Why the Maligawa Road Should Not Be Reopened
(First published in The Island/23rd July 2010 with some parts deleted to shorten the article)
The current proposal to reopen the road stretch adjacent to the Sri Dalada Maligawa in Kandy is being met with a show of approval as well as opposition, though on the whole the response on the part of the local Buddhist laity as well as the clergy has been rather lukewarm either way for some inexplicable reason (may be a case of the silence of the silent majority!). In any case, it appears that a final decision is yet to be taken in this regard. The delay affords the authorities an opportunity to reconsider the wisdom of restoring an anomaly on the sacred Maligawa premises that should have been permanently removed long ago.
Surprisingly, however, the Malwatte Prelate has no objection to the reopening, while the Central Province Governor is opposed to the move as reported in The Island newspaper on July 6 and 8 respectively. We hope that the wiser counsel of the Governor will prevail.
In the opinion of many people, an alternative route to and from downtown Kandy (i.e. an alternative to the one now traversing the Maligawa compound as it were) can be provided at little cost to the country by constructing a bridge across the Kandy lake at its narrowest point. An argument against such a project is that it will spoil the beauty of the place, but this can be easily countered by saying that a highway that is too close to the stately Maligawa edifice more seriously detracts from its beauty and majesty; besides, there is nothing to prevent the bridge from being designed appropriately incorporating compatible Kandyan architectural features that will enhance the beauty of the whole landscape.
A bridge across the lake is not a new idea. More than ten years ago, appalled by the thoroughly polluted state of the Kandy lake, I wrote an article entitled “The Kandy Lake and Its Future” to The Island. It was published on Friday 26th November 1999. The article included the following paragraph:
To reduce air pollution through motor traffic a bridge may be constructed across the Lake in an aesthetically pleasing manner where it is narrowest. (Such a bridge will not only lessen problems of pollution, it will also benefit all those who travel this way and the state by reducing fuel cost and vehicular wear and tear.) The motor-boat service now being operated on the Lake should be replaced with a non-fuel-consuming device such as a canoe, because the area that the Lake covers is quite small and even a small motor-boat can cause a relatively significant amount of pollution. Wooden boats will have the additional advantage of providing employment to a number of people and of adding some rural charm to the boat-riding experience that tourists, both local and foreign, love so much.
The idea about a bridge over the Kandy lake was something that had been already mooted at that time as I remember, though there was no sign of its being practically pursued. However, about six months later, The Island (Tuesday 13th June 2000) carried a news item to the effect that the then Ministry of Transport and Highways was considering a proposal to construct a bridge across the lake. The proposal was never implemented. (No reference is ever made, as far as I know, to the environmental pollution caused by the motor-boat service in the lake. This is perhaps because many people would think that the pollution caused by the boat is nothing compared to that caused by motor-car exhaust fumes around the lake.)
There is no question about the necessity of solving Kandy’s traffic congestion and air pollution problems. But the reopening of the Maligawa road will not significantly ease the situation caused by these problems. Even if it does (unlikely though that is), the reopening should not be allowed. Instead alternative ways of eliminating those hazards must be found. The stretch of road skirting the Maligawa too close to it must be permanently closed. This should have been done long before the terrorist attack on the Maligawa on January 25, 1998 which led to its closure by the authorities.
The preservation and protection of the Dalada Maligawa is a national obligation of the highest priority because of its unparalleled importance for us, which is twofold. First, it is the most venerated Buddhist shrine for the Buddhists within the country and for those in the wider world outside. Second, the Tooth Relic’s special connection with the temporal overlordship of the island, and the importance of the city of Kandy as the last royal capital invest the place with great historical significance for the nation; the general Kandy area which sits astride the focal point (at Katugastota) from where radiate the three ancient divisions of the state of Sri Lanka known as the ‘thrisinhalay’ (Ruhunu, Maya, and Pihiti) is sanctified by the blood of our patriotic forefathers who heroically fought against rapacious foreign intruders for safeguarding the independence of our beloved motherland.
A digression into history is necessary for me to make these points clear. Those timeservers who act as if they are ignorant of this must be reminded of what any ordinary Sri Lankan with some education knows about the Dalada Maligawa and Kandy the last capital of the kingdom of Sinhalay where it stands.
A Kalinga princess by the name of Hemamali travelled to Sri Lanka with her husband Prince Dantha disguised as ascetics about the year 310 BCE. She brought the Tooth Relic concealed in her hair. King Kirti Sri Meghavarna (301-328 CE) who was the ruler of Lanka at that time received them with great honour, and conducted them to Anuradhapura, the royal capital. He housed the relic within the precincts of the royal palace, and ordered an annual perahera to be held in its honour. Over the centuries it became a well established tradition to enshrine the Tooth Relic within the royal palace premises, and to hold an annual Dalada perahera. By the 12th century, a convention had developed whereby the custodianship of the Tooth Relic was accepted as conferring on the person the sovereignty over Sri Lanka. For this reason the protection of the Tooth Relic was of great religious and secular concern for the Sinhalese kings.
With the shifting of the capital city from Anuradhapura to Polonnaruwa, Vijayabahu I (1056-1111) built a Dalada Maligawa immediately to the north of the royal palace. Later, Parakramabahu I (1156-1183) and Nissanka Malla (1187-1196) also made imposing Maligawas to house the Tooth Relic. For the Sinhalese the link between the possession of the Tooth Relic and sovereignty over the island became indissoluble. Whenever the security situation deteriorated, the royal capital was shifted from one city to another: from Polonnaruwa to Dambadeniya under Vijayabahu III (1232-1236) who had saved the country from twenty-one years of cruel tyranny under the wicked invader Magha of Kalinga; again the capital was changed from Dambadeniya to Yapahuwa to Kurunegala, to Kotte, and finally to Kandy. The Tooth Relic was hidden in various locations, the Buddhist monks playing a major role in its protection. The connection between the custodianship of the Tooth Relic and royal power over the island was even internationally known, which attracted the hostile attention of certain foreign soldiers of fortune. Chandrabhanu was one of these. He made two unsuccessful attempts to seize the Relic and ascend the throne. He landed at Mahatittha with his Javaka army on his second attempt during the reign of King Vijayabahu IV (1271-1273). To the king he “sent forth messengers with the message: I shall take Tisihala; I shall not leave it to thee. Yield up to me therefore together with the Tooth Relic of the Sage, the Bowl Relic and the royal dominion. If thou wilt not, then fight.” Vijayabahu accepted the challenge, defeated the invader, and “united Lanka under the umbrella of his dominion” (Culavamsa , Part II, Geiger translation. Asian Educational Services, New Delhi and Chennai. 2003, p.187-88.) “Tisihala” refers, as Geiger explains on p.139, to the threefold division of the island into Patittharattha, Mayarattha, and Rohana, which correspond respectively to modern Pihitirata, Mayarata, and Ruhuna.
When Kotte was captured by the Portuguese, the monks fled the city surreptitiously carrying the Sacred Relic with them. They hid it in a safe place until it was again housed in the two-storeyed Dalada Maligawa built in Kandy by King Wimaladharmasuriya I (1592-1604) who ascended the throne there. (The present Dalada Maligawa is the same one built by King Wimaladharmasuriya, but it has undergone a number of periodic renovations since its inception.) The Kandyan Kingdom under Wimaladharmasuriya’s successors, for half of the nearly 450 years of predatory European aggression in various forms against our motherland between 1505 and 1948, had to bear the brunt of the relentless onslaughts of three European powers.
Writing about Vijayabahu III (mentioned above), who as a young warrior collected an army of combatants from the mountainous areas and attacked Magha to put an end to his depredations, the great D.C.Vijayawardane in his “The Revolt in the Temple” (1953) composed to “commemorate 2500 years of Buddhism, of civilization in Lanka, and of the Sinhalese nation…” praises the ‘mountaineers’ (as he calls them) as “always the last to be subdued and the first to revolt”.
