Situating Panduka Karunanayake’s ‘Politics’ of Education

by Sasanka Perera
South Asian University New Delhi

Panduka Karunanayake, Ruptures in Sri Lanka’s Education: Genesis, Present Status and Reflections. Nugegoda: Sarasavi Publishers, 2021 Pages; 280; ISBN 789553117793. Price: LKR 600.00 (with soft cover).

(This essay was initially written as the ‘Foreword’ for, Panduka Karunanayake’s book, Ruptures in Sri Lanka’s Education: Genesis, Present Status and Reflections)

As an educationist, once based in Sri Lanka, I had already read many of Karunanayake’s essays that have now been collected in this volume in their previous incarnation in the national press. This is not merely because we used to be teachers in the same university, but because we were both interested in the same issues, challenges and anxieties Sri Lanka’s education system had generated. I was also intrigued then and am also now that Karunanayake had opted to wade a considerable distance out of his speciality in Medicine into the messy and often thankless domain of public debate with his ideas that focused more broadly on education as opposed to his medical speciality. This is unusual for people with his kind of training, particularly in the local academic belief system where the popular assumption is that doctors should look after the sick and social commentaries should be left for social scientists and journalists. Thankfully, as the trajectory of these essays would indicate, Karunanayake began to transgress this kind of regressive thinking, at least 15 years ago, when he self-consciously decided to make the public sphere a forum for his ideas. In this context, my attempt in this Foreword is to situate these essays in the broader politics to which Karunanayake has consistently asked us to enter, though many have not.

Twenty-three essays

The 23 essays in this collection, about half of which have not been previously published, is a clear cartography of Karunanayake’s thinking on education. But, more importantly, they also broadly sketch the landscape of Sri Lankan education with a focus on three main issues. These are the present status of the educational reforms initially implemented under the visionary leadership of C.W.W. Kannangara in the 1940s and after; the role private capital can play in Sri Lanka’s higher education sector; and the status and role of the university as an institution in Sri Lanka, not only as a space for advanced learning, but also as a place for reflection.

Kannangara is best known for the introduction of what is known in Sri Lanka as ‘free education’, a system that assured citizens an education from kindergarten to university at the expense of the state. An important vehicle in institutionalizing this system was the establishment of central schools (Madhya Maha Vidyala) in urban and semi-urban locations in different parts of the country as conduits through which the vastly rural populations in the country could be directed towards an advanced secondary education at school level, and prepare them for university and professional education. The issue today is not that ‘free’ education does not exist along with the institutional structures set up to achieve this. Instead, the issue is whether the broader ideas of citizenship that Kananangara visualized are being met? It seems to me that Panduka Karunanayake’s anxiety is whether the value of this system of education has diminished as a result of the country’s present-day educational authorities losing touch with the finer points in the ideals of Kannangara’s reforms even though all of them would have reaped the benefits of that system.

Kannangara thinking

Today’s schools in Sri Lanka – in my view – are not about building a sense of citizenship and public consciousness that goes beyond the basic utilitarian expectations of education such as literacy and basic disciplinary competencies. In this sense, such a system can be better described in the words of Ivan Illich than what was anticipated by Kannangara’s thinking. That is, in general, schools everywhere today are “designed on the assumption that there is a secret to everything in life; that the quality of life depends upon knowing that secret; that secrets can only be known in orderly successions; and that only teachers can properly reveal these secrets. An individual with a schooled mind conceives of the world as a pyramid of classified packages accessible only to those who carry the proper tags.” What this regimented and linear scheme of learning refers to is the basic requirement of discipline that young people are expected to follow that would allow them to become an integral and unobtrusive part of the employment market. In this systemic setup in which both Karunanayake and I are also a part, it would be difficult to think in terms of humanity with a self-conscious sense of empathy. That is, in systemic and structural terms, this is not what is anticipated even though individuals still have considerable leeway to nudge their students – both in schools and universities – think out of the box, be reflective and conscious of one’s circumstances as they go about fulfilling the formal requirements of learning. In Sri Lanka’s context, it is precisely this reductionist system of learning that creates divisive, competitive and exclusivist notions of ethno-cultural and religious identities that have by now considerably subverted the more inclusive kind of Sri Lankan citizenship that statesmen like Kannangara envisaged at the time of Independence.

As his writings suggest however, Karunanayake does not absolve himself from this overall scheme of things. But by critiquing what needs to be critiqued and being reflective of what could be changed, he is attempting to offer specific avenues of hope by entering the public domain with his ideas rather than becoming a voiceless prisoner within the prevailing system. Decision-makers in Sri Lanka’s educational system today seem to have conveniently forgotten the basic implications of education to young people that Jiddu Krishnamurti outlined in Education and the Significance of Life. As he noted, “while one is young is the time to investigate, to experiment with everything. The school should help its young people to discover their vocations and responsibilities, and not merely cram their minds with facts and technical knowledge; it should be the soil in which they can grow without fear, happily and integrally.” This was also the kind of broader education the Kannangara reforms anticipated beyond its hoped-for impact on people’s social mobility.

