Editorial
Stop this game of chicken
August 15, 2012, 7:15 pm , The Island
Our education system is a shaky pyramid
crumbling at both ends––the apex and the base. School education is in
crisis. But for a plethora of private tuition classes propping it up it
would have collapsed a long time ago. School admissions are an unholy
mess. Some schools are being closed down for want of students while
others have as many as 60 children crammed into a single classroom. The
remedy for alarmingly high failure rates in subjects like mathematics
and science at the GCE O/L examination has been to lower the bar!
Universities have gone the same way. Bankrupt ultra radical elements
bent on disrupting university education and preying on resentful
undergrads must be partying. For, the on-going dons' strike has
crippled universities.
The government is acting
as if there were no university strike. Half-hearted attempts at
evolving a solution having failed, both the striking dons and the
government have resorted to brinkmanship, so to speak. President
Mahinda Rajapaksa has gone on record as saying that he is for a win-win
situation, but his Higher Education Minister S. B. Dissanayake remains
intransigent and determined to crush the strike. The government is
waiting till university teachers blink and vice versa. They want to
wear each other down.
The on-going tussle
between the Federation of University Teachers' Associations (FUTA) and
the government is a classic example of the game of chicken––a contest where neither party is prepared to yield, according to the mathematical Game Theory
even at the risk of mutually assured destruction. The university
strike is getting unnecessarily protracted. If it drags on
indefinitely, which is likely to be the case at this rate, the country
will be the loser. Unless the government cares to ensure the smooth
functioning of universities, it might as well forget about its ambitious
plan to make Sri Lanka the Knowledge Hub of Asia.
The
FUTA has, no doubt, bitten off more than it can chew. But, the
government must not make the mistake of treating university teachers
like a bunch of terrorists and trying to walk all over them. Many of
the strikers, it may be recalled, threw their weight behind President
Rajapaksa at the last presidential election. The government ought to
soften its stand and make a genuine effort to solve the problem. The
same goes for university teachers who are intelligent enough to realise
that trade unionism is the art of the possible and a labour dispute
must not be turned into a zero-sum game if it is to be settled.
Ideally, a country must spend at least 6 per cent of its GDP on
education, but that target cannot be achieved overnight. Similarly, pay
hikes given to one category of state workers usually have a domino
effect across the public sector rife with salary anomalies. Therefore,
the university dons must be flexible and realistic, though they deserve
the salaries they are demanding.
The
government cannot claim that it lacks funds to pay university teachers
higher salaries. It is never cash-strapped when it comes to purchasing
state-of-the-art choppers in peace time, building domestic airports,
paying PAYE tax of certain categories of state workers to the tune of
Rs. 2 billion per annum, bidding for mega sports events like the
Commonwealth Games and holding ego-boosting, fund guzzling carnivals.
Therefore, it must be able to save some funds being splurged on useless
ventures to grant university teachers a substantial pay hike without
playing tricks on them. Its claim that Sri Lanka's total spend on
education already amounts to 6 per cent of GDP is ludicrous, to say the
least. It has taken into account even expenditure incurred by some
temples on vocational training in arriving at that figure! Minister
Dissanayake should stop bandying about figures he does not understand.
The
striking dons' demand that they be consulted when important decisions
on universities are made could easily be granted as they have a crucial
role to play in such matters. What is preventing the government from
agreeing, in principle, that 6 per cent of GDP should be allocated for
education and undertaking to work towards that end? We think it is the
sheer arrogance of power.
Education is the
only hope for a small country that lacks physical resources. Sri Lanka
is badly in need of better schools and universities that conform to
international standards. The government must step up investment in the
education sector in order to export knowledge to the developed world
instead of unskilled labour to West Asia. Else, it should seriously
consider training the country’s children to grow bananas for western
multinationals like Dole, which has already commenced its operations
here.
Thankfully, Economic Development Minister
Basil Rajapaksa, a good listener, has been entrusted with the task of
negotiating with the striking dons. It is hoped that they will stop the
game of chicken forthwith, make compromises and find a solution. And
fast!