* Striking university lecturers in Sri Lanka warn of refraining from grading A/Level examination papers
Mon, Jul 16, 2012, 10:46 am SL Time, ColomboPage News Desk, Sri Lanka.

July 16, Colombo: Striking university lecturers in Sri Lanka have warned of refraining from grading GCE Advanced Level examination papers this year if authorities fail to address their demands.
University lecturers are currently engaged in a strike to win several demands including a salary hike.
The Federation of University Teachers' Associations (FUTA) is to hold a discussion with Presidential Secretary Lalith Weeratunga tomorrow (17) or Wednesday (18) to look at addressing the lecturers' grievances.
According to FUTA Head, Dr. Nirmal Ranjith Dewasiri Weeratunga has agreed to grant an appointment to discuss the issues tomorrow since the previous discussion on the 12th ended inconclusive.
He has added that the university lecturers have decided not to enter into any agreement with the Examination Department A/Level paper grading. According to Dr. Devasiri, university lecturers would be compelled to boycott the A/Level examination process.

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 ever met 

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that already 

look like a 

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Today 

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 JUSTA Blog spot

FUTA – Govt talks: Education should get priority

July 15, 2012, 7:51 pm 

by Kumudu Kusum Kumara, the island

The government having taken one whole week to ‘study’ the Federation of University Teachers’ Associations’ (FUTA) proposals for education reforms has come up with one general proposal of setting up a presidential commission to investigate ‘complex issues’ in the higher education sector. While no one would deny the value of an independent presidential commission to examine the ills higher education is afflicted with to come up with a white paper for public discussion as the basis for a higher education reforms bill and a new University Act, FUTA members believe that setting up of a commission cannot resolve the specific issues raised by the FUTA.

 In fact, they believe that the government move is a red herring or a tactic to delay finding solutions to the demands put forth by the FUTA. This lack of faith stems from the public perception that the findings of such commissions are never taken seriously or implemented by the government. The fate that befell the findings of the Udalagama Commission of Inquiry, the Youth Commission report, and the Commissions of inquiry on disappearances etc is a case in point. A senior academic commented that a book could be produced on the topic. This is to say that the general membership of the FUTA will be totally opposed to the idea of a commission at this point merely because it is perceived as a delaying tactic.

 The FUTA position made known, at the meeting, which was spelt out in a separate communiqué issued to its membership  has been that even though there could be issues that warrant the setting up of such a commission, there are many concerns and demands that could be solved outside the purview of a presidential commission. Here, it would be relevant to highlight the other salient points made in the FUTA communiqué. Secretary to the President maintained that the government found it extremely difficult to make budgetary allocations for education especially due to the need to implement the LLRC proposals and it may require the country to adopt stringent measures. The FUTA membership feels that this is another red herring. Secretary to the President  may have referred to the LLRC from his understanding of the issue gained in chairing the committee appointed to implement the proposals. However, the government has so far not come out with a plan for implementing the proposals nor has it identified its financial implications. The position of the FUTA has been that under any condition education should be a top priority and that it should not be considered a burden but an investment in the development of the country. The FUTA members believe that the need to implement the LLRC proposals should not be made an excuse for not increasing government expenditure on education.

 With regard to the government stand on the list of specific demands the Secretary to the President responded that the government needed time for further study and discussion. Response of the Secretary to the President  to a pointed question raised by the FUTA delegation on the government stand on the demands, has been "there is merit in discussing the demands and further discussions should take place to identify those demands that can be implemented immediately." This is an indication that the next round of discussions scheduled for middle of this week will now focus on the demands that can be implemented before the proposed commission is set up.

Low trust

 The FUTA has also stressed that the trust its members have in the government at this moment is at a very low ebb and hence the government should adopt confidence building measure, an indication of which could bring to an end the media campaign carried out by certain players on the government side to vilify the FUTA. An attempt to move courts to force university teachers to go back to work was also mentioned as an option possibly to be adopted by some of those players.

 According to the FUTA communiqué Prof. Ranjith Senaratna, who represented the University Grants Commission (UGC) at the meeting said as an academic he also appreciated that the FUTA had raised many concerns related to overall education and policy. Citing absolute numbers he had claimed that over the past few years funding for universities had increased whereas the academic environment in the universities had deteriorated resulting in poor teaching and research output. He suggested that the FUTA rally its members to commit themselves to improve this situation. However, the rationale behind taking the percentage of the GDP allocated to education adopted by agencies such as the UN and the World Bank cannot be nullified by citing absolute numbers an approach adopted by the Minister of Higher Education as well. The allegation that the academic environment in the Universities has deteriorated has been used in recent times by Minister of Higher Education S. B. Dissanayake in his attempt to neutralise university teachers’ resistance to ill-conceived ad-hoc university reforms. The present quality of teaching and research output in Sri Lankan universities is an outcome of its complex historical development emanating from government policies since independence and therefore it has to be analysed properly; it cannot be corrected by means of one sided ad-hoc solutions proposed by the Minister of Higher Education and the UGC.

Enhanced education budget

 What emerges from the current discussion between the government and the FUTA is that the priority the government assigns to education in its budgetary allocations is a matter that requires wide ranging public discussion and cannot be left to politicians, the bureaucracy and technocracy given its crucial importance. Sri Lanka cannot aspire to nation building unless it takes educating its population as one of its top priorities..

 It is the duty of a government to give serious thought to the future of a nation and prepare its policies and allocate national income generated on the basis of collective labour of the masses of people for the benefit of their future generations. A responsible government cannot ignore education of children in the name of infrastructure development.

(The writer is a member of Arts Faculty Teachers’ Association, Colombo University)

* University lecturers of Sri Lanka continue to strike after talks with government fail
Fri, Jul 13, 2012, 09:59 pm SL Time, ColomboPage News Desk, Sri Lanka.

