Vowels and consonants, rich dads and poor dads

It is likely that Tamil students, like successful Sinhalese and other students, outperformed some other Sinhalese, Tamil and Muslim students because they were better prepared to take examinations. Genetic factors and cultural conditions may account for this superior performance – Pic by Shehan Gunasekara  

Several decent and rational persons of Sinhalese ethnicity point to the disproportionate number of Tamil students who were admitted to the medical and science faculties in the fifties and sixties as evidence of unfairness, if not perfidy, and an indication of the discrimination endured by Sinhalese students. 

Several decades after the imposition of ‘standardisation’ the heat that this debate about disproportionate admissions has largely dissipated. It may be time to revisit this unfortunate milestone in Sri Lanka’s evolution as an independent state where every citizen is supposedly equal. Standardisation, like a malignant tumour, would metastasise leading to the blood-soaked events of July 1983. 

To show unfairness, some invoked statistics. But statistical anomalies have no significance in competitive endeavours. It is likely that Tamil students, like successful Sinhalese and other students, outperformed some other Sinhalese, Tamil and Muslim students because they were better prepared to take examinations. Genetic factors and cultural conditions may account for this superior performance. While accepting the fact that while only a few win the genetic lottery, students from all communities are gifted although not as much as the outliers who won in the genetic lottery. 

A case can be made out that other factors flip the tipping point. A supportive family environment, access to good teachers and learning materials and an ability to read widely in English will enhance a student’s performance. The standardisation project that involved arbitrary grade levels imposed on the basis of name endings was both discriminatory and immoral. Because Sri Lanka’s future depends largely on properly educated students, parents, educationists and others should continue their demand for meaningful reforms. 

Such reforms would include the introduction of diversity in classrooms, modernise curricula, upgrade facilities, and increase resources. Given the good results of Singapore’s education system that recognises the power of the knowledge of English in the 21st Century, the country could imitate its practices and gradually transition to universal education in English. 

Unless there is evidence to show that through some malignant favouritism process (of which there is no evidence), Tamil students got higher marks enabling a disproportionate number of admissions to medical and science faculties, proponents of the unfairness theory would have to take their argument to its logical conclusions as follows: (a) The New York Marathon is rigged because how is it that among the thousands of participants, the winners tend to be for East Africa, particularly Ethiopians and Kenyans? (b) Mossad has infiltrated the Nobel Committee because how else to explain the large number of Jewish Nobel laureates drawn from a tiny ethnic group of Ashkenazi Jews compared to the billions of others on the planet? And finally (c) Does the very high performance of Chinese and Indians in the American schools mean that there is a sinister cabal of Asians conspiring against white students, and exacerbating this outrage by rigging the Spelling Bee contest in favour of Indian Americans?

Science provides a plausible explanation for the impressive performance of Tamil students. It must be emphasised that all the available places in medical and science faculties were not taken up by Tamil students. It was just that their numbers were not proportionate to their population. It could well be, and probably was the case, that the successful Tamil students had a genetic advantage over those Tamil and non-Tamils who got lower grades. 

Princeton University Press has published a book by Kathryn Paige Harden, a behaviour geneticist, entitled ‘The Genetic Lottery: Why DNA Matters for Social Equality.’ The book is published at a time when there is a deep divide in America. Those on the Left insist that genes don’t really matter while those on the Right assert that genes are the only things that matter. The truth it would seems lies somewhere midway. In a project entitled the ‘genome-wide association study’ (GWAS), researchers, who focused on educational attainment, found 1,300 sites on the genome that are correlated with success in school. This could mean that the successful Tamil, like the successful non-Tamil students, who gained admission, benefitted from genes that allowed them to beat out the competition. 

Nature versus nurture

While the success of all students to limited places in the medical and science faculties could be linked to the sites in their genomes that produce successful educational outcomes, this can’t be the whole story. The endless debate over nature versus nurture will go on, but one cannot deny the role, perhaps a tipping point in achievement, of nurture. 

It is said that one cannot make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. But one may have all the silk but lack the other resources necessary to make a silk purse. Just as carrot and cabbage seeds will flourish when planted in the rich soil of Nuwara Eliya and Bandarawela but will wither and die if planted on Delft Island, students who have genome sites linked to achievements in education will not prosper unless nurturing conditions are present. 

Culture could provide nurturing conditions. Because education was seen as the principal avenue of upward mobility in Tamil communities living in the north where farming was difficult, an emphasis was placed on educating children. This synced with the wider Tamil culture of science achievement associated with the math genius Ramanujan and others who excelled in the sciences. Bengali and Keralite culture also places a huge emphasis on education. This is why the child of a Bangladeshi taxi driver in New York has a better chance of admission to the Ivies rather than the son or daughter of a millionaire rapper. 