The great rebellion of 1818 led by Keppetipola the Maha Dissawe of Uva , a heroic reaction to British perfidy, provides a piece of evidence for Vijayawardane’s assertion. In this connection, a reference to Professor Tennekoon Vimalananda’s “The Great Rebellion of 1818” (1970) is appropriate. Professor Vimalananda’s work of scholarship mainly draws on the 10,000 page report of the Select Committee of the British Parliament on Ceylon presided over by Mr Hume, which sat at Westminster from 1849-1850 to inquire into the grievances of people and the maladministration of the officials of the British Government in Ceylon. (The report contains records of official correspondence between Governor Robert Brownrigg and the Secretary of State, records of statements by British and native functionaries, etc who directly participated in the events connected with the rebellion, and numerous other records of evidence). The authoritative findings of the select committee categorically denounces the Governor’s deliberate attempt to evade commitments made under the Kandyan Convention. Professor Vimalananda gives an authentic account of the “heroic bravery and courage displayed by the Kandyan Peasantry against the might of the British Empire in a war in which the Sinhalese nearly inflicted defeat upon the invaders” which made the British Governor General Robert Brownrigg communicate his anxiety to the Home Government about the (British) Indian Government’s delay in sending British troops from India to Ceylon to deal with the situation.
The ferocity of the suppression of the uprising can be gauged from the following passage from M.A. Durand Appuhamy’s THE REBELS OUTLAWS AND ENEMIES TO THE BRITISH (M.D. Gunasena & Co. Ltd, 1990.):
The colour sergeant Calladine wrote in his diary, “at this time there was seldom a day passed but we had parties out scouring the country for a distance round, burning all they came across and shooting those they could not take prisoners”. He waxed lyrical in praise of the atrocities committed by him and his fellow British officers:
“But British courage still prevailing
Soon we made our foes to fly,
And their villages assailing,
Caused some hundreds for to die.
See their villages a-burning,
And their temples soon laid low.
This the wretches get for joining
With the jungle rebel foe.”
During the 1818 Kandyan rebellion Keppetipola temporarily secured the possession of the Dalada by having a monk remove it secretly from the Maligawa as mentioned in the above source; the rebel leader used the Relic to rally the peasants around him in support of his cause. But the leaders and their followers gave up the struggle when the Tooth Relic fell into the hands of the British because they thought that with the Relic in their possession the British were now the legitimate rulers of the country. That was the power the Tooth Relic had upon our people.
Thus, the Dalada Maligawa is a sacred living monument to that august history; it stands on ground hallowed by the blood of our patriotic forefathers who breathed their last defending the proud independence of our land; it enshrines the Sacred Tooth Relic of the Buddha the Enlightened One who taught his followers to extend loving kindness to every being irrespective of their colour, size, beliefs, qualities, age, importance, or whatever other attribute one could think of.
The rapacious Europeans did their damnedest to obliterate our Buddhist heritage. The Portuguese burnt down the historic Kelaniya Temple built, as the Sinhalese Buddhists have always believed, on a spot sanctified by the touch of the Buddha’s feet. The alien occupiers hemmed in the Dalada Maligawa with non-Buddhist structures to eclipse its majesty, and to reduce it into insignificance with a view to weakening the religious hold it had on our people. A statue erected in colonial times in memory of a British governor which had no religious significance was removed after Sri Lanka became a republic.
The Sri Dalada Maligawa is the holiest Buddhist shrine in the country and in the whole world. It enshrines the Tooth Relic of the Buddha which is venerated as if it were the living Buddha. For most of the period of its existence in Sri Lanka the Relic has been accorded the highest honour as a palladium, the possession of which was held to legitimize a ruler’s royal authority. A busy road in close proximity to it is not proper. That is why I believe that the Maligawa road should not be reopened, but that an appropriate alternative solution to the traffic and pollution problem must be found.
(Before mailing this write-up to the editor, I went and looked at the part of the Dalada Vidiya that still remains blockaded. I was encouraged by what I saw: the portion of the road parallel to the esplanade opposite the Maligawa was being paved with cement blocks, which I read as a sign that this road will not be reopened after all.)
Friday, July 30, 2010
Friday, July 16, 2010
What Is Happiness?
What Is Happiness?
(First published in The Island on Friday 16th July 2010)
Happiness is commonly defined as a state of mind marked by such pleasant feelings as satisfaction, contentment, freedom from anxiety, mental tranquillity, and other similar positive moods. The Chambers Thesaurus (Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd., 2004) lists twenty-four synonyms for the word “happiness” including joy, gladness, cheerfulness, contentment, pleasure, delight, gaiety, life, merriment, light-heartedness, exuberance, high spirits, elation, ecstasy, and euphoria. The list suggests the wide range and variety of feelings covered by the term happiness. No wonder the concept of happiness is sometimes described as a little too vague for precise definition.
Although we may not be able to say exactly what happiness is we know that “happy” is what we always want to be. Living and loving are two experiences we rarely ask questions about; we take them for granted. In the same way we don’t normally bother about what happiness is, or ask why we want to be happy. This may be because happiness is desired for its own sake, not as a means to an end.
In normal circumstances, there are other things that we set our minds on, such as knowledge, power, reputation, riches, and sound health. One might pursue these for their own sake, but they are still subject to the question “What for?”; and the ultimate answer may be something like “For self-fulfilment”, or “For a sense of well-being”, or “For the pleasure of gratifying sensual desires”, for which we may substitute one word “Happiness”. We follow many different goals in life; but all these are ancillary to the goal of personal happiness.
For thousands of years religions have recognized the general unsatisfactoriness of earthly existence, and have each advocated a specific course of religious conduct in order to escape from it and attain to a state of everlasting happiness after death. They also teach how people can achieve mundane as well as spiritual happiness here and now through prayer, practice of virtue, penance, pilgrimage, and fasting, etc. At any age for most people this kind of happiness is a distant ideal. For the average person, happiness consists in the pleasures of the body and mind.
Aristotle (384-322 BCE), the great Greek philosopher, explained what he considered the popular view of happiness thus: “What is the highest good achievable by action? … both the ordinary people and people of education and good judgement say it is happiness”. In all cultures in the world even today people share the same attitude towards happiness. A great tribute paid to happiness in modern times was its mention at the opening of the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence adopted by Congress on behalf of the Thirteen United States of America on July 4, 1776: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Buddhism, which inspires the majority of Sri Lankans, teaches its followers what is claimed to be the true nature of existence - its unsatisfactoriness, and the way of emancipation from that state of suffering. “Craving” is identified as the agent that perpetuates suffering by a process whereby a person comes into being again and again. The elimination of craving by the individual through the practice of the specific spiritual conduct suggested by the Master is shown to be the way to the realization of the supreme bliss of nibbana (freedom from the defilement of desire or craving). Buddhism also teaches how to live a happy life in this world in a way that is compatible with the practice of virtue. References to “sukha” (happiness) are as frequent as references to “dukkha” (suffering); on the whole, a follower of the teaching of the Buddha should always be happy, calm and confident amidst the vicissitudes of mundane existence. (The remarkable resilience that our people have demonstrated in the face of disastrous experiences such as the December 2004 tsunami and the recently concluded terrorist scourge may be attributed to the effect of this positive frame of mind inculcated in them by Buddhist teachings.) Contentment (santhutti) – a feeling of quiet happiness and satisfaction with one’s own lot acquired through wisdom – is praised as the supreme asset that one could possess. The Greek philosopher Socrates (469-399 BCE) echoes a similar view: “Good food and rich clothes, all possible luxuries, are what you call happiness, but I believe that a state of being where one wishes for nothing is the greatest of all bliss. To be able to approach the greatest happiness one must get used to being satisfied with little”. Religions which are based on other world-views too teach their adherents the way to liberate themselves from the imperfections of worldly existence, and attain to a state of everlasting happiness. All religious systems teach us how to achieve this ultimate liberation from the unsatisfactoriness of earthly life .
Generally, the ultimate happiness that each faith teaches as its summum bonum is achievable only after the extinction of an individual’s life on earth. However, the highest form of happiness that one can realize before death is that which results from a life of contemplation according to the traditions of religious and philosophical thinking both of the East and the West. Aristotle spoke about three kinds of happiness: the first is the happiness experienced by “ordinary” people (who, in contemporary terms, we may think of as those of the working class who are rightly or wrongly considered to equate happiness with immediate pleasures such as drinking, watching a play or a cricket match, etc); the second is the happiness of people of “superior refinement”, that is, the educated, sophisticated, and the materially better off who rely on achieving long-term goals such as career or business success to be happy; and the third, which Aristotle identified as the highest form of happiness, is the happiness produced by a contemplative life.
However valuable or exalted the happiness derived from a tranquil life of meditation may be, not everyone can pursue such happiness except perhaps occasionally; it will appeal to only a handful of individuals as we implied before. It is not suitable for ordinary people who want to raise a family, follow a profession, and fulfil obligations towards others, in short for people for whom “renunciation” is still not an option. Therefore let us focus on the temporal sort of happiness that is relevant to us all.