July 13, Colombo: University lecturers in Sri Lanka who are currently engaged in a strike to win their demands including a salary increase are continuing with the trade union action after talks with government ended inconclusive.
The Federation of University Teachers Association (FUTA) yesterday evening met with Presidential Secretariat Lalith Weeratunga to find solutions to the lecturers' demands that include an increase in the financial allocations to the education sector and an increase in salaries of university lecturers.
The discussion had continued till night, but had ended without any final decisions.
The secretary of FUTA Terrence Madujith said that the Presidential Secretary has invited them to another discussion at the beginning of the next week. However, the date, time and the venue for the discussion are yet to be informed.
He said that the last discussion the FUTA had with Weeratunga and the other officials was meaningful one although it failed to bring a settlement between the two parties.
FUTA says that they want to end the discussions soon. Madujith said that the President's Secretary also has agreed to a quick solution.
However, FUTA will continue the trade union action until the lecturers win their demands.

Z-score imbroglio: Student moves SC against delay in implementing court order

July 13, 2012, 9:43 pm 

by Chitra Weerarathne, the island

A student who sat the GCE Advanced Level examination in August 2011 has complained to the Supreme Court that though the Court, on June 25, 2012, directed the University Grants Commission to consider the students who faced that examination under the new and old syllabi as two different populations and to re-calculate the Z-scores, upto yesterday the UGC had not taken necessary action to implement that order.

The plaint said that the Court had clearly indicated that the new Z-scores, calculated according to accepted statistics and norms, should be released without undue delay. But, the authorities had not so far responded to that order.

The motion filed by the student, Bisal Barshitha Kaviratne of Matara, alleged that certain persons responsible for the calculation of the impugned Z-scores had made some comments to the media, undermining the authority of the Supreme Court.

The petitioner requested that the motion be mentioned on July 16, 17, 18 before the Chief Justice Dr. Shirani Bandaranayake, Justice N. G. Amaratunga and Justice K. Sripavan.

Among the respondents cited were the Commissioner General of Examination and sixteen others.

The motion had said that the students are confused about the authorities delaying to comply with the court order.

A student, who had sat the GCE Advanced Level examination in August 2011, has complained to the Supreme Court that although the Supreme Court, on June 25, 2012, directed the University Grants Commission to consider the old and new syllabi as two different populations and to re-calculate the ‘Z-scores’, upto yesterday the UGC had not taken necessary action to implement the Court order.

The plaint said that the Court had clearly indicated that the new ‘Z-scores’, calculated according to accepted statistics and norms, should be released without undue delay. But, the authorities had not so far responded to that order.

The motion filed by the student had alleged that certain persons responsible for the calculation of the impugned ‘Z-scores’ had made some comments to the media, which undermined the authority of the Supreme Court.

The petitioner requested that the motion be mentioned on July 16, 17, 18 before the Chief Justice Dr. Shirani Bandaranayake, Justice N. G. Amaratunga and Justice K. Sripavan.

The student who had made the application to the Supreme Court is Bisal Barshitha Kaviratne of Matara.

Among the respondents cited were the Commissioner General of Examination and sixteen others.

The motion had said that the students are confused about the authorities delaying to comply with the court order.

FUTA Strike: The need of the hour is dialogue with the university teachers’ community

July 12, 2012, 6:44 pm , the island

By Kumudu Kusum Kumara

A university teachers’protest (file photo)

By now the overwhelming majority of university lecturers of the entire state sector university system in Sri Lanka except the Uva Wellassa University have joined the continuous strike launched by the Federation of University Teachers’ Associations (FUTA) since July 4th. It is reported that at Uva Wellassa which the government promotes as the model university of the future knowledge hub that Sri Lanka is expected to become, teachers are prevented from forming a trade union.

Is the pay hike demand unethical?

Concerted effort on the part of the Ministry of Higher Education (MoHE) in response to the current demands of the FUTA has been to try to dismiss it as unethical. The MoHE and its apologists argue that the salaries of university teachers have been increased by large percentages since their trade union action last year. They claim it is unfair to demand more again when the large masses of employees are managing with much lower salaries and when the country needs more financial resources for development. The FUTA responded to this criticism from several angles. Firstly, the manner in which the MoHE cites various percentages of salary increases is misleading to say the least as they do not reflect the true picture of the salary increase the FUTA won through last year’s trade union action. Percentages cited have been calculated by taking allowances themselves as salary—which is not simply hair splitting as some may want to argue because an increase in the basic salary involves much more in terms of contributions to EPF, ETF etc. and also the status one holds in the world of economics within the structure of basic salaries with its attended benefits or disadvantages rather than an increase in the take-home pay packet. Secondly, research allowance of 25 percent of the salary added since last trade union action as the authorities keep on reminding has to be applied for every year by submitting reports of research and does not get added to the salary automatically. Thirdly, even if we consider the increase in the gross take home salary for the large majority of university academics who are senior lecturers the increase is not the same as that of professors let alone senior professors who do not number more than 200 out of about 4,500 odd university teachers.

