Sri Lankan children: Quo vadis?

Dr B.J.C.Perera
MBBS(Cey), DCH(Cey), DCH(Eng), MD(Paed), MRCP(UK), FRCP(Edin), FRCP(Lon), FRCPCH(UK), FSLCPaed, FCCP, Hony FRCPCH(UK), Hony. FCGP(SL)

Specialist Consultant Paediatrician and Honorary Senior Fellow, Postgraduate Institute of Medicine, University of Colombo, Sri Lanka.

The title of this article is more than likely to arouse a plethora of sentiments. Lyrically, it means “Sri Lankan children: Whither goest thou?” It would translate loosely as to what is in store for them. Where do they go? What is there for them? What of the future for them? And many other similar sentiments. Sadly, the answers to all these queries are not at all pleasant. They are the complete heartbreak of our nation at present.

We celebrated International Children’s Day on the first day of October 2023 with some pomp and pageantry on our emerald isle. The politicians were quite conspicuous with the meaningless rhetoric that emanated from their mouths and the hollow statements promulgated by them through the media. There were all kinds of celebrations, processions, dramatizations, and revelry to mark the significance of Children’s Day. It is a much-bandied cliché that the children of any country are the future jewels of that land. Our children are loved by all as much as in any other country and perhaps even more than in some of the nations of the planet Earth. It is in our culture and the very depths of our souls to look after the little ones of our land and provide them with all the facilities needed to secure a brighter future.

All that is well and good, but what have we got for them at the present time in this so-called land like no other? To be quite honest, the picture is as bleak as it could ever get. It is of the darkest hue imaginable. The educational facilities are in shambles. It was Albert Einstein, perhaps the greatest Physicist of all time, who said “The only source of knowledge is experience“. What do our children gain as experience in today’s world in Sri Lanka? Experience is what one perceives through our special senses of vision, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. Of these, vision and hearing are the most important tools of education.

At present, all that our children see and hear are all kinds of vile deeds of adults, including man-made accidents and disasters, harassment, murders in broad daylight, rape and other sex crimes, blasphemy and irreverence, all scales of thefts, fights portrayed even over the electronic media, indecent imagery, blatant lying, substance abuse and peddling of substances; you name it and it is all there, the most despicable deeds of every possible dimension is there for all to see and hear. The smell and taste of corruption is there from top to bottom to be felt by everybody and in fact, portrayed as the norm. The children are forced to touch and are even touched by evil perpetrated by despicable unscrupulous elements in our populace.

The children are supposed to learn by superlative experiences in schools but what have we got in our land? We have teacher shortages of monumental proportions, especially in the more rural areas of the country where they are most needed. The way out of, and perhaps the only way out of, the quagmire of poverty that is prevalent in most of the remote areas of the country is through proper education.

Quite a fair percentage of teachers who are in-post do not treat their job as a vocation. It is just a form of employment. Tuition is the name of the game in all areas of the country. Even little tots of 5, 6, 7 and 8 years are sent to tuition classes. In the higher grades, very little of the necessary academic material is taught in schools and the students have to rely on tuition classes if they are to get anywhere in life. Of course, tuition is a most lucrative business, sans even accurate and genuine tax payments.

This writer is comparing the current education system to the one that was prevalent when he was in the higher grades in secondary school. We were taught by dedicated teachers who took tremendous pride in their vocation. They taught us the entire syllabus and even more. None of us ever went for tuition classes. In fact, it was a bit of a black mark against you if you had to go for tuition as it indicated a very poor grasp of the subject concerned.

The teachers we had in school, and later on in the Medical Faculty as well, were absolute gems. We were carried on their shoulders and for many of us, we were deposited in the promised land. We would even worship the ground they walked on as they were the priceless catalytic agents who fired our academic advancement.

Then to add to all the woes of our country, there is the rampant drug menace trying to engulf and destroy our children. Heroin, Ice and even some other esoteric chemicals are being peddled in schools with a certain degree of impunity. The authorities are not even taking any serious steps to stem this menace and in some cases are not even concerned about this danger. These addictive drugs finish off the young lives of our children and youth.

It is a huge business with various high-powered patronages. There should not be any mercy shown to these dregs of the world who do not care even if they completely annihilate generations of our youngsters. In the good old days of ancient Kings and Queens of our land, they would have been summarily dealt with in a manner that would be an eternal deterrent. The punishments that were meted out were gruesome and made all and sundry to even puke.

To make matters worse, the extremely competitive nature of the examinations to enter the university streams of education is a major limitation for the youngsters of our country. There are only limited places in the universities in all disciplines and the demand is sky high. This has led to the situation where our youth, at least those who can afford it, are forced to seek higher education in foreign climes. We are definitely losing some of the best brains through that pathway as it is most unlikely that a majority of these young people will ever come back to work in this country. We are losing them forever.

Then to cap it all, if children fall ill, there are many problems that may be encountered in our National Health Service in trying to provide satisfactory care to those ill children. There are shortages of most things everywhere. To start with there are marked human resource shortfalls due to an enormous exodus of qualified healthcare workers. Large numbers have left this island looking for greener pastures.

It includes doctors of all grades including specialists, nurses, and nursing sisters. Then there are drug shortages of a very significant calibre. Some of the life-saving essential medicines were in short supply a while back. To compound the woes further, even when some drugs are available, their quality is not totally assured. A case in point is the provision of Intravenous Immunoglobulin through channels of dubious credentials by the Ministry of Health and the government of Sri Lanka.

Some other drugs provided have even been lethal according to many reports. The facilities in the peripheries and the remote areas have hit absolute rock bottom. To add to all the problems in the paediatric scenario, there is galloping malnutrition with scarcities of food and prices of available food articles going through the roof. The impact of inadequate nutrition has very long-lasting effects. Suboptimal nutrition not only has physical effects of poor growth but also has markedly adverse effects on higher functions of the brain and intelligence.

Woeful planning, in fact even a complete lack of it, unmitigated craving for the filthy lucre, and poor governance coupled with galloping corruption, have dragged our lovely Motherland into the pits of the world. Children will continue to suffer for many more years to come. It was that iconic President of South Africa, Mr Nelson Mandela, who once said in a marvellous anecdote “There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children.

” For his part, he went out of his way to safeguard the children of his native land. We need statesmen and stateswomen of that kind of capabilities and character to drag us out of this miserable conundrum of despondency and take this nation onto a promised land. Most unfortunately and quite sadly, we cannot see any Sri Lankans who would fit the bill to take over the governing of this beautiful land and take it to an era of milk and honey. That is definitely so for now and for the not-too-distant future as well.