I mean the kind of less ethereal happiness that certain seventeenth and eighteenth century philosophers such as John Locke (1632-1704) and Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) defined. They argued that happiness correlates to the number of pleasures in one’s life. University of London psychology teacher Michael W. Eysenck, the author of HAPPINESS – Facts and Myths (1990), says that this attitude corresponds more closely to contemporary thought and that it manages to rid views of happiness from what he calls “moralistic overtones”: “… pleasure enhances happiness regardless of whether our pleasure derives from disreputable and reprehensible activities or from noble self-sacrifice”. As I understand it, the author means that according to contemporary thinking happiness is amoral (non-ethical, morally neutral like the gods in ancient Greek mythology). But perhaps, this is not what he actually means, for one of the philosophers Eysenck refers to approvingly, Bentham, holds that all actions are right that promote “the happiness of the greatest number”. Will “disreputable and reprehensible activities” promote the happiness of the greatest number?
Where there’s a society there must be common ethical standards of behaviour that ensure its survival and the freedom of the individuals within it to enjoy all the benefits of living in such a community; individuals cannot conduct themselves in ways that obstruct the others’ freedom to do the same. Can a person indulge in an activity that brings them pleasure, but simultaneously wrecks the happiness of others (like rape for instance), and still be described as happy? However, there may be societies, or societies within societies, that hold a different view.
I think that, except in a totally selfish materialistic society, a pre-requisite for happiness is relative freedom from the idea of self. Reaching out to others is essential for personal happiness. Long time Oxford University social psychology professor Michael Argyle (1925-2002) who was fondly called the “Professor of Happiness” on obituaries on his death at 77 in September 2002 after a swimming accident from which he never recovered believed that good relationships are one of the factors that account for an individual’s happiness. His book “The Psychology of Happiness” (1987, 2nd edition 2001) contains a discussion of his empirical findings. One of these findings is that happiness is certainly enhanced by relationships, sex, eating, exercise, music, success, etc, but probably not by wealth. He, together with his colleague at Oxford University Peter Hills, developed the Oxford Happiness Questionnaire (containing twenty-nine items) with simple instructions for computing an individual’s Happiness Score. I am reproducing below some sample questions (with their serial numbers) from this questionnaire:
1) I don’t feel particularly pleased with the way I am.
2) I am interested in other people.
15) I am very happy.
28) I don’t feel particularly healthy.
29) I don’t have particularly happy memories of the past.
In a later comment, Professor Argyle said that an averagely happy person gets a score of 4 (in terms of the scoring method that is explained, which I have not given here).
Positive psychology researchers like Michael Argyle describe three kinds of happiness (not very different from the three types identified by Aristotle): pleasure, engagement, and meaning. According to him, happiness consists not only of positive emotions, but positive activities as well. Argyle believed that dancing is the happiest activity that one can participate in. Professor Argyle himself had a passionate love of Scottish country dancing.
We know when we are genuinely happy, because we feel happy when we are happy. But it is not so easy to say if someone else is truly happy or not unless we see evidence of the same in their verbal and non-verbal communication. This is because people try to hide negative feelings from others; they consider it improper or unseemly to betray such feelings to those around, something that psychologists call “social desirability bias”. British philosopher and mathematician Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) claimed that “the most universal and distinctive mark of the happy man” is zest. However, a person could still be pretending to be happy, unless their happiness is borne out by other signs as well.
Sources:
Eysenck, Michael W., Happiness – Facts and Myths, 1990. University of London.
Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia.
Concluded
(First published in The Island on Friday 16th July 2010)
Happiness is commonly defined as a state of mind marked by such pleasant feelings as satisfaction, contentment, freedom from anxiety, mental tranquillity, and other similar positive moods. The Chambers Thesaurus (Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd., 2004) lists twenty-four synonyms for the word “happiness” including joy, gladness, cheerfulness, contentment, pleasure, delight, gaiety, life, merriment, light-heartedness, exuberance, high spirits, elation, ecstasy, and euphoria. The list suggests the wide range and variety of feelings covered by the term happiness. No wonder the concept of happiness is sometimes described as a little too vague for precise definition.
Although we may not be able to say exactly what happiness is we know that “happy” is what we always want to be. Living and loving are two experiences we rarely ask questions about; we take them for granted. In the same way we don’t normally bother about what happiness is, or ask why we want to be happy. This may be because happiness is desired for its own sake, not as a means to an end.
In normal circumstances, there are other things that we set our minds on, such as knowledge, power, reputation, riches, and sound health. One might pursue these for their own sake, but they are still subject to the question “What for?”; and the ultimate answer may be something like “For self-fulfilment”, or “For a sense of well-being”, or “For the pleasure of gratifying sensual desires”, for which we may substitute one word “Happiness”. We follow many different goals in life; but all these are ancillary to the goal of personal happiness.
For thousands of years religions have recognized the general unsatisfactoriness of earthly existence, and have each advocated a specific course of religious conduct in order to escape from it and attain to a state of everlasting happiness after death. They also teach how people can achieve mundane as well as spiritual happiness here and now through prayer, practice of virtue, penance, pilgrimage, and fasting, etc. At any age for most people this kind of happiness is a distant ideal. For the average person, happiness consists in the pleasures of the body and mind.
Aristotle (384-322 BCE), the great Greek philosopher, explained what he considered the popular view of happiness thus: “What is the highest good achievable by action? … both the ordinary people and people of education and good judgement say it is happiness”. In all cultures in the world even today people share the same attitude towards happiness. A great tribute paid to happiness in modern times was its mention at the opening of the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence adopted by Congress on behalf of the Thirteen United States of America on July 4, 1776: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Buddhism, which inspires the majority of Sri Lankans, teaches its followers what is claimed to be the true nature of existence - its unsatisfactoriness, and the way of emancipation from that state of suffering. “Craving” is identified as the agent that perpetuates suffering by a process whereby a person comes into being again and again. The elimination of craving by the individual through the practice of the specific spiritual conduct suggested by the Master is shown to be the way to the realization of the supreme bliss of nibbana (freedom from the defilement of desire or craving). Buddhism also teaches how to live a happy life in this world in a way that is compatible with the practice of virtue. References to “sukha” (happiness) are as frequent as references to “dukkha” (suffering); on the whole, a follower of the teaching of the Buddha should always be happy, calm and confident amidst the vicissitudes of mundane existence. (The remarkable resilience that our people have demonstrated in the face of disastrous experiences such as the December 2004 tsunami and the recently concluded terrorist scourge may be attributed to the effect of this positive frame of mind inculcated in them by Buddhist teachings.) Contentment (santhutti) – a feeling of quiet happiness and satisfaction with one’s own lot acquired through wisdom – is praised as the supreme asset that one could possess. The Greek philosopher Socrates (469-399 BCE) echoes a similar view: “Good food and rich clothes, all possible luxuries, are what you call happiness, but I believe that a state of being where one wishes for nothing is the greatest of all bliss. To be able to approach the greatest happiness one must get used to being satisfied with little”. Religions which are based on other world-views too teach their adherents the way to liberate themselves from the imperfections of worldly existence, and attain to a state of everlasting happiness. All religious systems teach us how to achieve this ultimate liberation from the unsatisfactoriness of earthly life .
Generally, the ultimate happiness that each faith teaches as its summum bonum is achievable only after the extinction of an individual’s life on earth. However, the highest form of happiness that one can realize before death is that which results from a life of contemplation according to the traditions of religious and philosophical thinking both of the East and the West. Aristotle spoke about three kinds of happiness: the first is the happiness experienced by “ordinary” people (who, in contemporary terms, we may think of as those of the working class who are rightly or wrongly considered to equate happiness with immediate pleasures such as drinking, watching a play or a cricket match, etc); the second is the happiness of people of “superior refinement”, that is, the educated, sophisticated, and the materially better off who rely on achieving long-term goals such as career or business success to be happy; and the third, which Aristotle identified as the highest form of happiness, is the happiness produced by a contemplative life.
However valuable or exalted the happiness derived from a tranquil life of meditation may be, not everyone can pursue such happiness except perhaps occasionally; it will appeal to only a handful of individuals as we implied before. It is not suitable for ordinary people who want to raise a family, follow a profession, and fulfil obligations towards others, in short for people for whom “renunciation” is still not an option. Therefore let us focus on the temporal sort of happiness that is relevant to us all.
