“When he should be helping in the construction of a dam for hydro-electric and irrigation purposes, he has been forced by circumstances to plan the destruction of the same using mines. This is the net result of our faulty educational system further abused by corrupt politicians and bureaucrats.”
______________________
by Victor Karunairajan with files from Colombo
(June 15, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) Today’s terror politics has largely been the cause of mismanagement of our educational resources and the awful handling of the same that kept a good number of capable students out of university opportunities.
The GCE (Ordinary Level) results recently published reflects an appalling state of affairs in respect of educational objectives and management in the country. It is incredible that a majority of students have failed to reach the basic expectations from the last GCE (OL) public examinations conducted by the Ministry of Education’s Department of Examinations.
Other relevant figures add to the concerns such as 21,069 students out of 275,781 who appeared for this examination have failed all their subjects. None of them are qualified to proceed to the next level, the Advanced Level. The only bright spot, though faint and hardly a matter to be of comfort is that 4,830 students obtained an All-As grade. This makes them an exclusively privileged group with an opportunity to enter the portals of university education ahead of them.
Educational objectives and management of a country should never be one that ends up creating a privileged minority and this has been, unfortunately, a constant factor in Sri Lanka. There was a time when Sri Lanka enjoyed two “Great Frees” which made the country stand out as an ideal welfare state; one was Health and the other Education from Kindergarten to all the way to University Education.
This made Sri Lanka quite a healthy nation comparatively of course in the southern regions and the country’s literacy achievement was indeed our pride. But soon political travail and turmoil began to seep into both especially education. Today’s terror politics has largely been the cause of mismanagement of our educational resources and the awful handling of the same that kept a good number of capable students out of university opportunities.
Sub-standard educational opportunities that prevailed in the overwhelming non-urban regions in particular, became politically contentious and litigious issues when the educational bureaucrats and authorities should have been the ones to sort them out with a dynamic educational policy for the entire country.
In the south, most students who went through the system found themselves unemployable because an economic development infrastructure was not pre-determined in the agricultural, agro-industrial and industrial sectors of the entire country. In the north when students were denied the right to enter university education through a totally unacceptable process that had racist undertones, a number of them turned to the guns, an example that came from the JVP uprising in the south of the dawning 1970s.
In the north this failure of the government rode the steed of racial discrimination that became a scourge of the country which was virtually legalized by the Sinhala Only Act. The net and shocking consequence of all these is that our young people, thousands of them every year reach the end of their basic educational grade, the GCE (OL) as only employable at minor levels as labourers, workers and menials and even here, these opportunities are mostly available in the factory and slave sectors of Middle East countries.
This is also why the LTTE was able to recruit many young people, a good many of them if they were students of a more realistic educational system are possessed of the potential, skill and ability to become experts in various fields. Sri Lanka needs its own experts and yet why is that our young people either take flight to the slaving environment and backyards of Arabian factories and households respectively or to the jungle habitats of Sri Lanka and arming themselves with weapons of destruction?
Another and most disturbing phenomena resulting from Sri Lanka’s failure to nurture and nourish its young people in an environment of peace and amity in the country has also contributed to the creation of urban gangs some of them quite deadly, in our new homelands in the west which again is the consequence of the country’s lack of political honesty, guts and visions.
Right on the heels of the announcement of the GCE (OL) results also comes the news that school textbooks scheduled for distribution this year have been delayed by six months. This is absolutely intolerable. This includes even the GCE (OL) classes as well and in six months students from this group would have already sat for their examinations.
Even though there is a Government Printer, the fact that private printers have been selected for this purpose has raised the suspicion of the stink of corruption with politicians involved in what could be a major racket. Some of the publications that have already reached a few selected schools, it has been reported, as containing material that are irrelevant and erroneous. In other words, the provision of text books and their quality seem to be in an absolute sluggish and slothful situation.
When one looks at this nightmare scenario, what becomes starkly clear is that Sri Lanka’s Free Education system today serves terrorism because not only the system lacks visions of development, it is also corrupt and a very large majority of students who emerge from it are only fit for soul-searing and back-breaking jobs that leads to frustration or anger or seek the jungle tracks and arm themselves against the society.