A micro-focus of the writer’s high school class in a Colombo Catholic school sheds some light on the tipping point role played by nurture. The class consisted of Sinhalese, Tamils, Muslims, Burghers, and other communities including Sindhis and Borahs. The outliers were, in terms of wealth, students from Sindhi and Borah families. The average wealth of the other students’ families was within a fairly narrow band. 

The performance of the students after graduation was good, or as good as may be expected from a typical class in a good Catholic school. Four students became priests. Militia murdered one priest who was thought to be sympathetic to JVP insurgents. One student, who chose a life of service and dedication shunning the glittering career of a professional that would have undoubtedly been his, still ministers to the poor and the underprivileged. The third priest left his robes and taught at some of the top academic institutions in the US. And the fourth shifted to a ministry in another Christian denomination. 

The grade produced a top-class singer and musician who has delighted millions with his Sinhala songs. A lawyer, hailed as one of Sri Lanka’s best, and a dentist, a future president of the OPA, who came from an over-achieving clan, also emerged from the grade. There were others who became doctors, accountants, and CEOs of major listed companies. Finally, the grade produced a general who valiantly repelled an LTTE attack only to be assassinated later in Anuradhapura.

A distinctive outlier in terms of performance, was a freakishly clever Tamil student whose father was a government bureaucrat. He obtained nine distinctions in the SSC, and obtained a First Class in Medicine garnering all but one of the gold medals on offer. (This was at a time unlike the present where grade inflation sometimes outpaces rupee inflation. To put this achievement in perspective, this student was the first student to obtain a first class in Medicine since the late Dr. R.P. Jayawardene, a brother of the late President.) But there was another student, this time a Sinhalese, several grades senior, who was also an outlier in achievement. Year after year he would win multiple prizes including one named after his grandfather and funded by his father with no dark mutterings of ‘nepotism’ by others. He too graduated with a first class.

The nurturing environment of the school and one’s families played an important part in the achievements of the class. An argument can be made that there was a secret sauce in the nurture component. Students from a wide range of ethnicities and all the religions of the country were in the grade. This was a powerful socialising factor and may have empowered those in the class with superior people skills like empathy and tolerance that contributed to their success later. 

It could be confidently claimed that there wasn’t a racist bone in the vast majority of that class. In the tributes paid to the brilliant Sinhalese student when he passed away, nobody spoke of his brilliance because that would have been redundant. Instead, they spoke of his loyalty, ethics, trustworthiness and willingness to help others. It is plausible to think that the rich experience of socialising with students from a wide spectrum of backgrounds and the empathy developed are important contributors to future success.

Is it really a coincidence that when one reads of hateful statements made against another community or religion with such deadly venom that would make a spitting cobra hiss with envy, they most often come from the mouths of those who studied in a mono-ethnic – religious school? A madrassa mindset cannot develop in a school that has students from all communities and religions. Students of all communities will be enriched in a student class that reflects the rich diversity of the country. 

Because the Tamil students who successfully gained admission to the Medical and Science did so by fair means, it is important to consider the morality of subsequent burdens imposed by standardisation on succeeding generations of Tamil students.

While attending a law conference in Macau, a European academic told the writer of his experience while teaching in a leading Indian law school. After grading the papers, certain so-called high caste students would demand a grade review purely on the basis that they deserved better grades because of their caste. They would be outraged that a so-called lesser caste student obtained a better grade and wanted their grade to be changed to reflect their superior caste status. The academic flatly refused to do this. However, he told the writer that when the final results were published after a committee review from which he was excluded, the high caste students’ grades were bumped up over those of the ‘lower’ castes. He was powerless to correct the injustice.

Sri Lankans could rejoice that this pernicious practice does not exist in the country. It would be inconceivable for university admissions or honours to be based on caste although caste plays a factor in admission to some Nikayas. The Indian constitution provides for reverse discrimination through a reserved caste system which perhaps accounts for the large numbers of Indians of the Brahamin caste who work as deans in American universities. The Sri Lankan constitutions have never had a comparable provision. If a criterion of caste for university admission is so distasteful and unthinkable, how come a criterion of ethnicity is relevant for university admission in Sri Lanka? 

The euphemism called ‘standardisation’

The euphemism called ‘standardisation’ introduced by Mrs. Bandaranaike and implemented by her hatchet man, the late Badi-ud-din Mahmud, was no different than caste-based admissions because it rewarded or punished students because of birth origins over which the students had no control. At this point, Sri Lanka joined Malaysia in factoring in a birth-origin criteria for university admissions. To put things in perspective, a brilliant Sinhalese who is a Malaysian citizen and obtained three A grades, but who because she is not a Malay Muslim, could be denied admission in favour of a Malay Muslim who obtained three Cs in the A Level. It is doubtful that any beneficiary of the standardisation system in Sri Lanka would consider this fair. 

