The Need for Professionalism instead of Politics in Education

This article appeared in The Island on Wednesday 2nd September 2009.

I hope I won’t be accused of being an alarmist when I say that our education system is like a patient who has reached the crisis stage in his or her illness, i.e., the turning point at which the patient’s condition will suddenly change for better or for worse. This is how many concerned people may view the situation at present. It is a bleak impression that is being burnt into our collective consciousness by, among other things, the rash of examination-related incidents which seem acts of crass negligence and dereliction of duty by those paid by the public for doing the work they are entrusted with. The errors reported in the media would sound very stupid and improbable under normal conditions. Questions had been set which were open to criticism in terms of their meaning and appropriateness. Then, there was the case of the occurrence of some questions in a trial paper set by a tuition master in the south for his students allegedly later appearing in an AL paper. This matter was raised in Parliament by an opposition MP, but the charge was later met with a vehement denial of any ‘leak of the paper’. I wonder whether the authorities were able to make this denial convincing enough to the concerned public, before it was apparently swept under the carpet, though I don’t doubt that the dismissal of the charge was based on clear, acceptable evidence. Perhaps, the charge should have been more explicitly refuted. Next, there were rumours about incidents of copying (though I saw none reported in the media). A rumour circulating among some AL students and their parents was that at a particular exam centre set up at a premiere boys’ school there was significant copying during certain science papers where some students copied off a book that passed from hand to hand under the very nose of the invigilator who turned a blind eye to the cheating. (This of course is mere hearsay; I cannot provide any authority for it; but there’s no smoke without fire, as the saying goes. I decided to mention this to show that copying too could probably be included in the list of allegations.)

The ideas expressed in this essay are my personal views which, I believe, many others would share. I am voicing them here as a civic minded person in the hope that the exercise may in some small way contribute towards the amelioration of the educational prospects of our country. The essay should not be construed as an indictment of the persons handling the subject at the highest level. My opinion is that they are doing a difficult job as efficiently as the circumstances permit. The malaise that education suffers from in common with the rest of our public service is not of their making, but the evil legacy of decades of politicization of education and the resultant mismanagement under different regimes.

The errors in question papers, and numerous other lapses reported in the media, and also those unreported, but rumoured among the general public, seem so stupid and unlikely under normal circumstances, unless intentionally contrived, that they would naturally prompt many to suspect sabotage by unscrupulous elements among educational personnel both at the national and provincial levels against the government at the expense of our innocent children.. Whether such errors and lapses were acts of sabotage or genuine, unintended shortcomings is something that must be thoroughly investigated; and if there is reason to believe that offences have been committed, the individuals responsible must be punished, and the victims compensated in an appropriate manner.

In the absence of such investigations, to blame these glaring errors, and acts of commission and omission on supposed saboteurs in the department among those appointed to their posts in the past through political patronage by the main party in the opposition today is worse than an unsatisfactory answer to the problem, for it is a charge that could be invariably leveled back against the party currently in power, in the event of some reversal of fortune in the future, because, as far as we can remember, both the major parties have resorted to the practice of gratifying political supporters by appointing them to state institutions, at least in some cases irrespective of their qualifications.

The trading of charges and countercharges between the ruling party and the opposition has been a traditional ploy used by politicians to hide their own failures. This is due to the fact that politicians in general are mostly concerned with gaining and remaining in power whatever national interest demands. Education is one subject that must be treated as a vital national issue. Educational policies must be decided on, and formulated in consultation with the opposition so that periodic regime changes that are usual in a functioning democracy do not disrupt the smooth functioning of the system.

The abysmal inefficiency of our education system so plainly revealed in numerous crises brought to our notice by the media (school admission fiascoes, bribe taking school authorities, blunders in test papers, school textbooks of inferior quality, political patronage in teacher appointments and transfers, mismatch between the courses especially at the higher education level and the real needs outside, hooliganism among students who allow themselves to be manipulated by discredited politicians, and so on) cannot be obviated by the increasing number of new institutions opened, or fresh recruits absorbed into the system.

This state of affairs has left an immense vacuum, which private entrepreneurs are trying to fill with or (mostly) without government involvement. The economic losses or gains of this unofficial ‘privatization’ of education still remain to be calculated. What is certain, however, is that the state is in danger of losing its initiative in providing the nation with the proper education it needs to businesspersons, whose altruism or patriotism cannot be guaranteed.

There is a growing, already massive, parallel education system in the form of pre-schools, international schools, private tuition centres, and tertiary education institutions affiliated to foreign universities. These too run on wealth produced within the country. And it behoves the government to check that this kind of involuntary (total or partial) duplication of costs that the nation is called upon to bear is worth it, and that the country gets a fair return for its money.

Perhaps, private involvement in education is unavoidable in our present circumstances, (and privatization of education should not be treated as necessarily bad), but the state should not relinquish its fundamental responsibility for the education of the nation’s young. Since education is a matter of national importance it should not be entirely or even predominantly left to private enterprise. The government must properly regulate it so as to turn it into a useful adjunct to the state education system for the purpose of pursuing national educational goals set by the state.