I mean the kind of less ethereal happiness that certain seventeenth and eighteenth century philosophers such as John Locke (1632-1704) and Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) defined. They argued that happiness correlates to the number of pleasures in one’s life. University of London psychology teacher Michael W. Eysenck, the author of HAPPINESS – Facts and Myths (1990), says that this attitude corresponds more closely to contemporary thought and that it manages to rid views of happiness from what he calls “moralistic overtones”: “… pleasure enhances happiness regardless of whether our pleasure derives from disreputable and reprehensible activities or from noble self-sacrifice”. As I understand it, the author means that according to contemporary thinking happiness is amoral (non-ethical, morally neutral like the gods in ancient Greek mythology). But perhaps, this is not what he actually means, for one of the philosophers Eysenck refers to approvingly, Bentham, holds that all actions are right that promote “the happiness of the greatest number”. Will “disreputable and reprehensible activities” promote the happiness of the greatest number?
Where there’s a society there must be common ethical standards of behaviour that ensure its survival and the freedom of the individuals within it to enjoy all the benefits of living in such a community; individuals cannot conduct themselves in ways that obstruct the others’ freedom to do the same. Can a person indulge in an activity that brings them pleasure, but simultaneously wrecks the happiness of others (like rape for instance), and still be described as happy? However, there may be societies, or societies within societies, that hold a different view.
I think that, except in a totally selfish materialistic society, a pre-requisite for happiness is relative freedom from the idea of self. Reaching out to others is essential for personal happiness. Long time Oxford University social psychology professor Michael Argyle (1925-2002) who was fondly called the “Professor of Happiness” on obituaries on his death at 77 in September 2002 after a swimming accident from which he never recovered believed that good relationships are one of the factors that account for an individual’s happiness. His book “The Psychology of Happiness” (1987, 2nd edition 2001) contains a discussion of his empirical findings. One of these findings is that happiness is certainly enhanced by relationships, sex, eating, exercise, music, success, etc, but probably not by wealth. He, together with his colleague at Oxford University Peter Hills, developed the Oxford Happiness Questionnaire (containing twenty-nine items) with simple instructions for computing an individual’s Happiness Score. I am reproducing below some sample questions (with their serial numbers) from this questionnaire:
1) I don’t feel particularly pleased with the way I am.
2) I am interested in other people.
15) I am very happy.
28) I don’t feel particularly healthy.
29) I don’t have particularly happy memories of the past.
In a later comment, Professor Argyle said that an averagely happy person gets a score of 4 (in terms of the scoring method that is explained, which I have not given here).
Positive psychology researchers like Michael Argyle describe three kinds of happiness (not very different from the three types identified by Aristotle): pleasure, engagement, and meaning. According to him, happiness consists not only of positive emotions, but positive activities as well. Argyle believed that dancing is the happiest activity that one can participate in. Professor Argyle himself had a passionate love of Scottish country dancing.
We know when we are genuinely happy, because we feel happy when we are happy. But it is not so easy to say if someone else is truly happy or not unless we see evidence of the same in their verbal and non-verbal communication. This is because people try to hide negative feelings from others; they consider it improper or unseemly to betray such feelings to those around, something that psychologists call “social desirability bias”. British philosopher and mathematician Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) claimed that “the most universal and distinctive mark of the happy man” is zest. However, a person could still be pretending to be happy, unless their happiness is borne out by other signs as well.
Sources:
Eysenck, Michael W., Happiness – Facts and Myths, 1990. University of London.
Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia.
Concluded
Friday, July 9, 2010
Much Ado about Nothing
Much Ado about Nothing?
By
Rohana R. Wasala
(First published in The Island in two parts on 2nd & 3rd July 2010)
As an ordinary citizen and an English language teaching (ELT) professional with some experience, I have no quarrel with the notion of Sri Lankan English/es or the idea of a standard form of it being advocated for teaching in our country, provided that the two basic questions of what Sri Lankan English is, and why it should be promoted are answered to the satisfaction of all the stakeholders (students, teachers, parents, authorities, and the general public), and the move supported on a principled basis. Unless and until this is done the current debate will prove to be much ado about nothing.
It is not that these questions have already been dealt with by those competent to do so; what is identified by linguists as Sri Lankan English is even being codified it is claimed. However, apparently, it is only now that public discussion of the matter with a real sense of seriousness is taking shape. This is the time that the future course of the whole exercise (i.e. the implementation of the Standard Sri Lankan English proposal) is to be charted.
My sincere wish is not to tread on the toes of scholars who are known to have done much painstaking research in the field, or challenge their conclusions, but to explain, for what it’s worth, a commonsense opinion that I have had for a long time regarding the matter, something that may have been implicit in my earlier articles about ELT in Sri Lanka.
If the language of the writings of the scholars should be taken as exemplifying the Standard Sri Lankan English that they are advocating as a model – and I believe it should - , then those who fear that Sri Lankan English is “broken English” or a “substandard” variety will definitely come round to supporting their idea, and stop raising objections. The reason is that the English employed in the writings of the researchers represents a specimen of what used to be, and still is, popularly perceived as “Standard English”. This is also why I am tempted to believe that adherents of that variety (for which other names could be suggested such as international English, English English, global English, supranational English, etc) need not fear that the adoption of Sri Lankan English will be tantamount to an unwarranted adulteration of English for our children.
Although I cannot claim to have a complete understanding of what Sri Lankan English (SLE) specifically consists of in the experts’ view, my assumption is that it cannot be significantly different from what used to be taught in Sri Lankan schools in the past in terms of pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary. (The so-called “elocution English”, by the way, was rarely part of the language fare placed before our children in the past, except perhaps in a few urban schools .) As to the multiplicity of acceptable SLE dialects, one might say that it is impossible to accommodate all of them in any basic language teaching context where a single identifiable “standard” must perforce be the basis of instruction, and where the extremely unhelpful, chaotic “anything goes” linguistic permissiveness should be avoided. It is clear that there’s no reason to worry on this score.
An English language aficionado of an earlier generation than mine (a “master” of English, a so-called “compound” bilingual, but engaged in another discipline) in a casual discussion with me some time ago about what possibly might be termed Sri Lankan English, piqued by my sympathy for a “newfangled” idea that he strongly disapproved of, condemning the deviations from “the Standard” that he suspected SLE involved, asked me how I would describe the English I was taught as a kid at school in the 1960s (While my interlocutor was a product of English medium education, I learned my English as a second language at a later time); it was obvious to me that he expected me to say “Standard (British) English”. But I said “Sri Lankan English (!) although probably it was not identified as such at that time”. And I went on to explain to him what I meant by that answer.
What else could you expect us to learn from our teachers who were our compatriots except Sri Lankan English? True, they most probably believed that they were using British English; but they used it as Sri Lankans, infusing typically Sri Lankan elements such as a characteristic Sinhalese or Tamil accent in pronunciation, colloquial coinages reflecting the local social and linguistic backgrounds, or even slightly modified grammatical features into their English, thereby unconsciously turning the supposed “British English” into a form of “Sri Lankan English”, but experienced no difficulty in being well received both among their own people and outsiders who similarly used “Standard” English.
However, our teachers didn’t make an issue of this involuntary “Sri Lankanness” of their English; they helped us to speak English “our way” without saying so, and also to avoid what were condemned at that time as “Ceylonisms” – identified as errors which were due to sheer ignorance or negligence. But when we had an occasional opportunity to listen to native British or American speakers of English, we were able to understand them without difficulty; they understood what we said to them in “our” English. When we encountered other foreigners who had learnt English as a foreign or second language like us, again we were able to carry on a conversation with them in English quite easily. We understood without being taught that different people from around the world, and even within the country, spoke English differently, but that English was English whoever spoke it in whatever way they found it natural for themselves; but we never thought about English in terms of varieties (and this didn’t harm our learning English). We grasped instinctively that English is one language, though spoken in different ways.
Much later in life we realized that what we had been taught was actually a local version of British English, which could have been described as Sri Lankan English. And it was not considered inferior to the “real” thing, but identical with it in grammar and vocabulary with a negligibly few naturally inevitable deviations. As to formal written English, we expected to find no difference between “our” English and “their” English.