Govt.’s honesty in question

But most importantly the FUTA position is that the government has not been honest in its dealing with it. During the FUTA trade union action in 2011 the government accepted as a basis for negotiations the FUTA salary proposals recommended by the Jiffry–Malik Ranasinghe committee appointed by the UGC. It was also the basis for the discussion FUTA had with President Mahinda Rajapaksa, who offered a compromise formula in the form of an interim salary and asked the FUTA to work out the rest of the details with government officials. However, subsequently the MoHE began to refer to it as a ‘perceived’ agreement. It is as if even the President’s word were not sacrosanct! This time around, the FUTA has requested from the Secretary to the President not to treat the present round of discussions as tactics of a strategy to deflect the demands of the FUTA but to be honest in his approach. What is at issue here is the government’s credibility. The FUTA expects the government to desist from adopting evasive tactics in dealing with the FUTA and to be upfront about the university teachers’ salary demand. They want to know what, the government thinks, the salaries of university lecturers should be in the context of its desire to raise the standards of state sector universities; if it is unable to pay such a salary, they want it to discuss with the FUTA the reasons and the prioritisation of allocating government funding to various sectors.

Increased govt. funding for education

There is an effort on the part of the government and its apologists to dismiss the other major FUTA demand which is increased government funding for education as a politically motivated move to ‘take government hostage’. It is claimed that trade unions should restrict themselves to demands that affect their trade mainly meaning salary and working conditions. Even within such a narrow reading of trade union rights we cannot ignore that the meagre allocation of funding to education impacts on salaries of university lecturers. On the other hand if one keeps oneself informed of what is happening around the world one will realise that trade unions, in fact, do take issues of national interest beyond issues narrowly restricted to interests of their own trades. Moreover, education is a broad field within which university academics operate and how the government invests in this field is their legitimate concern not only as trade unionists but also as intellectuals whose input into public affairs is something society expects of them. At a broader level as citizens of the country the academics have every right to demand that government invest in education without the advancements of which we may not have a culture or a civilisation to begin with.

What the FUTA demand for spending of 6 percent of Gross Domestic Product for education— to which Sri Lankan government has restated its commitment at the second Ministerial Meeting of South Asia Education for All Forum in 2009 held in Dacca—highlights is that university teachers insist that education be a high priority for any government. Education is essential for both economic and social development and improvement of political culture of any country and therefore a worthwhile investment in the future. What the FUTA is attempting to do is to influence government policy on education and it believes that as a trade union of academics it is a legitimate demand.

Government budget is a reflection of its policy and hence the FUTA’s request to increase budgetary allocations for education! The FUTA’s demand is a guideline which is based on what the government itself has agreed to and hence it is the duty of the government to have discussion with the FUTA on this.

Is there a govt policy on higher education?

The FUTA demand that the government should declare its policy on higher education has been met with responses such as that mission and vision statements of the MoHE and the corporate plans of the UGC are government policy. These only reflect poor understanding of what policy is. While various government commissions on education have been appointed from time to time none of them have been able to convince the government to adopt  a policy on either general education or higher education. Minister of Education in the 1980s, Ranil Wickremasinghe’s white paper on education was the last known attempt to present a brief for policy discussion on education in recent times. The current parliamentary committee on general education has produced a document for public discussion, the outcome of which seems to have been lost in the Legal Draftsman’s office. Since President Chandrika Kumaratunga was elected President educational and higher educational policy of the government has been guided by World Bank studies on the subject backed by heavy funding that came through projects such IRQUE, QEF and now HETC. A cursory comparison of World Bank studies and the government educational policy orientation during this period would bear testimony to this view. The FUTA wants the government to declare its policy on higher education so that there could be a public dialogue on the subject. What the university community has been witnessing in the recent past is ad hoc policy decisions taken by the Minister of Higher Education being implemented at various levels without due consultations with them to the detriment of the interests of the community. It appears that Cabinet decisions have been substituted for policy making thus overriding the University Act—a practice which sets a bad precedence for democratic governance. As is well known an attempt to push a bill to set up private universities through Parliament without due public consultation was thwarted by strong public opposition. It is reported that the authority to grant university status to educational institutes, which the UGC was previously vested with has been transferred to the Minister of Higher Education by a gazette notification. The FUTA wants the government to put an end to such arbitrary policy making and revert to the tradition of collective policy making.

Restoring University Autonomy

The final FUTA demand is to restore autonomy of governance that has been traditionally enjoyed by the university academic community, it has come under attack with increasing politicisation and micro management and even militarisation creeping into universities. Hence, the FUTA demands that the MoHE give a pledge to respect and adhere to the Universities Act in all matters pertaining to the higher education sector so that these institutions can thrive as autonomous institutions. The FUTA demands an assurance that the minister shall not interfere in the appointment of members of the University Councils. The assurance must include an undertaking by the UGC that the qualifications of those appointed and the expected expertise each appointee brings into the respective council to be publicized for the information of the University community and the general public. It also demands a pledge to strictly adhere to the procedure pertaining to the appointment of Vice Chancellors without ministerial interference, at both stages involving the University Council and the UGC a principle recognized by the Supreme Court. It also demands a pledge to allow university councils to be the final decision making body with regard to all university appointments, both academic and non academic. There are also the demands for a pledge to stop interfering in the allocation of university funds and an undertaking to have the Cabinet-approved directive (in violation of the Universities Act) to hire the highly expensive Rakna Lanka security firm for university security rescinded.

Unfair criticism that university teachers have come under from the MoHE and its apologists is indicative of the fact that they are out to discredit the FUTA and its struggle instead of trying to understand the perspective of the FUTA and engaging it in dialogue. In contrast to this, the approach taken by the President’s Secretary Lalith Weeratunga at his recent initial meeting with the FUTA has shown an attempt to understand the rationale behind the FUTA struggle. The first meeting of the committee appointed under the chairmanship of President’s Secretary Lalith Weeratunga was scheduled to take place on the 12th July, 2012 evening. By now the initial government response to FUTA demands would have been made known to them and the direction in which the FUTA struggle would unfold would have been determined to a large extent by that response. It is the earnest hope of the FUTA that the government will enter into a dialogue with the university teachers in their desire to preserve and develop the state sector university system in the country, a desire which seems to resonate well with the public of the country, given the wide public support the FUTA is receiving for its campaign to collect signature for an online petition and a petition of million signatures under the slogan ‘Save Sri Lankan Schools and Universities!’

