Shaping our collective destinies through education, using lessons from the past

Hasty austerity measures, top-down policy decisions and narrow nationalistic views are threatening the very core of the progressive beginnings of our public education system – Pic by Shehan Gunasekara

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the global economy is being compared to the Great Depression – a crisis so widespread in the 1930s, that much of the world suffered a severe blow. What began with a stock market crash in the US affected both rich and poor countries in varying degrees and lasted until the beginning of World War II that set off more destruction under fascist regimes and imperial power struggles. 

It was around that time, when anti-colonial struggles were taking shape in many colonies, the free education policy of 1943 was introduced in Ceylon, laying the foundation for the sound public education system that we have today. From ensuring enviable literacy levels in the region to producing well-trained medical personnel who are now leading the country’s fight against COVID-19, free education has come to the rescue, be it in the short-term, or through our post-independence decades. 

The pandemic, which has exposed the entrenched inequalities in our society that makes coping significantly harder for some of us, has also foregrounded the many things our country got right in the past, such as our robust public health infrastructure, and our commitment to universal public education up to university. But instead of a concerted effort to build on those strengths, we see hasty austerity measures, top-down policy decisions and narrow nationalistic views threatening the very core of the progressive beginnings of our public education system. 

Most would agree that education must play an important role in our post-COVID futures. Those beholden to the private sector will predictably argue that expanding the free public education to fulfil that role is impossible during an economic crisis. But the historical trajectory of free education in Sri Lanka proves otherwise.

Education during an economic crisis

While many have heard of C.W.W. Kannangara, popularly referred to as the “Father of Free Education,” the story of how free education became an important pillar in post-independent Sri Lanka is not as widely known. Sri Lanka’s free education policy is traced back to the Report of the Special Committee on Education (1943), which recommended that education must be free from kindergarten to university, spelling out a vision with remarkable foresight. 

The special committee was appointed to come up with solutions to addressing the country’s rising education bill then. However, seeing the need for a comprehensive review of the education system and going beyond their remit, the commission sought representations from educators across the country on what kind of education that will benefit the people.  Inequality of access between the two systems at that time, the free vernacular and fee-levying English medium schools was identified as a key defect. It is significant that the Government of Ceylon, still a dominion of the British Empire, committed to free education when western democracies, including Britain, believed ‘free education’ up to university level was unfeasible.

The committee, led by Kannangara, endorsed the provision of equal educational opportunities with state support to cover the costs of such an extensive system. Responding to the argument on why parents with high income levels should not pay for their own children’s education, the committee said that those parents can contribute to the general revenue of the country. Given that a reorganisation of public finances was inevitable for reconstruction after the world war, the committee suggested that the state take a fresh look at taxation policy. 

In the early decades after independence, free education was strengthened under the import substitution regime as the state widened social welfare. The state also continued to support the rapid expansion of free education even when it faced a trade crisis in the 1960s, with measures such as the nationalisation of private schools, increasing enrolment in universities and accepting vernacular mediums of instruction. 

The district quota system followed in admitting students to the public universities, served as a mode of affirmative action, providing students from underprivileged regions enhanced opportunities to pursue higher education for free. 

Thus, with its beginnings in a post-colonial project, Sri Lanka’s free education captured people’s sentiments, charting a path for upward social mobility.

Introducing open economy policies in 1977 alongside trade liberalisation, privatisation, cuts to subsidies and social security weakened the welfare state. However, even despite the neoliberal turn, the authoritarian Jayawardena regime exercised caution in reforming the education sector. Fearing the political backlash, successive governments have refrained from completely dismantling our public education system, while supporting its privatisation by stealth.

Imperative for the democratisation of society

The architects of our education system stressed that a free public education system was essential for the democratisation of society at all stages, to “foster the idea of nationhood,” and to “develop a national consciousness.” 