Of course, at that time, as we still do perhaps, we had an insignificant minority of locals – members of the “Kultur clique” as we heard them nicknamed - who put on a “posh” accent. This we knew to be fake, and we reserved the deepest contempt for the accent and the people who stupidly flaunted it as a mark of prestige which they arrogated to themselves. We even discovered, in a few cases at least, that they didn’t know enough “good” English to go with their “posh” accent! Once, in the first half of the 70s decade, we heard about how a high official of the country’s educational establishment, a left-leaning academic from the university, dealt with a female English teacher (a Sinhalese and one of the “posh” crowd) who had come to him to complain about being denied success at her final exam at the training college because, as she assumed, she had failed in the compulsory elementary Sinhala language paper. She angrily referred to her successful colleagues, the hoi polloi, who, in her opinion, didn’t know good English, but knew their Sinhala, and passed the exam: “Un Sinhala dannawa ne!” (They know their Sinhala!) she said. The Sinhalese pronoun “un” was in this context an insulting equivalent of the English pronoun “they”. The official quipped: “Un dekama dannawa!” (They know both!). This might be an apocryphal story, but it was an indication of the already diminished prestige of the so-called English speaking elite and their English about forty years ago. (I wonder why we should be talking so much about the alleged “hegemony” of this class over ELT in Sri Lanka today.)
We considered it a great achievement for us to be able to converse with an English speaking tourist, especially a native English speaker, if we got a chance for that kind of experience as we occasionally did! It represented for us encouraging proof of our proficiency in the language. (Many present-day youngsters learning English, particularly from rural areas, display the same attitude, which I have had the opportunity to observe; they like to talk in English with foreigners because, in such a situation, they feel compelled to use English as the only medium of communication available, and also least worried about making “mistakes” unlike in the presence of their own teachers. It is not that they want to speak like native speakers; but they seem to believe, like their parents probably, that what the British or Americans speak is “real” English, the origin of the English language they are actually trying to learn.)
I think today’s young Sri Lankans, including the English teachers among them, are almost totally impervious to the servile “colonial mentality” which some of their counterparts in the pre-1956 era were guilty of, in contexts involving English. I have a hunch that to talk about elitism, hegemony, etc is just flogging a dead horse! It is more a case of students, teachers, and parents (who are aware enough of the controversy) being concerned that what is going to be foisted on them (as they see it) is something that will sound a mere lingo to the outside world, though there’s no doubt that such an attitude is unwarranted.
Since a language is a thing that constantly changes in the hands of its users in response to numerous conditions such as the nature of the purposes for which it is used and the contexts in which it is used, both defining and clinging on to a standard are wellnigh impossible tasks. This is true of all human languages including global English/es and Sri Lankan English/es. A language is a tool that changes as we use it, which makes both teaching and learning it problematic, especially a foreign language like English (We shouldn’t forget that English is a foreign language to the vast majority of our people, although it is sometimes claimed to be an indigenous language based on the 10% (?) or so of the population who have any proficiency in the language). Since ELT matters touch the destiny of the whole population, concern should be shown when what is deemed to be commonly acceptable to this minority as a standard dialect is recommended for all to follow.
The reason for saying this is bound up with the basic question “Why should we teach/learn this particular brand of English?”. First, there’s the need to justify the teaching/learning of English. Justifying the English language cause is the easiest task in this context. In spite of the fact that English is still identified by the majority as something that came from outside in unfortunate circumstances that subjected a proud nation to political subjugation, national humiliation, economic exploitation, and cultural subversion, its utilitarian value for us has always been appreciated since Independence. We still court English despite the inglorious history of its association with Sri Lanka because of its utility. But in what way is English useful to us? Is English needed for general domestic communication? No, we have Sinhala and Tamil for that; there are minority communities with their own native tongues such as Malay, Bengali, Vedda language, etc. A minority use English as their mother tongue. The majority of those who learn English do so to use it as a second language in the academia, in work-related situations, in business, law, politics, and so on. Some may use English as their first language in such contexts (if the term “first language” is taken to mean the language that one functions in). Such situations do not exclude a choice between English and a local language, even though a sound enough education is unthinkable without English. In addition to this, there is a sphere that leaves us with no option other than English as an adequate linguistic medium: international communication that affects every aspect of our country’s existence. In the highly globalized world of today, we are obliged to possess an effective medium through which to interact with other nations in every conceivable area of activity, be it politics, trade, diplomacy, education, research, technology, justice, communications, entertainment, sport, or anything else.
Someone might say, not every Sri Lankan is going to or is required to communicate with the outside world. Well, I am sure that at least in one area every Sri Lankan will be compelled to take part in international communication. This area is the world of information, the dotcom world. And, through which language will it be most convenient for us Sri Lankans to access this world? English, of course. This needs no arguing.
If, in ELT, we are compelled to decide on the type of English we must teach our young in order that they will be best equipped to profitably access the treasure-house of world knowledge through the computer, should it be a variety of the language that naturally alienates them from that world, or one that will integrate them into the global community of English language users? Obviously, the latter.
Sri Lankan English would be more relevant in contexts of day-to-day informal communication within the country, and in the production of creative literature than in the academia, and other domains such as international diplomacy, media, trade etc where an educated, formal, scientific, regionally unmarked form of English is demanded. For most Sri Lankans, the latter forms the main motive for learning English. And much of the English they must learn lies beyond the borders of Sri Lanka, as it were.
It is a fact that the English that we must teach our children lies more outside the country than inside. There’s an ever expanding world of knowledge, science, technology, literature, and the rest beyond our tiny island which is accessible to our children, whether they be in urban or rural areas, through the Web, provided the necessary facilities are supplied. Literature both scientific and creative generated in other languages gets constantly translated into English. And nothing but English is the gateway to this world. The English we teach our children should enable them to access and utilize this great resource not only for gaining knowledge about various subjects, and sharing information with their counterparts beyond our borders, but also for enhancing their mastery of the language itself. The Internet offers the richest, most easily accessible, and the least expensive resource for help with English, once the basic facilities are provided; there are so many free English teaching/learning websites (along with commercial ones for those who can afford them); teachers must be trained to find these for their students.
Professor J. Donald Bowen of the US (FORUM, 1977) refers to four useful criteria that should be considered when determining the degree of importance of a variant of an international language like English that is offered as a model for language instruction. He considers the relative importance of a variety as a key factor that affects its choice as an appropriate standard. The four criteria are: the number of its speakers, the quality of the literary tradition established in the particular variant, the amount of non-literary creativity expressed in research and development, and the function of the variety. Only a very small percentage of the Sri Lankan population speak any English; there’s not much to talk about a highly developed literary tradition, to which context perhaps Sri Lankan English would be most relevant; research publications, if any, are required to be in a formal academic register usually addressed to an international audience, leaving little room for regional dialectal features to be prominent; in terms of function Sri Lankan English could be important in informal conversational situations, but the real value of English for Sri Lankans lies in its being a vehicle of knowledge and global communication, which domains demand as regionally unmarked a form of English as possible.
So, my opinion is that we should leave such fine distinctions as those between British English, American English, Indian English, and Sri Lankan English to be the concern of linguists, language experts, and course designers. It will be a futile exercise to ask the students or parents or even the average young English teachers that we have today to express their opinion about the choice of “Sri Lankan English” as our standard, because we can’t expect them to be generally well informed about the relative merits of various varieties of English. When I say that those two basic questions (what’s SLE and why?) should be explicitly answered, I may appear to be contradicting myself. What I am suggesting is that by doing so the course designers will be removing the misgivings that have arisen in the minds of those concerned about the usefulness of promoting what is described as “Sri Lankan English”, instead of just “English”.
The popular wish among the English language learners and their parents is for the former to be taught English, not what they tend to view suspiciously as a devalued form of English called Sri Lankan English, however mistaken they may be from the experts’ point of view.
Let’s ensure that our teachers master the kind of English that the advocates of SLE themselves write (their speech can only correspond to this); let’s give them a good pedagogical training, and compile appropriate textbooks and other materials, incorporating sections that encourage the learners to draw on the Internet for autonomous learning. Let experts talk about varieties among themselves, but let us teach our children just “English”. I am sure this will not involve any changes to what is already being done, but perhaps an appropriate shift of focus from linguistics to applied linguistics.
Concluded
By
Rohana R. Wasala
(First published in The Island in two parts on 2nd & 3rd July 2010)
As an ordinary citizen and an English language teaching (ELT) professional with some experience, I have no quarrel with the notion of Sri Lankan English/es or the idea of a standard form of it being advocated for teaching in our country, provided that the two basic questions of what Sri Lankan English is, and why it should be promoted are answered to the satisfaction of all the stakeholders (students, teachers, parents, authorities, and the general public), and the move supported on a principled basis. Unless and until this is done the current debate will prove to be much ado about nothing.
