City School of Architecture, Graduation (2015)
Architect Harsha Fernando, Chairman, Board of Directors of the City School of Architecture, Professor Lal Balasuriya, Head of the School, members of the teaching faculty, Professor Elena Marco of UWE, Graduands who will receive your awards today and their families; Distinguished Guests.
It is a pleasure to join all of you this evening as the City School of Architecture completes another successful program for students who have had the privilege of studying in this institution. A graduating ceremony is a day of shared celebration for students, staff and their families. As students celebrate their own endeavors and achievement today, they will I am sure remember and recall the support and inspiration they were privileged to receive from their teachers and their families who helped them to realize a dream.
I thank the Chairman and the Board of Directors and the Head of the School Professor Balasuriya for inviting me to be the Guest of Honor at this event. I have been a member of the academic community of this country and institutions overseas for many decades. This is the first time that I have been invited as a guest to a graduation at a school of Architecture. My generation in particular were brought up in this country to think that there are two separate cultures in education – the disciplines of science and technology and the humanitiesand the social sciences. “The two culture” perception prevented people like me, who decades ago wanted to study architecture from doing so. We as “Arts” students did not have the “golden key” of a background in mathematics science and technology; for we were divided into “Arts” and “Science” streams in our early teenage years. So I have had to be satisfied with chasing the dream of an education is architecture indirectly through my brother, Architect Chandana Ellepola. The City School of Architecture has contributed to professional education in the country by opening the doors of their profession to a wider cohort of students than in many past decades.
When Professor Balasuriya invited me to this event, I reflected on the kind of address I should make this evening, to a younger generation of students located in a new environment of learning. Communication is a great challenge in this era of “knowledge based” and “virtual” learning, and the practice of following multiple courses on the internet through information technology; For forty years as a law teacher I used “talk and chalk,” and encouraged my students to access a wide range of literature in a library. The love of good books, reflection and discussion of what we read was part of the excitement of learning. A “Google search” on the internet was not a shortcut to working on a project or writing an essay because computers were not available and there could be no press button search for information and materials. In a recent conversation with my pre-teen grandchildren as I reflected on speaking at this event, I asked them how they thought I could communicate ideas in a manner that would interest an audience of young people. They are all ‘whiz kids’ at the computer. The eight year old’s answer was swift and precise. “Don’t lecture to them Athie” she said. “They will not like being lectured to. Ask them to read something, get the information and write an opinion piece”! However it is not easy to shed old practices that easily. So with some apology, I will use this time to share some thoughts on matters that concern me, as a citizen of this country, when I think about the profession of architecture that you will qualify to join today.
We are currently witnessing in medical education the manner in which students with passion and commitment to study become guinea pigs because state institutions and professional bodies can not link with each other with generosity, rationality, understanding and tolerance. The cancer of politicization masks the issues and prevents rational decision making in the interests of the country and professional education. Politicians whether they be the professional types or politicized student activists foster insecurity among students, and do not help them to understand the reality that this country needs a public/private mix in higher education and professional training. Professional education in Sri Lanka has unfortunately been trapped in crisis ever since all citizens of our country, irrespective of their economic and social status acquired a right to claim what has been described as that “pearl of great price” of free education, pioneered by the late C.W.W. Kannangara.
A partnership between the state and the corporate sector can help to create institutions such as the City School of Architecture that can overcome many of the problems faced by the state sector in education. However in creating this partnership these institutions in my view must also accept the need for quality control and evaluation so that professional institutions do not pursue the goal of economic efficiency and profit but emerge as “not-forprofit”educational institutions. This “notfor-profit” model, is followed by many great private institutions of the world. “Not-forProfit” has a conceptual meaning.