The commission report recognises its task as such: “The character of an educational system depends upon the character of the society for which it is designed. In a totalitarian system the educational system is designed to establish among all sections of the population the opinions of those who for the time being control the destinies of the nation. We have assumed that our task was to recommend an educational system suitable for a democracy and that our main effort must be directed towards devising a system that will enable every citizen to play his full part in the life of the nation.”(pg.11)

The dominant austerity mindset seen in policy-making in recent times prevents democratisation from emerging as a key vision for education, undermining the meaning of public education, shifting it to individualised profit-oriented goals, that see education as a vehicle to the popular job market, and not as a process that encourages critical thinking. While a range of challenges strains our public education system, its problems are often narrowly framed around a single issue of ‘employable’ graduates. Producing employable graduates will not solve the deep crisis and malaise plaguing our economy today. Instead, an education that promotes egalitarian values can enable a better society to emerge.

The austerity policy thrust manifests in various ways, in the voucher systems and the insurance schemes set-up for school students, increasing the number of fee-levying courses offered at public universities and recent proposals to introduce charter universities and creating education zones to attract foreign investment. Online learning technologies adopted during the pandemic is now seen as another venue for commercialisation. 

Far from addressing the inadequacies of our current system, these measures based on technocratic solutions coming from the top, will make matters worse for the disadvantaged students that the original visionaries of education cared about. Deliberations about the varied ways in which people participate in the life of the country, asserting their rights or choosing their leaders, seldom enter the policy discourse nowadays.

Promoting pluralism

In contrast, the committee that studied the sector in the early 1940s decided to specifically address what it had deemed serious impediments – not just to public education, but also to nation building. Grappling with the fundamental need to “weld the heterogeneous elements of the population into a nation,” as the transition to a post-independence state was to happen soon after, the 1943 report discussed the problems of communalism and members of certain communities not being able to claim equality. 

The idea of nationalism is articulated thus in the report: “Though we emphasise the importance of establishing national unity through education, we urge precisely the reverse of the strident and intolerant nationalism with its national bigotry, its racial discrimination and its contempt for religion of all kinds, that is the fundamental cause of the present conflict. The nationalism that we hope to see established depends for its being on toleration and understanding.” (pg.13)

We must pause here and reflect on how the country, in the following decades, descended into the very intolerant nationalism, that the deliberators of our education policy saw as dangerous to our future. 

The language-based standardisation in university admissions, albeit implemented very briefly in the 1970s, was seen by Tamil-speaking students as openly discriminating against them. The curriculum followed over the years has failed to give due recognition to the histories of the minority communities and the ways in which communities have interacted with one another across linguistic and religious boundaries making the cultural landscape of the island mosaic and hybrid. Even today, various areas of the curriculum taught to school students need improvement, for they promote essentialist and reductive ideas about the cultural lives of the communities that inhabit the island.

The ethos of exclusivist nationalisms entrenched in our educational settings close off space for artistic expressions that nourish cultural diversity and plurality of memories. Rigid dress-codes imposed by the educational system in the name of nation, religion and culture hinders female teachers and students, especially those who come from minority communities, from choosing an attire they identify with and feel comfortable in. 

Furthering the threats to pluralism and democracy in the education sector, increased interference of the military in the affairs of the public universities in recent times has posed a formidable challenge to academic freedom. If we fail to arrest the cultural intolerance, nationalist chauvinism, and militarisation in the field of education, our state-run schools and public universities will continue to alienate minorities and women and have reduced control over the education they provide.

The free education system in Sri Lanka emerged out of the historical conjuncture of the Great Depression, the rise of fascism and imperial wars and anti-colonial struggles. What lessons can we learn from this historical example, from both its success and its failure? As we find ourselves in the midst of another historical moment following the global pandemic, with an economic crisis and rising authoritarianism looming already, how can we reimage education? Will we choose a vision for education that leads to democratisation or one that submits to totalitarianism? The path we choose now will shape the collective destinies of our children and our country for decades to come.

(Niyanthini Kadirgamar is a PhD student in Education at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Mahendran Thiruvarangan is attached to the Department of Linguistics and English at the University of Jaffna.)