The recent eruptions should be treated as the latest eye-openers to us in this context. Trying out palliatives without removing the root causes of the disease – in the form of ad hoc measures to make the symptoms disappear temporarily – is no solution. There is much more than meets the eye here. To completely reverse the downward trend in education will involve nothing less than our wholehearted commitment to a distinct, nonpolitical, national programme of reformation formulated through the consensual participation of all.

This might be a tall order. But it must be fulfilled for the sake of our children. However, we need not wait until that object is completely realized to initiate a meaningful rehabilitation of education. We can begin with the largest, most vital, most enduring factor of all in this connection: the management of the workforce, the human resources, i.e. the teachers and the administrators, that correspond to the soldiers, sailors, and the air force personnel and their officers who did the actual fighting in the battlefield against the terrorists in the recent civil war.

The possible way forward has already been demonstrated by the manner in which the successful military campaign against terrorism was handled by President Mr. Mahinda Rajapakse. He defined the government’s policy, provided the necessary executive direction, and entrusted the job to a handful of handpicked ‘technocrats’ (read ‘military experts’ in this case); the latter in turn inspired and led an army of 100,000 and other defence personnel on a heroic mission for the sake of a well conceived, invaluable, sacred, national cause until ultimate victory was achieved.

Education is a sacred cause of the same order. In fact, it will exercise more influence than the war on the generations to come, and will be on a much larger scale too, as its theatre of operations will be the whole of the island. However, it will be comparatively less expensive to the country. What is to be done basically is mobilizing the already available human and material resources. Like such matters as national defence and health, education is a subject that should not be entirely delegated to provincial control (at least as long as the present conditions prevail). Education must be centrally planned and implemented, with a degree of decentralization in certain areas such as teacher appointments, and transfers within the provinces, conduct of term tests, etc. subject to the central government’s approval.

The existing managerial hierarchy can be used with a few adjustments where necessary under the central authority of the minister of education. His responsibility will be as usual to execute the educational policy of the government, and provide the necessary financial wherewithal., and leave the management to a team of educational experts who are also good administrators, not dilettantes, or non-playing captains from other fields. All administrators must be people who had previously served as teachers at some level.

A prime responsibility of the establishment is to do everything possible to keep the officers and the teachers contented, subject of course to the inevitable economic constraints that a developing country like ours must face. It is only then that we could expect a high level of performance from them.

A mechanism for regular supervision and assessment of the teachers must be built into the system. The supervisor should not project himself or herself, or be seen, as an adversary by the teachers, but as a guide and a collaborator. The supervisor on any particular occasion could be the school head, a regional education officer, or a higher authority (all of whom are a part of the supervisory mechanism mentioned earlier). Each encounter with the supervisor should be a pleasant experience for the teacher, and an opportunity for further education and professional development. This I would describe as ‘collaborative supervision’.

It must be made compulsory for teachers to constantly update their knowledge, both in terms of their subject knowledge, and professional expertise. This should be ensured through short periodic tests, and interviews (which could be conducted during the supervisor’s visit).

Good performance must be rewarded through promotion to higher levels of the service, public commendation, or monetary benefits in addition to normal remuneration (any one or a combination of these as appropriate). When good performance is rewarded thus, unsatisfactory performance will be automatically punished, for such good prospects will be unachievable through means other than professional conduct.

Education, like the health service, is especially susceptible to financial exploitation by the unscrupulous. There are no quick fixes, and money should not be squandered on such. What I feel is that a lot can be achieved in education with the resources we already have plus a little more money which we certainly can afford to spend without much difficulty.

Professionalism instead of politics should be our slogan.

Rohana R. Wasala

What does it mean to learn a language?

Previously published in The Island (Wednesday 30^th September 2009)


The cue for writing the following came from Susantha P. Hewa’s well written piece “Improving fluency: thank Vs ‘thank karanna’” (Midweek Review, 09.09.09). Susantha’s thesis, as I understand it, is that one’s ability to liberally intersperse one’s mother tongue conversation with English words does not reflect one’s fluency in the English language and that one’s fluency in a language comes (to quote the writer’s own words) from “… acquisition or unconscious assimilation, which involves a number of automatic adjustments that a learner would experience over a period of time the length of which would depend on such factors like age, exposure and immediate language environment”.

This, I think, is a valid observation to make on an existing state of affairs among Sinhala speakers who have experienced some association with English. Such (intentional or unintentional) mixing of Sinhala vocabulary with a copious dose of anglicisms is probably an inescapable consequence of the psychological, sociocultural, economic, and political power that English exercises on us. English is still seen as a means of achieving and demonstrating social distinction in our country where most people harbour a diehard class-consciousness (a situation that must change sooner or later, sooner rather than later). But it also reflects a relaxed attitude towards a foreign language that was once feared as a ‘kaduwa’ ( ‘sword’- a symbol of inaccessibility as well as oppression).

