers have ‘moved in the wrong direction’ so that the future does not look promising in terms of producing a graduate who fulfils the needs of the country which spends so much on the so-called ‘free education’. In this article, I wish to highlight some of the fundamental flaws in the way Sri Lanka educates its young generation.

A system of education and a population of students driven by examinations and rote learning

Sri Lankan education is a succession of examinations, starting with the Grade Five scholarship exam, followed by the GCE O/L and the GCE A/L, and continuing in the universities. All these examinations are structured in a pattern that has been set for well over several decades, with very little change. They are also based on curricula which are very heavy on subject content. The extremely competitive nature of these examinations, especially, the Grade Five scholarship exam, which offers the possibility of entrance to the so-called ‘elite’ schools, and the GCE A/L, which offers admission to an extremely limited number of university places, forces students into a set of learning habits which are detrimental to the development of their creative capabilities and critical thinking. The private tuition culture which started in the late 1970s has developed into a very elaborate network, which caters exactly to the needs of the examinations. The teaching is meticulously focused on developing the students’ capabilities to do well in the competitive examinations. This teaching is accompanied by preparing the students for examinations by getting them to practice answering questions from examinations of previous years. This is widely prevalent even in the Physical Science stream, which consists of subjects such as Mathematics and Physics, where logical reasoning rather than memorising is the skill that needs to be developed. Instead, ‘practice makes perfect’ has been the rationale, with the perception that a student who has done a greater number of similar questions has a greater probability of doing well in an examination, where questions are set according to a pattern that has been set and continued for over several decades. I was surprised to learn about 10 years ago that in the GCE(A/L), this practice of answering questions from previous years has moved on to memorising model answers written by a tuition teacher. This culture of rote learning has advanced to such an extent that ‘tuition classes’ are held for prospective entrants to the medical and engineering faculties on the subjects that they will learn during their first year in the university.

For the students who come through this dizzying maze of tuition classes, revision classes and practice examinations, and get into the university (only about 2% of the population in any age cohort), a set of learning habits that strengthens their habit of rote learning awaits in the university system. They are given access to the lecture notes of senior students and a group of supposedly competent senior students conduct what are called ‘Kuppi Classes’, which is a system ‘tuition classes’ aimed at filling the brain with subject content prior to the examinations (hence the meaning ‘filling the small bottle’ which is the brain). During a visit to a leading university in the Western Province which coincided with an examination period, I came across a ‘Kuppi Time Table’ for students in the Faculty of Science in the students’ canteen, which demonstrated the extent to which this culture of rote learning aimed at passing examinations was prevalent among the university student community. In science-based degree programmes with significant components of laboratory and field practical classes, it is common practice for a large majority of students to copy the lab report of a few supposedly competent students in the batch. This whole culture is strengthened and perpetuated by the institutionalised practice of ‘ragging’, strongly supported by the Students’ Unions, where students who do not subject themselves to ragging are denied access to the ‘Kuppi classes’ and the lecture notes of their seniors. The end product of all this is a graduate who expects a previously set pattern to bench mark his preparations to every single challenge that he/she faces in his/her profession. Preparation based on the practice of solving/meeting a similar problem/challenge that had occurred in the past is often the only strategy that these graduates know about. Hence, it is no wonder that they become almost clueless when the problems/challenges that come their way in their profession deviate even slightly from those that had come previously. This also explains the widespread incompetence in problem-solving among the government officials, at all levels of administration. While the politicians are rightly blamed for the current plight of Sri Lanka and its long-term post-independence failure, the system of education that has produced a set of mediocre and sub-competent officials, technical experts and bureaucrats should share the blame in equal measure.

The role of educators

A system that produces a majority of ineffective/sub-standard graduates, devoid of key competences, cannot have survived for so long if it has not been strengthened, wittingly or unwittingly, by its other stakeholders. In this regard, the educators, consisting of the curriculum experts in the relevant governmental institutions such as the National Institute of Education, and academics in the university faculties have failed in designing and implementing a system of education, curricula and examinations which are much less dependent on rote learning practices for success. Curricula have been progressively expanded with more and more information reflecting advances in the respective subject areas and disciplines. However, there has not been a proportional removal of outdated information so that the subject content that the students have to study has continued to expand in volume. Such an expansion reduces the space for students to engage in learning by exploration via reading and discussion, thus forcing them towards repeated reading and memorising of a set of lecture notes. The examinations have been made highly structured, which takes the novelty out of the questions. What makes the matters worse are the evaluation schemes where only answers containing specific words or sentences are considered ‘correct’ while answers containing the same meaning but written in different words and sentences are considered ‘incorrect’.