(The writer is a member of the Arts Faculty Teachers’ Association, Colombo University.)

A godless, dhamma-less, education system?

July 11, 2012, 8:05 pm 

By Fr. Mervyn Fernando, the island

The key role in a holistic/humanistic education is played by the teacher. Child psychology or even common sense makes clear that the life of a child is shaped firstly by parents (or parent substitutes) and subsequently by teachers. These are the two sets of gurus, the de-guru, recognized by the ancient educational wisdom of the East. The experiences of the child from these gurus and their example shape the child’s life–his/her mind, heart and spirit—especially in the early impressionable years.  A vision or dhamma is concretized in a vision of life and a set of values which a child has to absorb in graded steps to grow in wisdom and virtue as he/she grows in age.

The recent furore over the validity of Z-scores in the A-level examination is very symptomatic of the current malaise of Education in the country – the tip of the iceberg. So it is not surprising that the past few weeks have seen many articles in the newspapers expressing serious concerns about a number of issues in both school and university education. If there is no smoke without fire, what is burning in our education system? And how can we put out the fire?   

 First and foremost we must clarify the goal of education. What is the final raison d’etre of education – of schooling at primary, secondary and tertiary levels? The final goal of education is nothing less than the humanisation of the child/student; his/her development in body, mind, heart and spirit into the fullness of life. A human being born into this world is helpless; helpless to develop into what it could and should be, namely, to become a functioning human being. Unlike in the animal world where this process happens practically automatically, in the human world it is entirely dependent on the human environment, mostly the environment of parents, teachers and other adults. The chrysalis of the baby has to grow into the butterfly of mature personhood. As Plato rightly observed, education is a second birth without which the first one is meaningless.

The renowned philosopher Alfred North Whitehead stated: "In the schools of antiquity philosophers aspired to impart wisdom; in modern colleges our aim is to teach subjects. The drop from divine wisdom to textbook knowledge of subjects which is achieved by the moderns, marks an educational failure". (The Aims of Education) But what passes for education now is a system of rote learning "cribbed, cabined and confined" to the classroom in a rigid framework of compartmentalised subjects of very little relevance to life, taught by poorly motivated/qualified teachers to be tested at examinations of problematic validity – a far cry from the goals of humanization. Knowledge is only one slice of the cake of education and that to only as a gateway to wisdom. Very tellingly T. S. Eliot asked, "Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge; where is the knowledge we have lost information?"

Neil Postman, a major voice in Education, in his very perceptive book, The End of Education, subtitled, redefining the value of school, says, "for schools to make sense, the young, their parents and their teachers must have a god  to serve ... if they have none the school is pointless;  then he goes on to say, "to put it simply, there is no surer way to bring an end to schooling than for it to have no end or no goal". We can also re-state this reflection of Postman in a more familiar saying:  "Where there is no vision the people perish". The God that postman refers to need not be identified with the Christian God, though that would be definitely so for  Christians. In a more general sense, god (with simple ‘g’) refers to what we might call a comprehensive narrative (or meta-narrative, or to use a Buddhist equivalent, dhamma) about the whole of life—of self, the world  and  the Transcendent. Only such a god can give meaning to our lives and every aspect of it;  and man cannot live without meaning as Viktor Frankl discovered so poignantly in his experience of life in the death camps of Hilter (see, Man’s Search for Meaning).

Every religion is almost by definition, a meta-narrative of the human condition, responding at the deepest level to questions about self and world, the one and many, origins and ends, providing the big picture within which the small pieces find their place. The pieces of a jigsaw puzzle cannot be put together without a look at the whole picture. In this sense, education can be meaningful only in the context of a dhamma. It is not a question of teaching a particular religion as a subject (in fact that could be counter-productive), but the whole of the curriculum, the syllabi, and everything that falls under the rubic of ‘schooling’ be determined, consciously and explicitly, in the light of a definite Weltanschauung (world view) or vision of the Whole, which Aldous Huxley called the ‘perennial philosophy’ or in the Buddhist/Hindu idiom, the sanatana dhamma. Only that kind of comprehensive, goal-oriented education can mobilize the dormant aspirations of children and youth  to become fully-developed or enlightened, realized persons; in Gandhian language to become Mahatmas or great souls, people of high human stature. Only such citizens will be an asset to self, community and country.

The fundamental malaise of education in our country today is  that it has no clear end except the routine passing of examinations. Nietzsche’s famous saying "he who has a "why" to live , can bear with almost any "how"", applies as much to learning as to living. School education today has a surfeit of "how" without a "why"; in a way this itself could be considered an implicit vision of life or a "religion" though it’s advocates claim ideological neutrality. As Michael Lerner observes, "the alleged neutrality of contemporary education is a sham that covers up the systematic indoctrination of students into the dominant religion of the contemporary world: the slavish subordination of every one to the market place" (Spirit Matters). A good part of the evils we lament in our society—social irresponsibility, corruption, blatant political opportunism, dishonesty, individualism, exploitation, naked consumerism, (shop till you drop!), self–aggrandisement , violence etc. etc. even in high levels of public and political life are direct or indirect outcomes of the debasement of education as accumulation of knowledge/information, in that kind of self-centred pragmatism, devoid of any vision, god or dhamma. In politics, for example, we have hordes of petty-minded politicians but hardly any statesmen, namely, those who put the good of the country  above personal gain and party interests.