But what makes us identify such anglicized utteranes as specimens of the Sinhala language? Though Susantha does not himself pose this question, a potential answer to such a query is implicit in his references to Sinhala suffixes such as eka, ekak, karanna as “agents of ‘sinhalizing’ those English words” introducing “the all important structural adjustments to fit all those English words into Sinhala” (italics mine).

The examples given in that article, though with a preponderance of English words, are recognized as Sinhala sentences because of their characteristic Sinhala linguistic structure. The structural adaptation of English words to the requirements of Sinhala morphology and syntax is achieved through the use of typical Sinhala elements such as the affixes eka, ekak, karanna.

In the study of language, structure refers to the patterned organization of linguistic features such as phonology (speech sound patterns), morphology (formation of words), syntax (the way words are combined into sentences), and semantic (sense or meaning) relations . The organization of these structural elements is rule-governed. For example, there are phonological rules, morphological rules, etc.

This is a highly complex phenomenon, and is what distinguishes human language from animal signifying systems. That language is biologically and genetically specific to the human species has not been conclusively disproved yet (This statement is subject to verification by the latest findings in the field, though). Humans are endowed with an innate capacity for language. Each of the thousands of different languages found in the world is a particular realization of this innate linguistic faculty in us humans.

All normal children have the unique human ability of acquiring the language spoken around them by unconsciously discovering the structural rules of that language, and applying them to construct the grammar of the language (i.e. they acquire what linguists call linguistic competence, or the declarative knowledge of language) which is stored in their long-term memory; but children must also learn the rules concerning how language can be appropriately used in a social cultural context, which capacity is called communicative competence or procedural knowledge of language. Learning a language involves the mastery of both of these competencies.

It has been proposed that the critical age for the acquisition of languages is from birth to age 7 years. Children are believed to be capable of unconsciously ‘picking up’ more than one language easily during this period, when the conducive environment for such language development is available.

The question has not apparently been resolved whether a second language (or even a third) is usually acquired in the same unconscious way or consciously ‘learned’ by adult learners (i.e. –for this essay- those who have already learned their first language, and also passed the critical age for language development). However, various theories about second language acquisition/learning have been offered. For example, Stephen Krashen (early 1980s) presented his acquisition/learning hypothesis. He drew a distinction between acquisition (the unconscious process through which children acquire their mother tongue) and learning (conscious study of the rules of a language that is done by language learners in a school, for instance). According to Krashen, conscious learning does not contribute to the acquisition process which, he maintained, is triggered by the learner’s exposure to natural communication in the target language. The learner’s conscious knowledge of the rules of the particular language functions only as a ‘monitor’ that checks the accuracy of the target language utterances that the learner makes by drawing upon his or her acquired linguistic system. (The tightrope-walk-like strenuous mental effort I made as a ten-year old, born into a non-English speaking family, trying to practice speaking English ‘correctly’, was perhaps due to this, I reflected much later.)

The acquisition/learning hypothesis is a basic assumption that underlies Krashen’s Natural Approach to second language teaching. One of the fundamental pedagogical implications of the hypothesis is that learners should be presented with an abundance of comprehensible input for the development of the ‘receptive’ skills of listening and reading at the initial stage; speaking is expected to ‘emerge’ subsequently.(This situation is supposed to parallel natural language development in children).

An alternative theory is that second language acquisition results from the activation of the same innate language learning mechanisms that cause first language acquisition.

These and various other hypotheses have both their advocates and their detractors. Though none of these ideas could claim anything like absolute validity, they nonetheless provide some strong strands of useful ideology for the formulation of practical pedagogies.

In a mass English-as-a-second-language teaching situation, we cannot solely depend on natural acquisition for success, because, though that would be ideal, it will clearly prove a luxury we can hardly afford in terms of time and resources. We need to resort to a golden mean. Opportunities for conscious learning (through overt teaching) and quasi-communication activities (in classroom generated ‘authentic’ situations) through English must be made available for the learners. In other words, a proper balance of acquisition and learning opportunities should be contrived.

In Sri Lanka today, there is a lot of English in use; it is no longer a menacing bogey. (The trend towards the emergence of a people-friendly English learning environment is being encouraged by the new English teaching project launched under presidential initiative.) English is becoming a familiar part of our day-to-day life. Hence perhaps the propensity among many to pepper their speech with some English words when they communicate in their native tongues, though in most cases this demonstrates a desire to flaunt a knowledge of English that they don’t really possess!

If the practice of seasoning their speech with a sprinkling of anglicisms replaces a serious attempt to learn the language by those who need to do so, such a scenario is only to be regretted as harmful to the future of English in this country as well as our native tongues. However, the penchant for communication in English evident among our people can easily be channeled in the right direction if the authorities provide the necessary leadership and guidance with the collaboration of the public.


Rohana R. Wasala