Last lines for Kannangara?
Education is a word that would give any other word a good run for money in the matter of wordprostitution. It has been and probably will be lipserviced so much that if there was a metaphorical lip balm, supply will never be able to meet the demand of chaffed lips.
Education is talked of as a basic human right. We are told that no child should be left behind. We are told that education has to match the demands of the overall economic system where those who enter the job market have skills that are actually marketable. We are told that over and above this, education should be wholesome and equip citizens with knowledge and understanding necessary to face all life’s challenges, better their life chances and up the quality of the collective. In all this, the tenets taken as fundamental, directly or indirectly, draw from the ideas first articulated by C.W.W. Kannangara where equal opportunity or access is considered a ‘non-negotiable’. It is this element that often provides fuel to those who oppose the privatization of education or even educational facilities that levy fees.
Times have changed, clearly. The market rules as it has for several decades now. Quality has a price and not everyone can pay. Those who peddle their skills in the education sector tend to get slotted in terms of their approximate worth. Quality, in this system, moves up and few have the monetary height to pick things up from the high tables of education. This is a system that has and one might add necessarily has monetary ‘little people’ (shall we say?) who, again necessarily, can only pick at crumbs.
Today, no one can say there’s discrimination on account of ethnic, caste or religious identity. Class is where the rub is. Every day, somewhere in this island, a school is either being shut down or so declining in quality courtesy lack of good teachers that they do little or nothing for the children. Every January, little children are accompanied by their parents to attend school for the first time. It is unreasonable to expect all of them to graduate into doctors, engineers or accountants, but if the majority does not even make it to the O/Ls, it’s an indictment of system and not general intelligence of the students.
Needless to say, what we get is unacceptable levels of unemployment and under-employment, at least in terms of potential. Simply, the system does not allow a reasonable proportion of the labor force to reach its full potential. Disenchantment and even disgruntlement are not congruent with the Kannangara vision of education providing lasting value to the nation. They feed rebellion which, as this country has experienced, result in body blows that only exacerbate the problem.
How then can we develop, as per the Kannangara Vision, the heads, hands and hearts of our children?
Once again we have to return to policy. Once again we have to return to ensuring that all children go to school and obtain a quality education. If it’s not going to be ‘all public’, then there has to be a way to ensure a quality-spread that delivers on objective. We have to talk about checks and balances. We have to talk about regulations, monitoring and evaluation, and of course penalties. No educational institution, whether state or private, should be allowed to get away with slipshod services. There cannot be ‘freedom of the wild ass’ when it comes to the core elements of a school curriculum, ‘core’ being determined by the latest thinking about education.
We have had lots of policy statements. There’s never enough money of course, but the key question is whether the ‘little’ money is being spent effectively. There is ‘access’ on paper. Is there continuity? Is it head, hands and hearts on paper and headless and heartless in reality?
Finally, if ‘Kannagara’ is made for lip-service, wouldn’t it be the honourable thing to do to bury that great man’s ideas along with a headstone that says ‘Didn’t happen, never will, forget it’?