The need for a holistic approach and restructuring of system

Speech delivered by Dr. Gunadasa Amarasekara after receiving his D. Lit from the University of Peradeniya, last week.

Let me first thank you for bestowing this honour on me, which I accept with gratitude and humility. I am grateful to the Dental Faculty for sponsoring it.

On this occasion in spite of my penchant for ideological and philosophical wrangling, I thought of speaking on something more down to earth, something which is relevant to the problems we as educationists and university lecturers are facing at the moment. Hence the topic, ‘The need for a Holistic Approach and a Restructuring of the System’. My observations are mainly to stimulate your thinking, and make you think outside the box. And, if you find them worthy of consideration it is left to you, who are more knowledgeable, to use them to formulate the envisaged model that is needed.

At the moment, I see a concerted effort by the education authorities to incorporate a knowledge of the basic sciences as well as the latest technical knowledge, technical skills and Information Technology to the universities, especially to the field of Humanities.

To put it in other words, it is an attempt to get a student following the Arts/Humanities to pursue a course in Biology or Mathematics, and a student following a course in Science to follow a course in History or Literature, and both groups to imbibe the latest technical knowledge offered by the Technological Revolution that has come into being.

Whether this is being proposed with a holistic perspective in mind to produce an enlightened graduate who could contribute to the intellectual, cultural life of the society, or to produce an employable graduate in demand is not clear at the moment.

It is most likely prompted by a desire to produce an employable graduate who will not turn out to be a rebel, an anarchist, or a threat and also, to prevent those insurgencies of the past that were centered round the universities. It is natural that the Arts graduate who faces a blank future with no hope in sight should resort to violence to vent his frustration and agony. We are lucky that so far this frustration is being channeled into the streets and not to violence against the establishment.

Even if the restructuring is prompted by a self -centered impulse it must be welcome.

This reminds me of a personal experience I underwent some time ago. It was in 1987 during the JVP insurrection. I was abroad at the time and very keen to know what was happening in the country. With my eyes glued to the television to see what was happening especially in the universities I could see the terrible mayhem, the terrible tragedy, the torture that was inflicted on the youth especially at Peradeniya. The picture of those decapitated heads lined up round that pond made me utterly sick, filling me with a deep sense of guilt.

When I came back, I was interviewed by a Week-end Sinhala weekly and was asked what remedial measures I could suggest to prevent such a tragedy happening in the universities. My response was an irrational and emotional outburst. ’There is no need to continue with these universities any longer. They have provided a breeding ground for those youth to be turned into rebels and insurgents. All these universities must be closed down, we must go back to the situation that was there prior to the establishment of these universities. We must have a Medical College to provide the number of doctors needed for the country, we should have an Engineering school to provide the necessary number of engineers, we must resurrect the Technical Colleges to provide the technicians necessary for the country. It is an unaffordable luxury to have residential universities to produce unemployable Arts graduates. If there is a need to teach Humanities, we could have a number of Open Universities to cater for that need.’

Mine was no doubt an irrational and emotional outburst. But I think it contained a kernel of truth; the restructuring programme that the State has initiated today is there in that kernel.

I think if this restructuring is to be a success it must start from the school level and not from the University level. The universities should carry on the restructuring process initiated at school level.

At the moment we have two major streams after O levels – an Arts stream and a Science stream. Those who follow the Science stream study subjects such as Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry and Biology and none of the Arts subjects they studied at O levels. The same happens with those who follow the Arts stream; none of the subjects they had studied as Mathematics, and Environmental studies are followed by the Arts stream. There is a complete separation; this separation and compartmentalisation should cease, there should be only one stream at the Advanced levels. The Science stream student offering Science subjects for Advanced Levels should offer an Arts subject such as History or Literature. The same applies to the Arts student, while offering Arts subjects he/she must offer a subject like Mathematics or Biology.