It is not that these questions have already been dealt with by those competent to do so; what is identified by linguists as Sri Lankan English is even being codified it is claimed. However, apparently, it is only now that public discussion of the matter with a real sense of seriousness is taking shape. This is the time that the future course of the whole exercise (i.e. the implementation of the Standard Sri Lankan English proposal) is to be charted.
My sincere wish is not to tread on the toes of scholars who are known to have done much painstaking research in the field, or challenge their conclusions, but to explain, for what it’s worth, a commonsense opinion that I have had for a long time regarding the matter, something that may have been implicit in my earlier articles about ELT in Sri Lanka.
If the language of the writings of the scholars should be taken as exemplifying the Standard Sri Lankan English that they are advocating as a model – and I believe it should - , then those who fear that Sri Lankan English is “broken English” or a “substandard” variety will definitely come round to supporting their idea, and stop raising objections. The reason is that the English employed in the writings of the researchers represents a specimen of what used to be, and still is, popularly perceived as “Standard English”. This is also why I am tempted to believe that adherents of that variety (for which other names could be suggested such as international English, English English, global English, supranational English, etc) need not fear that the adoption of Sri Lankan English will be tantamount to an unwarranted adulteration of English for our children.
Although I cannot claim to have a complete understanding of what Sri Lankan English (SLE) specifically consists of in the experts’ view, my assumption is that it cannot be significantly different from what used to be taught in Sri Lankan schools in the past in terms of pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary. (The so-called “elocution English”, by the way, was rarely part of the language fare placed before our children in the past, except perhaps in a few urban schools .) As to the multiplicity of acceptable SLE dialects, one might say that it is impossible to accommodate all of them in any basic language teaching context where a single identifiable “standard” must perforce be the basis of instruction, and where the extremely unhelpful, chaotic “anything goes” linguistic permissiveness should be avoided. It is clear that there’s no reason to worry on this score.
An English language aficionado of an earlier generation than mine (a “master” of English, a so-called “compound” bilingual, but engaged in another discipline) in a casual discussion with me some time ago about what possibly might be termed Sri Lankan English, piqued by my sympathy for a “newfangled” idea that he strongly disapproved of, condemning the deviations from “the Standard” that he suspected SLE involved, asked me how I would describe the English I was taught as a kid at school in the 1960s (While my interlocutor was a product of English medium education, I learned my English as a second language at a later time); it was obvious to me that he expected me to say “Standard (British) English”. But I said “Sri Lankan English (!) although probably it was not identified as such at that time”. And I went on to explain to him what I meant by that answer.
What else could you expect us to learn from our teachers who were our compatriots except Sri Lankan English? True, they most probably believed that they were using British English; but they used it as Sri Lankans, infusing typically Sri Lankan elements such as a characteristic Sinhalese or Tamil accent in pronunciation, colloquial coinages reflecting the local social and linguistic backgrounds, or even slightly modified grammatical features into their English, thereby unconsciously turning the supposed “British English” into a form of “Sri Lankan English”, but experienced no difficulty in being well received both among their own people and outsiders who similarly used “Standard” English.
However, our teachers didn’t make an issue of this involuntary “Sri Lankanness” of their English; they helped us to speak English “our way” without saying so, and also to avoid what were condemned at that time as “Ceylonisms” – identified as errors which were due to sheer ignorance or negligence. But when we had an occasional opportunity to listen to native British or American speakers of English, we were able to understand them without difficulty; they understood what we said to them in “our” English. When we encountered other foreigners who had learnt English as a foreign or second language like us, again we were able to carry on a conversation with them in English quite easily. We understood without being taught that different people from around the world, and even within the country, spoke English differently, but that English was English whoever spoke it in whatever way they found it natural for themselves; but we never thought about English in terms of varieties (and this didn’t harm our learning English). We grasped instinctively that English is one language, though spoken in different ways.
Much later in life we realized that what we had been taught was actually a local version of British English, which could have been described as Sri Lankan English. And it was not considered inferior to the “real” thing, but identical with it in grammar and vocabulary with a negligibly few naturally inevitable deviations. As to formal written English, we expected to find no difference between “our” English and “their” English.
Of course, at that time, as we still do perhaps, we had an insignificant minority of locals – members of the “Kultur clique” as we heard them nicknamed - who put on a “posh” accent. This we knew to be fake, and we reserved the deepest contempt for the accent and the people who stupidly flaunted it as a mark of prestige which they arrogated to themselves. We even discovered, in a few cases at least, that they didn’t know enough “good” English to go with their “posh” accent! Once, in the first half of the 70s decade, we heard about how a high official of the country’s educational establishment, a left-leaning academic from the university, dealt with a female English teacher (a Sinhalese and one of the “posh” crowd) who had come to him to complain about being denied success at her final exam at the training college because, as she assumed, she had failed in the compulsory elementary Sinhala language paper. She angrily referred to her successful colleagues, the hoi polloi, who, in her opinion, didn’t know good English, but knew their Sinhala, and passed the exam: “Un Sinhala dannawa ne!” (They know their Sinhala!) she said. The Sinhalese pronoun “un” was in this context an insulting equivalent of the English pronoun “they”. The official quipped: “Un dekama dannawa!” (They know both!). This might be an apocryphal story, but it was an indication of the already diminished prestige of the so-called English speaking elite and their English about forty years ago. (I wonder why we should be talking so much about the alleged “hegemony” of this class over ELT in Sri Lanka today.)
We considered it a great achievement for us to be able to converse with an English speaking tourist, especially a native English speaker, if we got a chance for that kind of experience as we occasionally did! It represented for us encouraging proof of our proficiency in the language. (Many present-day youngsters learning English, particularly from rural areas, display the same attitude, which I have had the opportunity to observe; they like to talk in English with foreigners because, in such a situation, they feel compelled to use English as the only medium of communication available, and also least worried about making “mistakes” unlike in the presence of their own teachers. It is not that they want to speak like native speakers; but they seem to believe, like their parents probably, that what the British or Americans speak is “real” English, the origin of the English language they are actually trying to learn.)
I think today’s young Sri Lankans, including the English teachers among them, are almost totally impervious to the servile “colonial mentality” which some of their counterparts in the pre-1956 era were guilty of, in contexts involving English. I have a hunch that to talk about elitism, hegemony, etc is just flogging a dead horse! It is more a case of students, teachers, and parents (who are aware enough of the controversy) being concerned that what is going to be foisted on them (as they see it) is something that will sound a mere lingo to the outside world, though there’s no doubt that such an attitude is unwarranted.
Since a language is a thing that constantly changes in the hands of its users in response to numerous conditions such as the nature of the purposes for which it is used and the contexts in which it is used, both defining and clinging on to a standard are wellnigh impossible tasks. This is true of all human languages including global English/es and Sri Lankan English/es. A language is a tool that changes as we use it, which makes both teaching and learning it problematic, especially a foreign language like English (We shouldn’t forget that English is a foreign language to the vast majority of our people, although it is sometimes claimed to be an indigenous language based on the 10% (?) or so of the population who have any proficiency in the language). Since ELT matters touch the destiny of the whole population, concern should be shown when what is deemed to be commonly acceptable to this minority as a standard dialect is recommended for all to follow.
The reason for saying this is bound up with the basic question “Why should we teach/learn this particular brand of English?”. First, there’s the need to justify the teaching/learning of English. Justifying the English language cause is the easiest task in this context. In spite of the fact that English is still identified by the majority as something that came from outside in unfortunate circumstances that subjected a proud nation to political subjugation, national humiliation, economic exploitation, and cultural subversion, its utilitarian value for us has always been appreciated since Independence. We still court English despite the inglorious history of its association with Sri Lanka because of its utility. But in what way is English useful to us? Is English needed for general domestic communication? No, we have Sinhala and Tamil for that; there are minority communities with their own native tongues such as Malay, Bengali, Vedda language, etc. A minority use English as their mother tongue. The majority of those who learn English do so to use it as a second language in the academia, in work-related situations, in business, law, politics, and so on. Some may use English as their first language in such contexts (if the term “first language” is taken to mean the language that one functions in). Such situations do not exclude a choice between English and a local language, even though a sound enough education is unthinkable without English. In addition to this, there is a sphere that leaves us with no option other than English as an adequate linguistic medium: international communication that affects every aspect of our country’s existence. In the highly globalized world of today, we are obliged to possess an effective medium through which to interact with other nations in every conceivable area of activity, be it politics, trade, diplomacy, education, research, technology, justice, communications, entertainment, sport, or anything else.