The key role in a holistic/humanistic education is played by the teacher. Child psychology or even common sense makes clear that the life of a child is shaped firstly by parents (or parent substitutes) and subsequently by teachers. These are the two sets of gurus, the de-guru, recognized by the ancient educational wisdom of the East. The experiences of the child from these gurus and their example shape the child’s life–his/her mind, heart and spirit—especially in the early impressionable years.  A vision or dhamma is concretized in a vision of life and a set of values which a child has to absorb in graded steps to grow in wisdom and virtue as he/she grows in age. But, unfortunately, in the current system of education the teacher is "compelled" to be a mere dispenser of knowledge in a rigid framework of curriculum and syllabus. He/she is a caricature of what he/she should be– a guru–the enlightened, guide and life model–in that fine guru-shishya relationship which was the hallmark of classical Education in both East and West. It was his/her noble role to draw into actuality the potentialities latent in the child.

As in many other areas, there is a woeful poverty of serious thinking on education in the country. What is called for is not just an academic exercise in the technicalities and methodologies of education—how many subjects for the GCE A/L examination, how to calculate the Z-score etc. but a deeply thought-out holistic/integral philosophy of Education relevant to our country and our times, identifying the god or dhamma it has to serve, embodied in a structure which will remain untouched by changes of governments, vagaries of politics and idiocyncracies of education ministers. The first UNESCO Report on Education, Learning to Be put it very clearly: "Today it is no longer desirable to undertake educational reforms in piecemeal fashion; without a concept of the totality of goals and modes of the educational process. To find out how to reshape its component parts, one must have a vision of the whole". Instead, we are still lurching blindly from one piecemeal reform to another? At what cost to the nation?

The writer is the Founder–President of the Institute of Integral Education, SUBODHI, Piliyandala.

A godless, dhamma-less, education system?

July 11, 2012, 8:05 pm 

By Fr. Mervyn Fernando, the island

The key role in a holistic/humanistic education is played by the teacher. Child psychology or even common sense makes clear that the life of a child is shaped firstly by parents (or parent substitutes) and subsequently by teachers. These are the two sets of gurus, the de-guru, recognized by the ancient educational wisdom of the East. The experiences of the child from these gurus and their example shape the child’s life–his/her mind, heart and spirit—especially in the early impressionable years.  A vision or dhamma is concretized in a vision of life and a set of values which a child has to absorb in graded steps to grow in wisdom and virtue as he/she grows in age.

The recent furore over the validity of Z-scores in the A-level examination is very symptomatic of the current malaise of Education in the country – the tip of the iceberg. So it is not surprising that the past few weeks have seen many articles in the newspapers expressing serious concerns about a number of issues in both school and university education. If there is no smoke without fire, what is burning in our education system? And how can we put out the fire?   

 First and foremost we must clarify the goal of education. What is the final raison d’etre of education – of schooling at primary, secondary and tertiary levels? The final goal of education is nothing less than the humanisation of the child/student; his/her development in body, mind, heart and spirit into the fullness of life. A human being born into this world is helpless; helpless to develop into what it could and should be, namely, to become a functioning human being. Unlike in the animal world where this process happens practically automatically, in the human world it is entirely dependent on the human environment, mostly the environment of parents, teachers and other adults. The chrysalis of the baby has to grow into the butterfly of mature personhood. As Plato rightly observed, education is a second birth without which the first one is meaningless.

The renowned philosopher Alfred North Whitehead stated: "In the schools of antiquity philosophers aspired to impart wisdom; in modern colleges our aim is to teach subjects. The drop from divine wisdom to textbook knowledge of subjects which is achieved by the moderns, marks an educational failure". (The Aims of Education) But what passes for education now is a system of rote learning "cribbed, cabined and confined" to the classroom in a rigid framework of compartmentalised subjects of very little relevance to life, taught by poorly motivated/qualified teachers to be tested at examinations of problematic validity – a far cry from the goals of humanization. Knowledge is only one slice of the cake of education and that to only as a gateway to wisdom. Very tellingly T. S. Eliot asked, "Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge; where is the knowledge we have lost information?"

Neil Postman, a major voice in Education, in his very perceptive book, The End of Education, subtitled, redefining the value of school, says, "for schools to make sense, the young, their parents and their teachers must have a god  to serve ... if they have none the school is pointless;  then he goes on to say, "to put it simply, there is no surer way to bring an end to schooling than for it to have no end or no goal". We can also re-state this reflection of Postman in a more familiar saying:  "Where there is no vision the people perish". The God that postman refers to need not be identified with the Christian God, though that would be definitely so for  Christians. In a more general sense, god (with simple ‘g’) refers to what we might call a comprehensive narrative (or meta-narrative, or to use a Buddhist equivalent, dhamma) about the whole of life—of self, the world  and  the Transcendent. Only such a god can give meaning to our lives and every aspect of it;  and man cannot live without meaning as Viktor Frankl discovered so poignantly in his experience of life in the death camps of Hilter (see, Man’s Search for Meaning).

Every religion is almost by definition, a meta-narrative of the human condition, responding at the deepest level to questions about self and world, the one and many, origins and ends, providing the big picture within which the small pieces find their place. The pieces of a jigsaw puzzle cannot be put together without a look at the whole picture. In this sense, education can be meaningful only in the context of a dhamma. It is not a question of teaching a particular religion as a subject (in fact that could be counter-productive), but the whole of the curriculum, the syllabi, and everything that falls under the rubic of ‘schooling’ be determined, consciously and explicitly, in the light of a definite Weltanschauung (world view) or vision of the Whole, which Aldous Huxley called the ‘perennial philosophy’ or in the Buddhist/Hindu idiom, the sanatana dhamma. Only that kind of comprehensive, goal-oriented education can mobilize the dormant aspirations of children and youth  to become fully-developed or enlightened, realized persons; in Gandhian language to become Mahatmas or great souls, people of high human stature. Only such citizens will be an asset to self, community and country.