This trend should be continued at the University level. At the same time the technological knowledge and skills introduced at the University level should be considered as Applied Science, and not as something unrelated to science which they had learnt. If we want to impart technical knowledge unrelated to science, we need no universities to perform that function, we could have Technical Schools such as the German Technical School. (We could consider our own Technical Colleges as against the German Technical School).

The demand for incorporating Technology into the University curriculum is being adhered to by the universities of the West at the moment. They seem to have realised the inadequacy of the classical model to cater to the present- day needs. The Fourth Industrial Revolution- the Technological Revolution seems to have awakened them. However, this has brought about a controversy about the place that Technology should occupy in the University Curriculum.

Professor Aaron Garre in his remarkable work, Post Modernism and Environment addresses his mind to the dilemma faced by the universities. This is what he has to say. “Associated with these developments universities are fundamentally transformed , thoroughly corrupted by the publish or perish syndrome, and by the pressure to lower standards to accommodate the higher proportion of young people going on to higher education, they are being reduced to extensions of High Schools and Technical Colleges, valued by governments only in so far as they provide people with vocational training or produce technological knowledge, and by students only to increase their earning power. Arts and Science Faculties have lost status within universities with good reason”.

Let this not happen to our universities.

The emphasis on technology and technological skills, IT, etc., at the expense of scientific knowledge is bound to generate a warped idea regarding science. It may make the youth consider science not as a source of knowledge, a way of understanding the world, an indispensable way of thinking but as a means to an end, the end being to create a world dominated by gadgetry which will relieve the youth from thinking and creativity and make life more comfortable and make more money as suggested by Prof. Garre.

Such a concept could be detrimental to a ‘Third World’ country like ours, which has not experienced the Industrial Revolutions and the expansion of scientific knowledge of the West. This may reinforce the idea of science as ‘pattapal boru’ in the minds of our youth.

I believe, this idea of a holistic approach devoid of compartmentalisation of knowledge is not something new to us. In the Pirivena universities we had, they maintained this holistic approach.

There is a mistaken belief amongst us that these Pirivenas were religious centres, and their main function was to propagate Buddhism. Far from it; they were centres of learning and also intellectual and cultural centers, and the Heads of these were advisers to the rulers and also representatives of the people. I am sure you are aware of the triangular relationship that existed among the king, the Sangha and the people-the Asokan model of governance we inherited with Buddhism.

One of the foremost Pirivenas was the Vijayaba Pirivena of the 15th century headed by the great Thotagamuwe Sri Rahula .

This was pointed out to an international community of scholars by Arunachalam Ponnambalam when he addressed that gathering at the Calcutta university in 1916.This was the observation he made at that conference. “Long before the emergence of universities in the Western world in the 18th century we had in our country, in the 15th century, a great seat of learning, a university of international fame at Thotagamuwa headed by poet Sri Rahula”.

An examination of the curriculum followed at the Vijayaba Pirivena shows how it resembles the curriculum of the present-day universities of the West. The disciplines that were followed consisted of Asian languages such as Sinhala, Tamil, Siamese and Burmese, Buddhist Philosophy and Indian Philosophy, Logic, Poetics, Literature, Medicine, Legal Studies, and Surya Siddhantha consisting of Astronomy, Astrology and Mathematics. A student was expected to pursue a number of diverse disciplines without confining himself to one.

Even the vedamahattaya of today is not only a doctor but a scholar and an intellectual who guides the thinking of the villagers. I believe he is a product of a lost tradition.

It is this knowledge that was imparted by these Pirivenas that enabled our engineers to achieve those engineering marvels as the Bisokotuwa of the great reservoirs, the Yoda Ela with a gradient that has baffled modern day engineers and those great dagobas-examples of unique architecture. The builders of those dagobas surely would have been aware of the gravitational forces long before Newton discovered them.

One may well ask ‘what happened to that knowledge? Why did that knowledge fail to achieve the level of scientific knowledge achieved by the West?’