This practice is especially prevalent in the evaluation schemes of the GCE A/L examination. Such highly structured and repetitive examination papers and marking schemes inevitably condition the students’ minds to anticipate a certain structure and type of questions and write a certain type of answer, which has been memorised and/or practiced in advance. While such psychological conditioning helps the students to do well in examinations, it also leaves them clueless when confronted with an examination paper or a question, which deviates even slightly from the pattern of the previous years. Therefore, it is no wonder that the majority of students who graduate through such a system of evaluation are incapable of problem-solving and ‘out of the box’ thinking when confronted with real-life problems in their professional work environments. Such work environments include the very institutions which provide education where generations of teachers and lecturers who have come through this system perpetuate the same system.

During the 1990s, almost all universities and faculties in Sri Lanka converted their curricula to the so-called ‘course unit’ system. The whole subjects, which had hitherto been taught over the course of one academic year and evaluated in year-end examinations, were broken in to several smaller ‘course units’, which were evaluated at a higher frequency (the so-called continuous evaluation) via a series of quizzes, written assignments and mid-term and end-term examinations. This system of teaching and learning is practiced in an overwhelming majority of universities globally and the merits of continuous evaluation appear to be advocated by an equally overwhelming majority of education experts. However, as a product of the old ‘whole subject-one examination’ system, I have observed, over the course of the last three decades, several flaws in directly transplanting the ‘course unit’ system (which at that time was predominantly prevalent in the US and Canadian Universities, but not in the European Universities) in Sri Lanka on a student population who are psychologically conditioned in to rote learning within an examination-oriented system of education. The biggest flaw is the fragmentation of the process of learning and the subsequent knowledge gained and retained by the students. When one whole subject is broken down to several smaller units which are evaluated separately, the students’ learning is focused on getting through the smaller units. In this process, understanding the connections between different smaller units and building inter-relationships between different aspects of a whole subject, which is an integral aspect of deeper learning, is neglected. It has been a common experience for us teachers to find that students have forgotten most of what they had learned previously in the course units which had been completed and examined. It is a direct result of the ‘Kuppi’ type of learning where the ‘small bottle’ which is filled just before the examination is emptied as soon as the examination is over!

Introduction of the course unit system to Sri Lankan universities caused a change in student behaviour which, arguably, has had far-reaching consequences. The increased frequency of assessments and examinations on an already examination-oriented student population directed them even more towards preparing for examinations (often via rote learning methods and ‘Kuppi’ classes) at the expense of spending time on sports and extra-curricular activities, which are essential components of the holistic development of a ‘complete’ graduate and a human being. The weaning of students away from sports and extra-curricular activities from the 1990s onwards was clearly evident in a large residential university such as the University of Peradeniya, which offers a wide range of facilities and opportunities for sports and extra-curricular activities. There is no doubt that the introduction of the ‘course-unit’ system of curricula was the major cause of this shift in student behaviour. During my time as an undergraduate in Peradeniya in the early- to mid-1980s, I remember many of my own batchmates, who had not previously engaged in sports and extra-curricular activities during their school days, getting involved and participating in games and activities and thoroughly enjoying the experience despite not being in the official university teams.

Concluding remarks

The underlying structural flaws in the Sri Lankan system of education, teaching and learning is often hidden by the argument that many (but only a tiny fraction of the whole) Sri Lankans who have come through this system have gone on to reach top rungs in their chosen professions in the developed west. However, the true test of an education system of a country is that it should produce a human resource base equipped with competencies (and values) which are required to address the multi-pronged challenges that the country faces in trying to bring about its national development and prosperity. The trajectory that Sri Lanka has travelled as a nation during its 75-year post-independence period and the patently evident current trend of brain drain brings into stark question whether its ‘free-education’ has achieved its intended objectives. It is clear that a comprehensive re-think and a careful overhaul of the current Sri Lankan education system, including its core principles, values and modes of operation, is essential for the country to realize the full potential of its human resource base for the benefit of its own development and prosperity.

The writer has been a university teacher and a researcher for more than thirty five years and has received special training in university staff development, including teaching and learning methodology, at the University of Kassel, Germany.