The need to create ‘humane beings’ through education

After 73 years of Sri Lanka being a ‘high literacy’ country why is it that we are still ‘poor’? What is this poverty? Is it not beginning and ending with what we have wrongly perceived as ‘education?’ – Pic by Shehan Gunasekara

By Surya Vishwa 

Everybody is preoccupied with getting what is euphemistically called an ‘education’ but what exactly is it and what is it there for? What is it exactly? The end result of years of ‘education’ is a piece of paper which is the ‘certification’ one gets that states generally that one has got ‘educated’.

But what is there practically to show for it? Should there be crime and cheating and corruption if a country has ‘educated people?’ After 73 years of Sri Lanka being a ‘high literacy’ country why is it that we are still ‘poor’? What is this poverty? Is it not beginning and ending with what we have wrongly perceived as ‘education?’ 

We say that education needs to be ‘developed’. Often we equate this ‘development’ with high rise buildings or aping other ‘developed’ countries. We destroy trees rampantly, we destroy our heritage, we destroy our ancient traditional knowledge and our basic simple ways of being human and sharing our goods for the sake of being ‘modern’ and ‘developed’. Modern and ‘developed’ man has destroyed the planet and with all our technology we have only taught ourselves to destroy the planet and all species. We have created machines and we have become the machine that created the machine. We have become unfeeling, cynical and superior beings.  

In the post-independence era Sri Lanka has been attempting to create a workforce armed with the latest knowledge, technology and training and this has been the purported goal of educational reforms for the past seven decades. We have learnt from the West and other ‘developed’ nations but have we learnt from our ancient past? Have we learnt from the Gurukula and the Gurukulams and the Pirivena education structure we had? These educational frameworks had self-improving aspects such as introspection and contemplation as its core educational ethic.  Today education is equated with prestige and earning money at any cost. It is here that we have to resort to delving into our own heritage to look at creating a holistic educational model, at least now, late as it is. We have to admit that our country has not developed as expected although we seem to be copying well from other ‘educated’ nations and today the dream of every student is merely to leave the country without thinking twice about how they could contribute to their motherland. 

The question we have to ask and re-ask continually is whether we are looking at ‘wellbeing’ as a holistic equivalent to ‘development’ which is now synonymous with destruction of the environment and concrete structures. 

Is it the scarcity of natural resources, capital, technology, knowledge and skilled workforce which keeps our country away from true wellbeing or is it lack of introspection? Do we have a disconnectedness with who we are as human beings? Did we have it in our ancient past or did we learn from elsewhere to become fragmented pieces in the puzzle of existence?

Is our ‘education sector’ dedicated to developing the qualities such as honesty, truthfulness, empathy, kindness, discipline, and unselfish, frugal people who are willing to dedicate time, knowledge, skills, capital, technology and natural resources for the common good? Are we even developing youth who are able to think through a debate from all points of view and above all be respectful to another opinion? Is our post-colonial political sphere indicative of an ‘educated’ society?

Evidence we see right around us every day suggests that the current education system has failed to produce ‘humane’ beings.  One example is the brutal ragging that a 23- or 24-year-old in the final year in university seems to be capable of carrying out even inflicting death on another living being or driving them to suicide. If such a person gains the highest level of theoretical academic knowledge, what is the purpose? He or she has not learnt to be human and we are producing non-humans in our so-called education sector.

There is no evidence to suggest that the so-called ‘educated persons’ produced by the existing education system are honest, generous, unselfish, law-abiding and ready to dedicate their lives for the common good rather than the ‘uneducated’. those who may not have had formal qualifications. The country urgently needs an education system that is holistic, that embraces nature and all living beings, that encourages deep reflection and boosts creativity and all that is beautiful and aesthetic. In all our education reforms have we made adequate use of our artistes who are world class and ranging from poets to singers to film makers and painters? We have a modern education system that looks at all that is aesthetic as a waste of time and hence we produce youth who are cookie-cutter prototypes doing cookie-cutter prototype jobs. 

Creation, innovation and invention is the basic backbone of uniqueness of a nation. Sri Lanka’s ancestors were that. They created, they innovated and then invented. Today their efforts are marvelled at and to date succeed in providing us foreign exchange. Hence let us begin a proper discourse on the kind of genuine reforms needed and let them not be mere token ‘education reforms’.True education should change society from being spiritually undeveloped to a spiritually developed state. Humanity should thrive in such a state of being and should be evident in everyday life.

We should be able to succeed in creating the kind of humanity and wisdom that will make it difficult for diverse local and international agendas to thrive which are aimed at dividing people. As we contemplate wise educational reforms, let us remember that our ancient Sinhala civilisation was founded on high humanistic values and that we were never a civilisation that oppressed people based on skin colour or language or religion or any other difference.