This question has been asked and answered by Joseph Needham in dealing with science in China, on which he has produced ten volumes. He believes that it was capitalism in the Western world that caused the expansion of scientific knowledge which was not relevant to the Chinese who had opted out of capitalism. This is probably the answer we too can offer. Professor Needham’s observation that Capitalism is unavoidable for the progress of science has been proven wrong by the China of today. It has shown how a feudal state can skip the capitalist phase in its march towards great scientific achievements. It is no secret that the Chinese civilisation based on Confucius and Taoist Buddhism and our own civilisation based on Theravada Buddhism abhor capitalism as kamasukallikhanuyoga,

inimical to human happiness.

I feel, that this attempt to restructure the university curriculum is not an innovative move as such but an attempt to go back to our own tradition as pointed out by me.

At the present moment I feel that in addition to the restructuring of our university curriculum, there is a need to restructure our training programmes in the fields of Medicine, Dentistry and even Engineering. I will confine myself to my own field of Dentistry.

At the moment there is a great demand for Medicine and Dentistry. Over thousands seek admission to the Dental Faculty. Most of them have the required qualifications, but only about 10% of them are able to gain admission. This is by no means a healthy situation; it creates frustration and envy in those who fail to get in. This could be avoided by restructuring the system.

We take five years to produce a Dental Surgeon, we see to it that he/she is not second to a Dental Surgeon in a highly developed Western country. After that long and arduous training he/she is sent out to perform a function which could be done without that exhaustive training. Isn’t that underutilisation of manpower as well as a sheer waste of the tax payer’s money? Consequently, the Dental surgeon himself is unhappy, and seeks to come to the urban centre where he could use his knowledge and skills to make more money or to migrate to a foreign country where he can make dollars instead of rupees.

The result of this procedure can be seen by looking at those rural peasants on the television screen. Most of them are toothless by the age of fifty, their oral hygiene is putrid, some of them harbour precancerous lesions in their mouths. I think oral cancer still occupies the first place in the list of our cancers. This is in spite of the fact that we have a first-class Dental Faculty here in Peradeniya and the best Dental hospital in South Asia in Colombo. Isn’t there something wrong in the whole process? Only callous disregard for humanity prevents us from seeking a remedy for this sorry state of affairs.

I have over the years thought of a scheme to remedy this situation. I will present an idea of the scheme I envisage.

There will be three stages. In stage 1 we take in almost all the students who have fulfilled the qualifications and are eligible.

All of them should be sent to the periphery after two years’ training; they will provide the necessary treatment required by the rural masses. In addition to being clinicians they will perform the duties of dental health workers as well. In Stage 11 out of that thousand or so, 25% will be selected for further training. They will be given three years’ training, the kind of training that is given today at the Dental Faculty. In Stage 111 out of that 25%, 10% will be recruited for Specialist training as required by the country. What I have presented is the bare outline of the restructuring process I envisage. What is important is that all these should enjoy the same social status irrespective of the position they occupy. Such a scheme would be absolutely necessary if we are to overcome the present state of affairs for the proper utilisation of man power and finances. It will also fulfill the ambitions of those thousands who seek admission to the Dental Profession.

Of course, this kind of thinking is radical. It calls for systems that have been taken for granted to be turned around.

This restructuring scheme I have presented has an ideological basis; it is village-based, with the village occupying centre stage.

The present scheme we have is urban-based with the city occupying centre stage. That is what the colonial masters wanted it to be. We have only been tinkering with it and not attempted to change it. It is time we realise this and reverse this order of things. This country is still a collection of villages, 70 % of our population still live there. The village is still the pivot of our existence, which we will soon realize with the present fertiliser fiasco when we find there is no rice on our plate.

A holistic approach combined with such a restructuring process will not only produce an enlightened graduate and a humane professional but also an intelligentsia across the country who will lift us from the morass we are in and liberate us from the tyranny of the power- hungry self-seeking politician who has ruined this country.