The fundamental malaise of education in our country today is  that it has no clear end except the routine passing of examinations. Nietzsche’s famous saying "he who has a "why" to live , can bear with almost any "how"", applies as much to learning as to living. School education today has a surfeit of "how" without a "why"; in a way this itself could be considered an implicit vision of life or a "religion" though it’s advocates claim ideological neutrality. As Michael Lerner observes, "the alleged neutrality of contemporary education is a sham that covers up the systematic indoctrination of students into the dominant religion of the contemporary world: the slavish subordination of every one to the market place" (Spirit Matters). A good part of the evils we lament in our society—social irresponsibility, corruption, blatant political opportunism, dishonesty, individualism, exploitation, naked consumerism, (shop till you drop!), self–aggrandisement , violence etc. etc. even in high levels of public and political life are direct or indirect outcomes of the debasement of education as accumulation of knowledge/information, in that kind of self-centred pragmatism, devoid of any vision, god or dhamma. In politics, for example, we have hordes of petty-minded politicians but hardly any statesmen, namely, those who put the good of the country  above personal gain and party interests.

The key role in a holistic/humanistic education is played by the teacher. Child psychology or even common sense makes clear that the life of a child is shaped firstly by parents (or parent substitutes) and subsequently by teachers. These are the two sets of gurus, the de-guru, recognized by the ancient educational wisdom of the East. The experiences of the child from these gurus and their example shape the child’s life–his/her mind, heart and spirit—especially in the early impressionable years.  A vision or dhamma is concretized in a vision of life and a set of values which a child has to absorb in graded steps to grow in wisdom and virtue as he/she grows in age. But, unfortunately, in the current system of education the teacher is "compelled" to be a mere dispenser of knowledge in a rigid framework of curriculum and syllabus. He/she is a caricature of what he/she should be– a guru–the enlightened, guide and life model–in that fine guru-shishya relationship which was the hallmark of classical Education in both East and West. It was his/her noble role to draw into actuality the potentialities latent in the child.

As in many other areas, there is a woeful poverty of serious thinking on education in the country. What is called for is not just an academic exercise in the technicalities and methodologies of education—how many subjects for the GCE A/L examination, how to calculate the Z-score etc. but a deeply thought-out holistic/integral philosophy of Education relevant to our country and our times, identifying the god or dhamma it has to serve, embodied in a structure which will remain untouched by changes of governments, vagaries of politics and idiocyncracies of education ministers. The first UNESCO Report on Education, Learning to Be put it very clearly: "Today it is no longer desirable to undertake educational reforms in piecemeal fashion; without a concept of the totality of goals and modes of the educational process. To find out how to reshape its component parts, one must have a vision of the whole". Instead, we are still lurching blindly from one piecemeal reform to another? At what cost to the nation?

The writer is the Founder–President of the Institute of Integral Education, SUBODHI, Piliyandala.

A godless, dhamma-less, education system?

July 11, 2012, 8:05 pm 

By Fr. Mervyn Fernando, the island

The key role in a holistic/humanistic education is played by the teacher. Child psychology or even common sense makes clear that the life of a child is shaped firstly by parents (or parent substitutes) and subsequently by teachers. These are the two sets of gurus, the de-guru, recognized by the ancient educational wisdom of the East. The experiences of the child from these gurus and their example shape the child’s life–his/her mind, heart and spirit—especially in the early impressionable years.  A vision or dhamma is concretized in a vision of life and a set of values which a child has to absorb in graded steps to grow in wisdom and virtue as he/she grows in age.

The recent furore over the validity of Z-scores in the A-level examination is very symptomatic of the current malaise of Education in the country – the tip of the iceberg. So it is not surprising that the past few weeks have seen many articles in the newspapers expressing serious concerns about a number of issues in both school and university education. If there is no smoke without fire, what is burning in our education system? And how can we put out the fire?   

 First and foremost we must clarify the goal of education. What is the final raison d’etre of education – of schooling at primary, secondary and tertiary levels? The final goal of education is nothing less than the humanisation of the child/student; his/her development in body, mind, heart and spirit into the fullness of life. A human being born into this world is helpless; helpless to develop into what it could and should be, namely, to become a functioning human being. Unlike in the animal world where this process happens practically automatically, in the human world it is entirely dependent on the human environment, mostly the environment of parents, teachers and other adults. The chrysalis of the baby has to grow into the butterfly of mature personhood. As Plato rightly observed, education is a second birth without which the first one is meaningless.

The renowned philosopher Alfred North Whitehead stated: "In the schools of antiquity philosophers aspired to impart wisdom; in modern colleges our aim is to teach subjects. The drop from divine wisdom to textbook knowledge of subjects which is achieved by the moderns, marks an educational failure". (The Aims of Education) But what passes for education now is a system of rote learning "cribbed, cabined and confined" to the classroom in a rigid framework of compartmentalised subjects of very little relevance to life, taught by poorly motivated/qualified teachers to be tested at examinations of problematic validity – a far cry from the goals of humanization. Knowledge is only one slice of the cake of education and that to only as a gateway to wisdom. Very tellingly T. S. Eliot asked, "Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge; where is the knowledge we have lost information?"