The ‘standardisation’ system gave an answer to the distraught Juliet’s question, “What’s in a name?” As it turned out, a lot. If one’s surname ended with a consonant such as ‘M’ or ‘H’ or ‘N’ then one could be the daughter of an impoverished Tamil fisherman family who studied with an oil lamp by her side but still be required to score higher marks in the A levels than someone with a surname ending with a vowel such as ‘A’ or ‘E’ a daughter of a rich family who had the benefit of multiple private tutors and was educated in one of the better schools in Colombo. (These name endings are society specific assumptions because in America, the Anglo-Saxon (‘WASP’) are the ones whose names end with a consonant.)

At this point, it is useful to be revisit the opening paragraph of John Rawls in his seminal work, ‘A Theory of Justice’. “Justice,” he wrote, “is the first virtue of social institutions, as truth is of systems of thought. A theory however elegant and economical must be rejected or revised if it is untrue; likewise, laws and institutions no matter how efficient and well-arranged must be reformed or abolished if they are unjust. Each person possesses an inviolability founded on justice that even the welfare of society as a whole cannot override.” A powerful ethical statement eloquently expressed has influenced generations of jurists and philosophers the world over. Unfortunately, justice as an organising principle of Sri Lankan society has never been important much less a priority. The crass nature of Sri Lankan society manifest in almost every area of public life is the result.

Despite standardisation, Sinhalese students still have to cope with disadvantages imposed on them by short-sighted education ministers. They had no option other than to drink from the poisoned chalice that was the ‘Sinhala Only’. Millions of students were denied the key that would unlock the treasure chest of knowledge, knowledge of the English language. This gap in their education drastically reduced the potential for associative learning. Now many study Korean to get menial jobs in Korea! 

The distance and online learning requiring computers and Wi-Fi caused by the pandemic is a further impediment. Children in families where one or both parents are migrant labour, are deprived on the parental care and supervision which can rarely be duplicated in extended families. Finally, like all students in non-urban areas, they learn in an under-resourced environment. They were like the unlucky cabbage and carrot seeds forced to share with donkeys a parched field in Delft Island. 

Using the analogy of the country as a coconut estate, the youth can be analogised to young coconut plants in the nursery section which must be tended to with the utmost care. They must receive the fertiliser, water, and other nutrients that promote the optimum growing conditions. Translated into the reality, the State must provide, in addition to good nutrition, access to an education that includes a good education of the English language and science subjects, as well as dedicated and competent teachers. This would change the present system where universities keep producing unemployable graduates who are absorbed into a bloated public service and here too only if they have political patronage. 

In America, there are elite middle schools where the annual tuition exceeds fifty thousand American dollars. When one reads the resumes of those tech-giants CEOs, one never finds students who graduated from these elite schools. The resumes boast of an MIT education, but the MIT is not the one with the zip code, ‘02139’ in the Bay State. The ‘MIT’ in question refers to the Manipay Institute of Technology! These CEOs of tech giants studied in simple but good Indian schools. Can’t Sri Lanka provide a similar education? Of course, it can! Sri Lankan graduates educated in a properly resourced environment can make the country another Bangalore and perhaps compete with these Indians who now helm most of the gigantic tech companies in America.

Robert Kiyosaki In his best-selling book, ‘Rich Dad, Poor Dad’ identified the qualities of the rich dad and the poor dad. The rich dad channelled his resources into investments that brought consistent dividends and capital gains. The poor dad, however, squandered resources on consumer items that depreciate in value swiftly and yield little or no returns. Poor dads are up to their eyeballs in consumer debt. Sri Lanka’s most important resources are its children. Investing in them is the way to go because the future welfare of the country depends on them. That would be a rich dad’s choice. A poor dad on the other hand will go on a spending binge on luxury vehicles for parliamentarians, engorge them further with perks and privileges, misdirect migrant remittances, borrow like a problem gambler from loan sharks, and splurge on sophisticated weaponry that are mostly toys for the boys. 

One can consider the present standard of education in Sri Lanka and contrast the present state with the state of education in the fifties and sixties. Which dad is responsible for the current parlous predicament, is not a difficult question to answer. 

The writer graduated from the faculty of law, University of Colombo. He practised cross border transactions law in the Asia Pacific region before teaching law at the Singapore Management University for 20 years before retirement.