Someone might say, not every Sri Lankan is going to or is required to communicate with the outside world. Well, I am sure that at least in one area every Sri Lankan will be compelled to take part in international communication. This area is the world of information, the dotcom world. And, through which language will it be most convenient for us Sri Lankans to access this world? English, of course. This needs no arguing.
If, in ELT, we are compelled to decide on the type of English we must teach our young in order that they will be best equipped to profitably access the treasure-house of world knowledge through the computer, should it be a variety of the language that naturally alienates them from that world, or one that will integrate them into the global community of English language users? Obviously, the latter.
Sri Lankan English would be more relevant in contexts of day-to-day informal communication within the country, and in the production of creative literature than in the academia, and other domains such as international diplomacy, media, trade etc where an educated, formal, scientific, regionally unmarked form of English is demanded. For most Sri Lankans, the latter forms the main motive for learning English. And much of the English they must learn lies beyond the borders of Sri Lanka, as it were.
It is a fact that the English that we must teach our children lies more outside the country than inside. There’s an ever expanding world of knowledge, science, technology, literature, and the rest beyond our tiny island which is accessible to our children, whether they be in urban or rural areas, through the Web, provided the necessary facilities are supplied. Literature both scientific and creative generated in other languages gets constantly translated into English. And nothing but English is the gateway to this world. The English we teach our children should enable them to access and utilize this great resource not only for gaining knowledge about various subjects, and sharing information with their counterparts beyond our borders, but also for enhancing their mastery of the language itself. The Internet offers the richest, most easily accessible, and the least expensive resource for help with English, once the basic facilities are provided; there are so many free English teaching/learning websites (along with commercial ones for those who can afford them); teachers must be trained to find these for their students.
Professor J. Donald Bowen of the US (FORUM, 1977) refers to four useful criteria that should be considered when determining the degree of importance of a variant of an international language like English that is offered as a model for language instruction. He considers the relative importance of a variety as a key factor that affects its choice as an appropriate standard. The four criteria are: the number of its speakers, the quality of the literary tradition established in the particular variant, the amount of non-literary creativity expressed in research and development, and the function of the variety. Only a very small percentage of the Sri Lankan population speak any English; there’s not much to talk about a highly developed literary tradition, to which context perhaps Sri Lankan English would be most relevant; research publications, if any, are required to be in a formal academic register usually addressed to an international audience, leaving little room for regional dialectal features to be prominent; in terms of function Sri Lankan English could be important in informal conversational situations, but the real value of English for Sri Lankans lies in its being a vehicle of knowledge and global communication, which domains demand as regionally unmarked a form of English as possible.
So, my opinion is that we should leave such fine distinctions as those between British English, American English, Indian English, and Sri Lankan English to be the concern of linguists, language experts, and course designers. It will be a futile exercise to ask the students or parents or even the average young English teachers that we have today to express their opinion about the choice of “Sri Lankan English” as our standard, because we can’t expect them to be generally well informed about the relative merits of various varieties of English. When I say that those two basic questions (what’s SLE and why?) should be explicitly answered, I may appear to be contradicting myself. What I am suggesting is that by doing so the course designers will be removing the misgivings that have arisen in the minds of those concerned about the usefulness of promoting what is described as “Sri Lankan English”, instead of just “English”.
The popular wish among the English language learners and their parents is for the former to be taught English, not what they tend to view suspiciously as a devalued form of English called Sri Lankan English, however mistaken they may be from the experts’ point of view.
Let’s ensure that our teachers master the kind of English that the advocates of SLE themselves write (their speech can only correspond to this); let’s give them a good pedagogical training, and compile appropriate textbooks and other materials, incorporating sections that encourage the learners to draw on the Internet for autonomous learning. Let experts talk about varieties among themselves, but let us teach our children just “English”. I am sure this will not involve any changes to what is already being done, but perhaps an appropriate shift of focus from linguistics to applied linguistics.
Concluded
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Sri Lankan English and English Language Teaching
Sri Lankan English and English Language Teaching
by
Rohana R.Wasala
(This present article appeared in the Midweek Review of The Island newspaper on 23rd June 2010)
A truncated version of this article first appeared in The Ceylon Daily News of Wednesday April 24, 2002 under the title “Sri Lankan English? The question of an acceptable model”. The same article in its complete original form, though now naturally dated, is being offered here to the Island readers because of the relevance of its subject to the current revitalized state English Language Teaching (ELT) enterprise. I have slightly edited it without altering its general content - RRW.
The reality that we encounter in the English language teaching domain today is that we no longer can claim that there is a single form of English which we could adopt as the universal standard; instead we have many standards, all equally correct and acceptable. We are obliged to talk about Englishes, not English.
The multiplicity of standard forms of English is a formidable problem for the practical teacher in the language classroom. In Sri Lanka where we teach English as a second language at all levels from the primary to the tertiary we obviously cannot tell our pupils, “Unlike in the past we now believe that there are many acceptable standard Englishes, not just one. You must learn the variety of English that is the most appropriate one for you”. Such advice may be enlightening to people who already know their English quite well. Where learners are concerned, it is teachers who must deal with the problem of “standard” in terms of which they may arbitrate on matters of linguistic acceptability/correctness.
This is where “the importance of advocating a standard for the language” comes. In fact, the question regarding a suitable standard for us to adopt in teaching English as a second language is in the process of being settled by local scholars in a context where the “many Englishes” idea is accommodated. This means that a standard Sri Lankan variety of English is being identified. However, there is still a lot of uncertainty, controversy and unfinished work surrounding the subject, which is naturally likely to put off those who, in any case, have not taken kindly to what appear to be deviations from the “standard English” of yesteryear.
The main aim of this present article is to suggest how “old” views about “correct” English could probably be reconciled with current perceptions and practices as far as “Sri Lankan English” is concerned. Let us have a closer look at the situation.
It is well known that the English language has never had anything like the academie francaise of France, i.e. a central authority invested with the power of regulating its use. Nevertheless, over the last two hundred years or so of its roughly 1500 year history to date the two predominant varieties – British English and American English – have provided models of accuracy or standards against which to judge the acceptability of the language in use. Although these two major English dialects have existed as two distinct standards, the divergences between them in terms of grammar and vocabulary are minimal; even the differences in spelling and pronunciation (which are more readily noted) are never so wide as to render them mutually incomprehensible in the least. In effect, they represent nearly identical models of correctness.
However, with the recent emergence of English as the global medium of science, technology, industry, trade, culture, computer, communications, etc the function of serving as a measure of authenticity is being rapidly decentralized away from the native British and American standards to peripheral non-native forms of English such as Canadian, Caribbean and Indian. In other words, there is a growing tendency among users of English as a foreign or second language in different regions around the globe to consider the varieties of English evolving in their own sociocultural contexts to be as “respectable” as, and, for their particular purposes, even more effective and efficient than, Standard American or British English.
Consequently, it is difficult today to talk about one single authoritative form of English. Rather it is the case that there are a number of Standard “Englishes” - a notion that could be reprehensible to some of us who were educated when the English we were taught was securely bound to the flagship of Standard British English (or whatever was locally supposed to constitute it) and characteristic deviations from “the norm” among the local users of the language, whether they resulted from an imperfect mastery of the standard or from natural sociolinguistic causes, were rightly or wrongly outlawed as erroneous forms, or as “Ceylonisms”.
While the persistent conservative standpoint is understandable, the global trend appears to be an accommodating attitude towards the phenomenon of a plurality of Standard Englishes. In terms of this tendency which may, in fact, be seen at one level as a manifestation in the field of language of a certain desire amongst previously colonized peoples for emancipation from lingering Western dominance, some of us in Sri Lanka too might feel justified in trying to adopt a Standard English of our own. If what could be identified as the local educated variety of English is to be accepted as our autonomous model, this must be done in such a way as not to depress even further the already low levels of competence in English among our students.
It is even possible to imagine a worse scenario than the mere decline of proficiency levels: the threatened extinction in Sri Lanka of English as we know it today, or its final degeneration into an autonomous tongue, a creole perhaps, alienated from the rest of the world! However, where English is concerned, such fears may be baseless because the centrifugal movement towards diversity is being countered by an opposite movement towards uniformity in the context of easy international communication and the virtual obliteration of national borders due to globalization.