Neil Postman, a major voice in Education, in his very perceptive book, The End of Education, subtitled, redefining the value of school, says, "for schools to make sense, the young, their parents and their teachers must have a god  to serve ... if they have none the school is pointless;  then he goes on to say, "to put it simply, there is no surer way to bring an end to schooling than for it to have no end or no goal". We can also re-state this reflection of Postman in a more familiar saying:  "Where there is no vision the people perish". The God that postman refers to need not be identified with the Christian God, though that would be definitely so for  Christians. In a more general sense, god (with simple ‘g’) refers to what we might call a comprehensive narrative (or meta-narrative, or to use a Buddhist equivalent, dhamma) about the whole of life—of self, the world  and  the Transcendent. Only such a god can give meaning to our lives and every aspect of it;  and man cannot live without meaning as Viktor Frankl discovered so poignantly in his experience of life in the death camps of Hilter (see, Man’s Search for Meaning).

Every religion is almost by definition, a meta-narrative of the human condition, responding at the deepest level to questions about self and world, the one and many, origins and ends, providing the big picture within which the small pieces find their place. The pieces of a jigsaw puzzle cannot be put together without a look at the whole picture. In this sense, education can be meaningful only in the context of a dhamma. It is not a question of teaching a particular religion as a subject (in fact that could be counter-productive), but the whole of the curriculum, the syllabi, and everything that falls under the rubic of ‘schooling’ be determined, consciously and explicitly, in the light of a definite Weltanschauung (world view) or vision of the Whole, which Aldous Huxley called the ‘perennial philosophy’ or in the Buddhist/Hindu idiom, the sanatana dhamma. Only that kind of comprehensive, goal-oriented education can mobilize the dormant aspirations of children and youth  to become fully-developed or enlightened, realized persons; in Gandhian language to become Mahatmas or great souls, people of high human stature. Only such citizens will be an asset to self, community and country.

The fundamental malaise of education in our country today is  that it has no clear end except the routine passing of examinations. Nietzsche’s famous saying "he who has a "why" to live , can bear with almost any "how"", applies as much to learning as to living. School education today has a surfeit of "how" without a "why"; in a way this itself could be considered an implicit vision of life or a "religion" though it’s advocates claim ideological neutrality. As Michael Lerner observes, "the alleged neutrality of contemporary education is a sham that covers up the systematic indoctrination of students into the dominant religion of the contemporary world: the slavish subordination of every one to the market place" (Spirit Matters). A good part of the evils we lament in our society—social irresponsibility, corruption, blatant political opportunism, dishonesty, individualism, exploitation, naked consumerism, (shop till you drop!), self–aggrandisement , violence etc. etc. even in high levels of public and political life are direct or indirect outcomes of the debasement of education as accumulation of knowledge/information, in that kind of self-centred pragmatism, devoid of any vision, god or dhamma. In politics, for example, we have hordes of petty-minded politicians but hardly any statesmen, namely, those who put the good of the country  above personal gain and party interests.

The key role in a holistic/humanistic education is played by the teacher. Child psychology or even common sense makes clear that the life of a child is shaped firstly by parents (or parent substitutes) and subsequently by teachers. These are the two sets of gurus, the de-guru, recognized by the ancient educational wisdom of the East. The experiences of the child from these gurus and their example shape the child’s life–his/her mind, heart and spirit—especially in the early impressionable years.  A vision or dhamma is concretized in a vision of life and a set of values which a child has to absorb in graded steps to grow in wisdom and virtue as he/she grows in age. But, unfortunately, in the current system of education the teacher is "compelled" to be a mere dispenser of knowledge in a rigid framework of curriculum and syllabus. He/she is a caricature of what he/she should be– a guru–the enlightened, guide and life model–in that fine guru-shishya relationship which was the hallmark of classical Education in both East and West. It was his/her noble role to draw into actuality the potentialities latent in the child.

As in many other areas, there is a woeful poverty of serious thinking on education in the country. What is called for is not just an academic exercise in the technicalities and methodologies of education—how many subjects for the GCE A/L examination, how to calculate the Z-score etc. but a deeply thought-out holistic/integral philosophy of Education relevant to our country and our times, identifying the god or dhamma it has to serve, embodied in a structure which will remain untouched by changes of governments, vagaries of politics and idiocyncracies of education ministers. The first UNESCO Report on Education, Learning to Be put it very clearly: "Today it is no longer desirable to undertake educational reforms in piecemeal fashion; without a concept of the totality of goals and modes of the educational process. To find out how to reshape its component parts, one must have a vision of the whole". Instead, we are still lurching blindly from one piecemeal reform to another? At what cost to the nation?

The writer is the Founder–President of the Institute of Integral Education, SUBODHI, Piliyandala.

A godless, dhamma-less, education system?

July 11, 2012, 8:05 pm 

By Fr. Mervyn Fernando, the island

The key role in a holistic/humanistic education is played by the teacher. Child psychology or even common sense makes clear that the life of a child is shaped firstly by parents (or parent substitutes) and subsequently by teachers. These are the two sets of gurus, the de-guru, recognized by the ancient educational wisdom of the East. The experiences of the child from these gurus and their example shape the child’s life–his/her mind, heart and spirit—especially in the early impressionable years.  A vision or dhamma is concretized in a vision of life and a set of values which a child has to absorb in graded steps to grow in wisdom and virtue as he/she grows in age.

The recent furore over the validity of Z-scores in the A-level examination is very symptomatic of the current malaise of Education in the country – the tip of the iceberg. So it is not surprising that the past few weeks have seen many articles in the newspapers expressing serious concerns about a number of issues in both school and university education. If there is no smoke without fire, what is burning in our education system? And how can we put out the fire?   

 First and foremost we must clarify the goal of education. What is the final raison d’etre of education – of schooling at primary, secondary and tertiary levels? The final goal of education is nothing less than the humanisation of the child/student; his/her development in body, mind, heart and spirit into the fullness of life. A human being born into this world is helpless; helpless to develop into what it could and should be, namely, to become a functioning human being. Unlike in the animal world where this process happens practically automatically, in the human world it is entirely dependent on the human environment, mostly the environment of parents, teachers and other adults. The chrysalis of the baby has to grow into the butterfly of mature personhood. As Plato rightly observed, education is a second birth without which the first one is meaningless.