Second Theme

The second theme that runs across some of Karunanayake’s essays focuses on the possibilities of opening Sri Lanka’s higher education to private investment. His general position is that private capital does have a role to play in the country’s university education system, which is not a popular position to hold in Sri Lanka’s public and often noisy debates on education. Most educationists in the country argue that the burden of university education in terms of both planning and costs of delivery should be the responsibility of the state. I am sympathetic to this idea as long as the state also takes the responsibility to guarantee the quality of education at all levels, the competence of teachers, equity of access and finally that the education offered by universities also creates a broader sense of citizenship as opposed to parochial-minded individuals. But we know from experience at both school and university levels in Sri Lanka that the state has not been able to fulfill these ideals. In such a situation, to chant the mantra of an exclusively state-led higher education makes little sense. What Karunanayake proposes for Sri Lanka is a private university sector based on what he calls an ‘indigenous model.’ But even in this call, he does not envisage the abolishment of the state system. What he visualizes instead is a parallel system.

Karunanayake’s arguments in support of private education is not leaning towards unmitigated privatization. Instead, what he favours is what might be called an ‘enlightened infusion of private capital into higher education’ which might expand the country’s higher education opportunities as well as areas for social justice. The post-1977 liberalization of Sri Lanka’s markets has ensured capital influx into many areas of the national economy. The healthcare sector is one of them. Education at the school level and college level training for universities overseas have also seen an expansion in the private sector. One cannot simply assume if a country’s economic policies embrace capitalism and its people seem to prefer it, only selected areas – like higher education – might not be impacted by these schemes. Such a position is simply not sensible. Privatization of university education does not necessarily have to mean inequitable access. Its potential ill-effects can be controlled to some extent by appropriate state policies that guarantee access through scholarships and financial aid schemes. After all, it is not that such schemes have not been successfully experimented with in other parts of the world. But this area has merely remained an area of anxiety and virulent argumentation in Sri Lanka’s public sphere where nuanced reflection has generally been absent. It is to this contentious debate that Karunanayake’s essays that deal with privatization of university education beckons us. One does not need to agree with him. But what he writes in this matter is worth reflecting upon.

Status of universities

Karunanayake also reflects on the status and role of the university as an institution in the Sri Lankan context. But his reflections are not only about how universities must function as competent forums for advanced technical training in different disciplines. This is certainly one of the most important roles universities can and should play in contemporary times. More importantly, he also wonders how universities might also be spaces for reflection. It is about the university’s role in the first sense referred to above that states, including the Sri Lankan state, have paid considerable attention to. Technical education offered by universities has traditionally focused on this aspect in any case. But its over-emphasis in contemporary times, its popular acceptance by most people today and state support to this hegemonic understanding of the university has degraded its once-cherished ideal as a place of reflection and responsible social and political commentary. While Karunanayake is in agreement that universities must offer technical competencies as he himself does as a medical academic, he does not believe it must necessarily be offered at the cost of reflection. To put it more simply, his opinion differs considerably from many of his and my colleagues in the Sri Lankan higher education sector whose only focus is on training individuals for the needs of the market, an attitude shared by most students as well. It is truly unfortunate the present moment in the 21st century, many of us have lost sight of the fundamental difference between a university and a technical college.

‘University and society’

It is in this spirit that Karunanayake, in the chapter titled, ‘University and Society: To Tango or Not’ refers to Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan’s ideas on the ideal university as a place for the “promotion of liberty of mind or freedom of thought” which “has little to do with the protection of privilege or call for conformity.” It is the same idea that Rabindranath Tagore also promoted in the early twentieth century in his essay, . ‘Ideals of Education’ when he noted, “universities should never be made into mechanical organizations for collecting and distributing knowledge. Through them the people should offer their intellectual hospitality, their wealth of mind to others, earn their proud right in return to receive gifts from the rest of the world.” It is possible to dismiss these ideas as old-fashioned, and to argue the university’s role today is to merely fulfill the requirements of a technical education. Support for this reductionist idea comes from within the university as well as from within the country’s governance structure. It is precisely the poverty of such thinking that has diminished the overall intellectual value of Sri Lanka’s higher education even though in selected fields, the technical training offered might be on par with what is provided in other parts of the world. It is heartening to note that Karunanayake has brought this important cluster of thinking to forums of pubic debate through his writing.

Karunanayake’s collection of essays enters public circulation as a body of reflections linked to his training, social background and ideological positions at a time Sri Lankan society in general and the country’s broader education system in particular are experiencing profound and multiple crises. In this difficult context as a university teacher, what come to my mind are the following words of Rabindranath Tagore outlined in his essay, ‘Ideals of Education’: “I try to assert in my words and works that education has its only meaning and object in freedom – freedom from ignorance about the laws of the universe, and freedom from passion and prejudice in our communications with the human world.” By bringing his ideas, concerns and ideological positions as a specific form of politics into public discourse away from his twin comfort zones in academia and medical practice, it seems to me that Karunanayake as a fellow university teacher is striving to live closer to the words of Tagore than to the disruptive hegemonic politics of our times.