Decline and fall of an educational bureaucracy

Ruptures in Sri Lanka’s Education – Genesis, Present Status and Reflections by Panduka Karunanayake – Published by Sarasavi Publishers – 2021 – 285 Pages – Price: Rs. 600/=. Reviewed by Leelananda De Silva

Reading this instructive and informative volume, one can conclude that the golden period of Ceylon and Sri Lanka’s educational system, both higher and school levels, were the years 1942 to 1962. In 1942 C.W.W. Kannangara introduced path breaking reforms – free education, assisted schools, central schools, teaching in English medium. His kind of reform avoided the creation of a stifling educational bureaucracy.

Also in 1942, with the arrival of Ivor Jennings, Ceylon started on a path of high quality and autonomous university education. All these innovative and largely successful systems were destroyed in the 1960’s by politicians and academics, at the expense of the ordinary citizen. Sixty years later, in 2022, we witness two systems of education in Sri Lanka – one for the affluent and another for the poor. The former has access to better schools, both public and private, an English medium education, better teachers, high class private tuition, to state-of-the-art educational technology and access to Oxford, Cambridge and Harvard. The poor can access Sri Lanka’s universities teaching in the vernacular and prospects of unemployment for many of them.

 Panduka Karunanayake, the author is professor of medicine at the Colombo University. He belongs to a long and select tradition of medical academics and professionals, who have pursued interests beyond their own academic fields. He has been engaged in looking at the entire educational system – its history, its economy, sociology and culture. The volume reflects these interests.

It is a collection of articles on the many facets of our educational system. They include observing the reforms of C.W.W. Kannangara, university developments, in the arts, medicine and sciences and in administration, the evolution of a private university system and more generally on the history of education in Ceylon and Sri Lanka. He has some instructive and informative End Notes which offers us much food for thought.

The author examines the Kannangara reforms. The aim of these reforms was to open up opportunities for the less affluent, the less urban and the more rural, children to obtain an English education, free of charge and obtain access to the university. His idea of free education was not to make its supply a monopoly of the state. He never visualized the kind of educational bureaucracy that we have now.

He wanted free education to be provided from multiple sources – private schools, assisted schools, and government schools. School teachers were not part of an educational bureaucracy. School principals were ensured the individuality and the high profile they already enjoyed. These aims can be observed in the central schools that emerged. Karunanayake, notes that one of the colonial governors J.A. Stewart MacKenzie (1784-1843) was one of the earliest to advocate greater access to education and that he might have influenced the Kannangara reforms.

 Let us observe two important developments, noted by the author with regard to the evolution of higher education. One was the introduction of vernacular education to the universities of Colombo and Peradeniya in the early 1960’s. When Ivor Jennings was Vice-Chancellor in the early 1950’s, he opposed the change to a vernacular medium.

“While welcoming equal opportunity, Sir Ivor naturally disagreed with those who tried to redress this injustice by a wrong strategy; making university education itself vernacular, instead of battling the elitist politicians. He pointed out that the local vernacular was not yet ready to enter the global higher education arena, and it simply didn’t make sense to him to undermine the universities too and lose its excellence for the sake of circumventing the elitist politician’s plans. We can now see how correct he was”.

It was the resulting decline in the quality of university education, (after the introduction of vernacular policies after 1962 especially in the arts, social sciences and humanities) which have led to the decline of standards in the whole field of politics and public administration. We can see the results in 2022 with the Sri Lankan economy now in tatters. India avoided this calamity through its retention of English. Let me offer one contrasting example. Until the 1970s the administrative services of India and Sri Lanka were more or less similar in terms of their capacity to conduct business. Now the Sri Lanka Administrative Service is not fit for purpose.   With regard to autonomy, the author refers to the role of education minister, Iriyagolla (he called it autonomiya) in doing away with the principle of universities being detached from the state. What is surprising is that this happened during the Dudley Senanayake liberal government in the latter 1960’s.

“The new SLFP government had already made plans to re-introduce autonomy (and that Act had already gone through its first reading in Parliament) when the JVP insurrection broke out in April 1971………… The government immediately changed its stance on the universities and rewrote the Act, taking autonomy away further and bringing the universities under the direct control of the political authority. And the rest is history.”

The result of all this is the massive expansion of universities and their student numbers and the decline of standards. Vice-Chancellors are now academic bureaucrats, not scholars of excellence. The Chancellors are from a religious background making universities look like pirivenas.The volume has a wide ranging discussion on higher education – higher and further education, technical education, franchised institutions. The author refers to Macuniversities and McDonaldisation. Thousands are passing out from these franchised institutions. Although more action is required to regulate them, the author sees the advantages of these institutions. Without going abroad, children can hope to obtain a decent education that makes them employable.

Every year 400 doctors, qualified abroad in places like Belarus, China, India, Nepal, join the Sri Lankan medical services. Why not save all that foreign exchange and allow for foreign medical colleges to be opened up in Sri Lanka? It is these franchised institutions that have enabled the country to develop an export-oriented IT sector.

 Reading this volume one observes an important feature of Ceylon’s education system prior to 1962. Prior its unification and bureaucratization in the early 1960’s there could be observed in Ceylon great diversity in the educational system. In other words, there were many educational sub-cultures which flourished. The most obvious is the educational system which prevailed in Jaffna. It had a medical college and schools run by American missionaries and others.

Jaffna children had access to a good English education. They sought jobs in the South. Another education sub-culture can be observed in the Galle district. The author mentions the role of H.W. Amarasuriya, who was a great philanthropist. There was an inter-connected school system in the Galle district. In other cities and towns like Kandy, Kurunegala and Ratnapura, there were leading schools linked informally to other schools in the area creating an educational sub-culture.

Prior to 1960, there was a decentralized educational system unlike the current centralized bureaucratic model. There was room for private and philanthropic initiatives. It allowed for much wider social engagement in the education system. Should we once again aim at reviving a more decentralized system, allowing for greater civic engagement?

The public education system – at university and school levels – has failed the country. Its obsession with the vernacular languages as the medium of instruction has cost the country dear. An emerging private sector has partly filled the gap, but access to it is only for those who can pay for it. The private sector should be allowed to prosper. Steps should be taken to further expand it and make Sri Lanka a learning hub in the Asian region.

Urgent reforms such as decentralization, relaxing the bureaucratic stranglehold on universities and schools, opening up more polytechnics instead of universities and giving access to technology are essential in the public education system. Panduka Karunanayake offers many insights into future directions. Reading this volume is a rewarding experience.