The renowned philosopher Alfred North Whitehead stated: "In the schools of antiquity philosophers aspired to impart wisdom; in modern colleges our aim is to teach subjects. The drop from divine wisdom to textbook knowledge of subjects which is achieved by the moderns, marks an educational failure". (The Aims of Education) But what passes for education now is a system of rote learning "cribbed, cabined and confined" to the classroom in a rigid framework of compartmentalised subjects of very little relevance to life, taught by poorly motivated/qualified teachers to be tested at examinations of problematic validity – a far cry from the goals of humanization. Knowledge is only one slice of the cake of education and that to only as a gateway to wisdom. Very tellingly T. S. Eliot asked, "Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge; where is the knowledge we have lost information?"

Neil Postman, a major voice in Education, in his very perceptive book, The End of Education, subtitled, redefining the value of school, says, "for schools to make sense, the young, their parents and their teachers must have a god  to serve ... if they have none the school is pointless;  then he goes on to say, "to put it simply, there is no surer way to bring an end to schooling than for it to have no end or no goal". We can also re-state this reflection of Postman in a more familiar saying:  "Where there is no vision the people perish". The God that postman refers to need not be identified with the Christian God, though that would be definitely so for  Christians. In a more general sense, god (with simple ‘g’) refers to what we might call a comprehensive narrative (or meta-narrative, or to use a Buddhist equivalent, dhamma) about the whole of life—of self, the world  and  the Transcendent. Only such a god can give meaning to our lives and every aspect of it;  and man cannot live without meaning as Viktor Frankl discovered so poignantly in his experience of life in the death camps of Hilter (see, Man’s Search for Meaning).

Every religion is almost by definition, a meta-narrative of the human condition, responding at the deepest level to questions about self and world, the one and many, origins and ends, providing the big picture within which the small pieces find their place. The pieces of a jigsaw puzzle cannot be put together without a look at the whole picture. In this sense, education can be meaningful only in the context of a dhamma. It is not a question of teaching a particular religion as a subject (in fact that could be counter-productive), but the whole of the curriculum, the syllabi, and everything that falls under the rubic of ‘schooling’ be determined, consciously and explicitly, in the light of a definite Weltanschauung (world view) or vision of the Whole, which Aldous Huxley called the ‘perennial philosophy’ or in the Buddhist/Hindu idiom, the sanatana dhamma. Only that kind of comprehensive, goal-oriented education can mobilize the dormant aspirations of children and youth  to become fully-developed or enlightened, realized persons; in Gandhian language to become Mahatmas or great souls, people of high human stature. Only such citizens will be an asset to self, community and country.

The fundamental malaise of education in our country today is  that it has no clear end except the routine passing of examinations. Nietzsche’s famous saying "he who has a "why" to live , can bear with almost any "how"", applies as much to learning as to living. School education today has a surfeit of "how" without a "why"; in a way this itself could be considered an implicit vision of life or a "religion" though it’s advocates claim ideological neutrality. As Michael Lerner observes, "the alleged neutrality of contemporary education is a sham that covers up the systematic indoctrination of students into the dominant religion of the contemporary world: the slavish subordination of every one to the market place" (Spirit Matters). A good part of the evils we lament in our society—social irresponsibility, corruption, blatant political opportunism, dishonesty, individualism, exploitation, naked consumerism, (shop till you drop!), self–aggrandisement , violence etc. etc. even in high levels of public and political life are direct or indirect outcomes of the debasement of education as accumulation of knowledge/information, in that kind of self-centred pragmatism, devoid of any vision, god or dhamma. In politics, for example, we have hordes of petty-minded politicians but hardly any statesmen, namely, those who put the good of the country  above personal gain and party interests.

The key role in a holistic/humanistic education is played by the teacher. Child psychology or even common sense makes clear that the life of a child is shaped firstly by parents (or parent substitutes) and subsequently by teachers. These are the two sets of gurus, the de-guru, recognized by the ancient educational wisdom of the East. The experiences of the child from these gurus and their example shape the child’s life–his/her mind, heart and spirit—especially in the early impressionable years.  A vision or dhamma is concretized in a vision of life and a set of values which a child has to absorb in graded steps to grow in wisdom and virtue as he/she grows in age. But, unfortunately, in the current system of education the teacher is "compelled" to be a mere dispenser of knowledge in a rigid framework of curriculum and syllabus. He/she is a caricature of what he/she should be– a guru–the enlightened, guide and life model–in that fine guru-shishya relationship which was the hallmark of classical Education in both East and West. It was his/her noble role to draw into actuality the potentialities latent in the child.

As in many other areas, there is a woeful poverty of serious thinking on education in the country. What is called for is not just an academic exercise in the technicalities and methodologies of education—how many subjects for the GCE A/L examination, how to calculate the Z-score etc. but a deeply thought-out holistic/integral philosophy of Education relevant to our country and our times, identifying the god or dhamma it has to serve, embodied in a structure which will remain untouched by changes of governments, vagaries of politics and idiocyncracies of education ministers. The first UNESCO Report on Education, Learning to Be put it very clearly: "Today it is no longer desirable to undertake educational reforms in piecemeal fashion; without a concept of the totality of goals and modes of the educational process. To find out how to reshape its component parts, one must have a vision of the whole". Instead, we are still lurching blindly from one piecemeal reform to another? At what cost to the nation?

The writer is the Founder–President of the Institute of Integral Education, SUBODHI, Piliyandala.