- Sri Lanka Guardian
______________________
by Victor Karunairajan with files from Colombo
(June 15, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) Today’s terror politics has largely been the cause of mismanagement of our educational resources and the awful handling of the same that kept a good number of capable students out of university opportunities.
The GCE (Ordinary Level) results recently published reflects an appalling state of affairs in respect of educational objectives and management in the country. It is incredible that a majority of students have failed to reach the basic expectations from the last GCE (OL) public examinations conducted by the Ministry of Education’s Department of Examinations.
Other relevant figures add to the concerns such as 21,069 students out of 275,781 who appeared for this examination have failed all their subjects. None of them are qualified to proceed to the next level, the Advanced Level. The only bright spot, though faint and hardly a matter to be of comfort is that 4,830 students obtained an All-As grade. This makes them an exclusively privileged group with an opportunity to enter the portals of university education ahead of them.
Educational objectives and management of a country should never be one that ends up creating a privileged minority and this has been, unfortunately, a constant factor in Sri Lanka. There was a time when Sri Lanka enjoyed two “Great Frees” which made the country stand out as an ideal welfare state; one was Health and the other Education from Kindergarten to all the way to University Education.
This made Sri Lanka quite a healthy nation comparatively of course in the southern regions and the country’s literacy achievement was indeed our pride. But soon political travail and turmoil began to seep into both especially education. Today’s terror politics has largely been the cause of mismanagement of our educational resources and the awful handling of the same that kept a good number of capable students out of university opportunities.
Sub-standard educational opportunities that prevailed in the overwhelming non-urban regions in particular, became politically contentious and litigious issues when the educational bureaucrats and authorities should have been the ones to sort them out with a dynamic educational policy for the entire country.
In the south, most students who went through the system found themselves unemployable because an economic development infrastructure was not pre-determined in the agricultural, agro-industrial and industrial sectors of the entire country. In the north when students were denied the right to enter university education through a totally unacceptable process that had racist undertones, a number of them turned to the guns, an example that came from the JVP uprising in the south of the dawning 1970s.
In the north this failure of the government rode the steed of racial discrimination that became a scourge of the country which was virtually legalized by the Sinhala Only Act. The net and shocking consequence of all these is that our young people, thousands of them every year reach the end of their basic educational grade, the GCE (OL) as only employable at minor levels as labourers, workers and menials and even here, these opportunities are mostly available in the factory and slave sectors of Middle East countries.
This is also why the LTTE was able to recruit many young people, a good many of them if they were students of a more realistic educational system are possessed of the potential, skill and ability to become experts in various fields. Sri Lanka needs its own experts and yet why is that our young people either take flight to the slaving environment and backyards of Arabian factories and households respectively or to the jungle habitats of Sri Lanka and arming themselves with weapons of destruction?
Another and most disturbing phenomena resulting from Sri Lanka’s failure to nurture and nourish its young people in an environment of peace and amity in the country has also contributed to the creation of urban gangs some of them quite deadly, in our new homelands in the west which again is the consequence of the country’s lack of political honesty, guts and visions.
Right on the heels of the announcement of the GCE (OL) results also comes the news that school textbooks scheduled for distribution this year have been delayed by six months. This is absolutely intolerable. This includes even the GCE (OL) classes as well and in six months students from this group would have already sat for their examinations.
Even though there is a Government Printer, the fact that private printers have been selected for this purpose has raised the suspicion of the stink of corruption with politicians involved in what could be a major racket. Some of the publications that have already reached a few selected schools, it has been reported, as containing material that are irrelevant and erroneous. In other words, the provision of text books and their quality seem to be in an absolute sluggish and slothful situation.
When one looks at this nightmare scenario, what becomes starkly clear is that Sri Lanka’s Free Education system today serves terrorism because not only the system lacks visions of development, it is also corrupt and a very large majority of students who emerge from it are only fit for soul-searing and back-breaking jobs that leads to frustration or anger or seek the jungle tracks and arm themselves against the society.
- Sri Lanka Guardian
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