Only Connect

Text of a speech
delivered by
Prof. Rajiva Wijesinha

recently at the Web Page Launch of the ‘English for Fun’ Project, an outreach service of the Library, University of Sri Jayewardenepura

‘Only Connect’ is an exhortation by E M Forster that I have long thought a guideline for productive action. This I believe is what some of you at the University of Sri Jayewardenepura have done, to implement a remarkable initiative.

This is the more remarkable in that it seems to me the first initiative for several years in the field of education which takes forward the guiding principle that led to so many great innovations over almost a century. Beginning with C W W Kannangara’s creation of several schools to provide for students outside the big towns an education to equal that available to a previous charmed circle, and moving on to the effort by Arjuna Aluvihare, the best UGC Chairman we have had; he wanted to broad-base tertiary education; from the efforts to provide tertiary English for rural students and disseminate English medium education more widely through the government system – remembering that Kannangara’s Central Schools functioned in the English medium before the blight of compulsory Swabhasha was introduced by J R Jayewardene – to the effort less than a decade ago to ensure soft skills in vocational training, the focus of creative effort was to extend opportunities, not just for education but also for education leading to productive employment, for those who are comparatively deprived.

None of that has mattered in recent times to decision makers, and we go on with the mixture as before, pouring borrowed money into essentially the same projects, improving the Relevance and Quality of University Education with no appreciable outcome over now a quarter of a century, ploughing money into construction in schools with no systematic efforts to use plant productively, right through the day and right through the year.

Madhu Ratnayake, whose brainchild of English Language Acquisition Centres we celebrate today, has tried to remedy this, and to no small extent I feel, for the concept she has deployed, of English for Fun, making use of existing structures that are under-used – in this case the excellent library system the country has – can be extended to more and more productive learning activities at all levels. This I should note is something, as I suggested when coronavirus first struck us, that the education ministry should have developed, alternative systems of delivering learning, through clusters and user friendly materials that could be deployed outside schools which coronavirus had rendered doubly dangerous, because of difficult travel and then crowded classrooms. But unfortunately, the several Ministers of Education we have had, in the game of musical chairs this country has suffered from for a couple of years, were not interested in or capable of alternative thinking. The result, as your Vice-Chancellor put clearly in his very thoughtful speech, is that fewer and fewer students attend school.

To return to Madhu’s alternative thinking, I should mention that when I headed the Tertiary and Vocational Education Commission, where I introduced a great many initiatives, I found myself running out of steam towards the end of 2017. This was in part because a committed Minister who studied his briefs had been replaced by one who thought a portfolio was simply a vehicle to provide jobs for constituents – a sad function of our electoral system where MPs have to fight each other over whole Districts for votes.

But when I was drooping, it was Madhu who revived me with a plan for the training of potential pre-school teachers, another of the brilliant ideas that, as in the case of the Athenians, she produces once a week from her fertile imagination. I moved on this immediately, but then I was sacked, and the vocational training sector sank into moribundity – and in the process abolished the most popular courses at the time, certificates in English that helped to occupy students in the ghastly fallow period they have after public examinations. Though successive Ministers of Education talk about the need for more and better English, since none of them look at what has been put in place, they allow it to be dismantled even while they witter on.

But Madhu did not rest, when her proposal was forgotten, and earlier this year I put her in touch with someone else full of energy, who when he worked for me would ask me critically what we planned to reform next. This was the Governor of the Northern Province, and working with his indefatigable Coordinating Secretary, Dhanya Ratnavale, Madhu has set up pre-school centres in the North with teachers trained to have fun with students, through the activities which she pioneered here in the English Language Teaching Department.

But the lady never rests, and after that got off the ground, she engendered new ideas, and then found a willing ally in your Librarian, and now we have what promises to be a fantastic opportunity for learning all over the country. This collaboration reminds me of something I proposed soon after I became a Member of Parliament, when I thought it was my business to initiate socially useful activities, before I came to realise that the principal function of MPs was to get themselves re-elected, and that society had nothing to do with their projects for benefits.

But the lady never rests, and after that got off the ground she engendered new ideas, and then found a willing ally in your Librarian, Nayana Wijayasundara, another of the energetic ladies in whom this university now abounds, and now we have what promises to be a fantastic opportunity for learning all over the country. I was struck by her comments this morning that action does not require funding, but rather clear thinking, and what she has proposed exemplifies this. It reminds me too of something I proposed soon after I became a Member of Parliament, when I thought it was my business to initiate socially useful activities, before I came to realise that the principal function of MPs was to get themselves re-elected, and that society had nothing to do with their projects for benefits.

I wanted to set up cultural activity centres in every Division, and indeed I got a wonderful design from Milinda Pathiraja of the University of Moratuwa, a building that could be used for many purposes and also added to by Divisional officials who wanted to do more for those they were supposed to work for. Unfortunately, Cultural Affairs was then in the hands of a Minister who thought in terms of cement rather than people, as most politicians do, for reasons my father put eloquently thirty years ago. In line with that sad fact, this Minister responded when I asked about establishing a National Theatre, on the lines of institutions in India and England that train youngsters and have regular productions, that we had theatres aplenty. What went on in them was of no interest to him, the human resources that we neglect so that the cement remains unused to its full, or even half its potential.

That idea lapsed, as did my suggestion that we set up English classes in every division, free for students after the Ordinary Level Examination, which would also help in making English compulsory for University Entrance. The buildings are there and personnel are available. But those who took over Higher Education from me in 2015 were not concerned with educational needs, as opposed to commandeering vehicles I had tried to get rid of – 14 I was told I could use – and that was the end of innovation in Higher Education.

But if Madhu takes further her philosophy of connecting things together, I believe she could also now introduce this programme to regions through collaboration with the Regional English Support Centres. These are no longer as dynamic taken as a whole as they were when British Council consultant David Woolger ensured productive activity in all of them. But I know there are still some innovative individuals in place, and I have no doubt they can extend this sort of learning though enjoyment into primary classes as well.

Madhu is one of the few people who could make this happen with support from your dedicated English staff. For they too, like her, continue to innovate, most recently I learned in terms of a wonderful idea of your English Department Professor, Chitra Jayatilleka, to record the work of Sri Lankans in the field of English Drama, a genre long neglected by academia. Remembering how English at USJP was looked down on thirty years ago by universities which prided themselves on being able to send their products to Cambridge – one every decade or so – I am immensely proud of how this university has developed, after the then Vice-Chancellor, Prof S B Hettiarachchi, and the then Dean of Arts, the dedicated Mahinda Palihawadana, took up Arjuna Aluvihare’s challenge and spearheaded the process of broadbasing tertiary education, with particular emphasis on English.

I recall how, soon after I joined this university, Arjuna introduced a group of academics from this university to a World Bank delegation as the cutting edge of the university system. But I soon understood what Arjuna meant, when I met the leading lights here of those distant days, Mr Wickramaarachchi who started the first English Medium only Accountancy Course, the wonderful Oranee Jansz whom every department wanted to teach their students English, and who rapidly made sure along with Mohan de Silva (a thoughtful UGC Chairman, stultified by his dull colleagues appointed to it when his able predecessor was unceremoniously dismissed) that your Medical Faculty students were soon on a par with others from other universities, the avuncular Sirisena Thilakaratna who was later UGC Chairman. It is a joy then to be here today to see Madhu and Nayana collaborating so productively backed so solidly, as Madhu has told me, by the hierarchy here. I can only hope that this will be the precursor of much more to benefit those in distant areas who have no access to the learning and the fun that the more fortunate are exposed to.