Education in our country, mostly a charade and a fraud

By Usvatte-aratchi

(June 09, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) I received this (06 June) morning a very good piece of writing by Harsha Aturupana with the title The Pearl of Great Price: Achieving Equitable Access to Primary and Secondary Education and Enhancing Learning in Sri Lanka. It is the expanded version of a lecture delivered by Aturupana in November 2008 at the Institute of Education in London. It contains a very useful summary of data on the process in Sri Lanka over the last 60 years and a clear write up of the data. Without further complimenting him on his good work, in which area I also have written a few pieces, let me turn to a related problem which has worried me during the last few weeks.

We all feel happy about the high rates of enrolment in schools, high enrolment rates for females, low rates of drop out, low student teacher: ratios, high adult literacy rates and the like. These numbers we collect from summary statistics published by various organisations, often government. The compilers of these figures have an interest in showing ‘progress’ year after year and there is a clear and present conflict of interests. Even if we leave that aside, do these statistics tell us the reality?

‘Unteachable students’?

I went to a national school with a student population of about 1,200 a few weeks ago and was fortunate to talk freely with some teachers who were manifestly deeply interested in teaching their students. They were a very worried lot because they were not teaching their students. The school took in 160 students into Grade 6 this year. Not one of them had scored more tan 50 percent of the total marks awarded at the 5th standard scholarship examination. Some 20 of them had scored zero. After five years of schooling, there was nothing that they could write to score a few marks! Some 30 students could not write Sinhala. What is a secondary school to do when the output of the primary system is as poor as that. These students of course will go up to Grade 11 and end up with zero marked at the GCE O’Level Examination. Then we will show high enrolment rates for ages 5-14, yet have we taught large swathes of these young age cohort any thing?

I was shocked learning that after 5 years of schooling, so many students, one in eight could not write their first language. Is the proportion of ‘unteachables’ that high in that age group? Or is there something wrong with the way we run our schools? This incompetence goes all the way to high school and university teachers in the humanities tell me that when they come to the university students do not know to write a short essay. I used to complain that university teachers did not teach students to write. But how can they, when students come to them from schools, incompetent to write? Universities are not secondary schools! I know that there are remedial courses in some of the less demanding colleges in the US. That cannot apply here as we enroll only the first 2-3 percent of intellectual ability in each age cohort. It is then evident that there is some thing wrong at the core of teaching in primary and secondary schools.

There was another teacher in that school who taught social sciences in Grades 12 and 13. He was a teacher of some 20 years experience in more than one school. He was a very worried man. For one thing he had students (17-18 years old) who came to class without a morning meal because there was no food at home. The poor man paid out of his measly salary. More dreadfully, he said that most students had violent hatred of learning and school. They simply did not want to learn. They hated everything to do with learning and school. They would wantonly break new water taps. If they could pick up a stone, they would throw it with energy at a glass pane or a roof tile willfully to break it. He attributed all that violent and hateful behaviour to the mental make up grown out of failure at the Grade Five scholarship examination. I don’t know about that cause but the animosity of students to learning and the school was clearly evident.

Incorrigible teachers?

I spoke to the principal of another national school. He had a man who came to teach with a special degree in geography. He simply cold not teach any subject in any class. The principal told him that the man was blameless in seeking an appointment as a teacher but that he wished that the man/woman who gave him the appointment would suffer in successively more gruesome hells for several kapa. I second his wish and add a few more kapa. The wise principal employs him as a clerk in his office but is paid as graduate teacher!

A musician teaches Grade 2?

I went to the University of Fine Arts in early June to meet a musician and sat in the Staff Room till he was free to see me. A young musician who wanted some one to talk to, found an audience. He graduated from that university with a first class honours degree. He sought appointment as a school teacher. He was appointed to a Type 2 school (Grades 1-5) six kilometers east of Puttalama on the road to Anuradhapura. There wasn’t even a flute in that school and a man with a first class degree in music was appointed to teach there. The wise headmaster asked him to teach Grade 2 and the gifted musician did that for four years until the University invited him to teach in the university. Do not bureaucrats in any ministry exercise any discretion in making these appointments and are they that stupid as to make these sorts of appointments?

Six-hour long lectures at university?

Yeterday (05 June), I talked on the telephone to a retired university professor of Sinhala at Peradeniya to discuss something on which I needed clarification. On his own he spoke to me about Sinhala teaching in our universities. He had taught an M.A. class for some time. The classes were held during weekends. Students came to class from Ampara, Polonnaruva and similar distant places. Because it was expensive to pay for boarding, they left home early morning and invariably arrived in class late. Teachers were paid by the lecture hour. Often a teacher was given six lectures on a particular subject. Teachers wanted to maximize their earnings that Saturday and teach elsewhere on Sunday. So they would teach all six hours on one Saturday and earn Rs.4,500 for the day. Now these students who had travelled by bus for 3 or 4 hours would listen to lectures for six continuous hours. There would be no time for discussions. And this is designed to be teaching at M. A. level. Is there any chance that any student would learn anything in that class room? He also told me that during the entire course, there was no written work submitted to teachers.

Input English, output Sinhala?

Then on SirasaTV on 5 and 6 June, there was the story of this presumably very bright and intellectually very ambitious and tenacious girl from a wattle and daub house in Rajangana who sat for the GCE O’Level Examination 2008 in English. She had sat for the Mathematics paper as well in English. When her results came she had scored distinctions in English and other subjects but was reported to have not completed the Mathematics paper. She protested. Then she was shown a piece of paper where it was shown that she had secured an ordinary pass in mathematics having sat for the paper in Sinhala. This was to all appearances a diabolical lie, diabolical because there is a devil in the lying. The explanation of the Department of Examinations was that her answer script in English was mistakenly bundled with the Sinhala scripts and that was the source of the erroneous report that she had sat for the examination in Sinhala. Then who examined her answer script? The Sinhala medium examiner? Was the Sinhala medium examiner competent to examine the English medium answer script? Otherwise how did the score come as in the Sinhala medium? I suspect a cover up of some foul nature by the bureaucracy. Would the Examinations Department ask SirasaTV to exhibit the answer script on TV and would some impartial party re-scrutinise the script? Why should one be interested in a girl from a poor home in Rajangana? Because, there is appearance of foul play against a student, no matter who. To have opted to study in English in a school in Rajangana shows intellectual ambition of a high order, the sort of tenaciousness that produces outstanding scholars. That she did well in examinations promises intellectual ability of a rare order. I identify myself with her, in some respects. A few decades ago that was me. This girl needs all the help in the world and her school and the Department of Examinations are not giving any but burying her in bureaucratic lying and deception.

A massive fraud?

I wrote at length about what I learnt of education both at school and university within a fortnight without any effort on my part to go and purposely look for this information. I was forced to compare the beautiful picture so well painted by Harsha Atururpana with the sordid reality, I learnt of closer to the ground. I am now more or less convinced that this whole picture of good education in our country is a charade, a fraud elaborately put up by politicians, by the education bureaucracy, by the teachers’ trade union and our universities and their teachers. They teach students and give them certificates that the students had achieved certain levels of excellence. Teachers don’t teach, students don’t learn and the certificates are lies as students do not posses that level of excellence. To protect themselves teachers both at school and university sing and dance around politicians. Nobody cares to point out the consequences of dangerous behaviour patterns of politicians. The whole thing is a massive fraud.

Sarvodaya to the rescue?

How de we expose and destroy this fraud? Politicians and bureaucrats cannot because it is not in their interest to so. I recall that a Minister of Education who at the end of her period of office a few years ago announced in public that all problems in education, except a marginal few, had been solved. The present minister does not show a firm grasp of problems in education and even less commitment to take on the thorny problems in the sector. He has the interests of his political party uppermost in his concerns.

Who has a deep interest in the well-being of the students? Their parents, foremost. Parents must organize at the level of each school and collect the information of the nature I have seen glimpses of and write it up as best as they can. We need a national level organization to float that campaign and the one that may stand up to it, is Sarvodaya.

There is leadership, there is an organisation and Sarvodya can raise the resources. It will be a people’s movement at its best and must be ready to meet the opposition of politicians, trade unions, bureaucrats and similar other vested interests. But it is worth doing.

-Sri Lanka Guardian