David Graddol writes in his The Future of English? (London: British Council, 1997) “The widespread use of English as a language of wider communication will continue to exert pressure towards global uniformity as well as give rise to anxieties about ‘declining’ standards, language change and the loss of geolinguistic diversity. But as English shifts from foreign- language to second- language status for an increasing number of people, we can also expect to see English develop a larger number of local varieties” (Graddol, 1997, p.56).
In the same context Graddol attributes these opposite strains that English is presently undergoing to the fact that “… English has two main functions in the world: it provides a vehicular language for international communication and it forms the basis for constructing cultural identities…”. The former pushes towards uniformity, intelligibility and common standards, whereas the latter tends to lead towards fragmentation through the creation of local forms and hybrid varieties.
However, there is no evidence to suggest that English is in any danger of breaking up into an infinity of mutually unintelligible dialects. The diversity of varieties of English is nothing new after all. Different brands of English have always existed. What is new is that with the unprecedented expansion of its adoption in every part of the world this plurality of standard forms of English has become more evident than before.
The best future we may perhaps extrapolate for English from the current trends is that, notwithstanding the localizing movements leading to “polycentrism” (i.e. a number of standard forms), the momentum towards global uniformity will prevail and that, as a result, “a supranational” (Graddol’s phrase) will emerge, transcending all these competing “native” and regional varieties. Strevens (1992), quoted by Graddol, speculates that the ELT industry will play a significant role in maintaining such an international standard for both communication and teaching purposes. The prevailing tendency though is towards the recognition of non-native regional models.
The replacement of what once enjoyed a monolithic status as the correct form of English with a regional variety will obviously have important implications for ELT activity as well as international communication. While lack of uniformity could hinder easy exchange of information, it may also pose problems for ELT practitioners in the matter of designing curricula and compiling teaching materials. Nevertheless, the current advocacy of a standard Sri Lankan variety of English for teaching will not, I believe, lead to such a complete break with the native varieties of English,( especially British and American, however protean and elusive to boot these themselves may be) as to hamper our communication with the outside world. Curriculum designing, material preparation, and other pedagogical problems will not be insurmountable obstacles either.
Probably a major reason for championing a local brand of English in our country is the recognition of the changed image and function of English as opposed to its past. Under the British, it was the language of administration and business, associated with elitism and power, and the colonialists restricted its availability to a subservient minority for their own purposes. Even for most of the half century of independence since 1948 English has been almost exclusively the prerogative of the power-wielding national bourgeoisie. As a result of the spirit of resurgent nationalism which swept the country in the wake of Independence (and which culminated in the 1956 political changes), English was given a back seat in the national consciousness, but this was temporary. Even during this time, Sri Lanka’s educational policy makers were not oblivious of the importance of English for the development of the country through education. A programme was implemented to teach English as a second language to all school children irrespective of their social class.
Education through the medium of national languages began to be available to far larger numbers of students than education through the medium of English ever was under colonial rule. This immensely benefited many children of the dispossessed classes who were previously denied that opportunity. A rapid expansion of mother tongue education happened broadly between the 1960’s and 1980’s during which period English education was virtually downgraded. The reality today is that English is being restored to its position of prominence in all important spheres – education, economic development, communication, business, industry, etc. Most of all, there is a widespread reawakening to the immense significance of English in the field of education.
The vast majority of those who learn English intend to use it as a second language, especially in education and work. First language English is still confined to a small percentage of the population. Therefore English is mainly important for us as a second language.
Local academics in the field generally assume that we have a distinctly identifiable variety of English with its own characteristic pronunciation, vocabulary and idiom. However, as outlined in The Oxford Companion to the English Language (ed. Tom McArthur, 1992), Sri Lankan English “… is not itself a monolithic system; it consists of a range of subvarieties based on proficiency in it and the users’ language background. It is in fact a subvariety of South Asian English similar to Indian English with which it shares many features…”
Out of this range of subvarieties the form of English that is normally used by educated Sri Lankans is the one that can be described as Standard Sri Lankan English, which is the variety generally accepted as correct. I believe that the educated variety of Sri Lankan English derives from what used to be regarded as Standard British English. The reason is that the British have dominated general education in Sri Lanka including the teaching of English during most of our two hundred year association with them. Particularly in educated English medium discourse we used to believe that we were following the British standard. Even our conscious accommodation of the other major national standard – the American variety – began relatively recently. Out of all major forms of English, it is “British” English that is most readily intelligible to us in its spoken and written forms. The other varieties are comprehensible to us to the extent that they resemble the (assumed) standard British model.
The “British” habit is so ingrained in us, at least in some of us, that we should be excused if we appear to cling on to a so-called British Standard that is being debunked, and exorcised by modern linguists. Yet, I believe that this British connection is an essential link between the Sri Lankan variety that is being advocated, and the global English that is probably emerging in the world at large.
In this context, the usual confusion between standard and accent must be resolved. The standard form of a language is the form that enjoys the greatest prestige in educational and official contexts, in the media, and in writing systems; accent usually refers to features of pronunciation that reveal a speaker’s regional or social background. There was a time when Standard British English was identified with RP (Received Pronunciation) among native British speakers. Today this is no longer the case. Standard English is now spoken with a variety of accents. The “Standard” is maintained more in grammar and vocabulary (not without occasional lapses) than in pronunciation. Even in Britain, only about 3% of the population are said to speak RP.
RP could never be a model for our ELT purposes. Perhaps it never was. Naturally, as speakers of our own native languages whose sound systems are significantly different from each other as well as from English, we cannot pronounce English the way either the native or other non-native speakers of the language do unless we undergo special training to do so. We must adopt our own Sri Lankan accent, which itself is heterogeneous on account of the diversity of the mother tongue backgrounds within Sri Lanka. I think that since the time that Sri Lankans started learning English in a local context they have always been using their characteristic accents, because they cannot acquire any other accent in their specific circumstances: their teachers usually share the same mother tongues; they start learning English as a second language only after they have mastered the sound system of their native language, and so on.
Of course, there are a few who try to put on a “posh” accent, which is nothing but a ludicrous attempt to improvise what they imagine to be a “native-speaker-like” pronunciation.
Many foreigners would say that our mastery of English grammar and vocabulary is excellent, but that our pronunciation is not quite so good. This is perhaps not a fair assessment. Non-native speakers of a language can rarely achieve native-speaker pronunciation unless specially trained. Most English speech sounds are new to us; some of our own sounds are not even remotely identical with them. Where a competent teacher’s guidance is not available for the correct production of authentic English sounds, second language learners tend to substitute approximate native (i.e. mother tongue) equivalents for them.
English pronunciation can be problematic for our students for two basic reasons among others: the first is the novelty of certain English phonemes; the second, the far more difficult but also more significant problem concerns their lack of familiarity with the syllable stress and intonation patterns of English. In English it is important to stress the correct syllables to convey meaning. We do not have this feature in Sinhala, and when we speak English, our delivery is a flat even flow of speech without the correct pattern of stresses that a native speaker of English would generally produce.
Foreigners will find it difficult to understand our English speech if we fail to produce reasonably authentic English sounds and stress patterns. Since we learn English for international/global communication as a major aim of our effort, our commitment to a totally “Sri Lankan” model of English should not be at the expense of mutual intelligibility with other varieties of English, not only at the level of grammar and vocabulary, but also at the level of accent (“accent” here is intentionally simplified to mean characteristic features of pronunciation that signal the second language speakers’ mother tongue background).
Our target need not be a British or American accent, but a natural Sri Lankan pronunciation approximating the normal or neutral English pronunciation we hear around the world. The two major “native” varieties of English (British and American) which are really merging into each other, are closer to this nascent form of “global English” than any other manifestation of English. We need not bother about being able to copy a supposed native-speaker pronunciation; but we should aim at the mastery of basic phonemic distinctions and stress patterns, which are likely to cause us trouble as non-native speakers of English, but which are essential for universal comprehensibility.
The pronunciation of educated Sri Lankan speakers of English is yet to be described, and pronouncing dictionaries compiled by researchers; adequate linguistic corpora must be put together to define and describe the “educated Sri Lankan variety of English”; reference books must be written to guide teachers and students and language teaching materials have to be produced, too.
Until such time as these are ready we should turn to source materials and other relevant literature produced by native British and American authors and non-native experts who are close to the two major national standards. Going after the Indian or Caribbean varieties just to spite the alleged “English power base” will not take us anywhere.
The reason for making such an assertion is my belief that anything that is identified as Standard Sri Lankan English cannot be very different from the English found in international circulation, whose remarkable common core uniformity is due to its general similarity to the two predominant “native” standards (i.e. British and American) in terms of grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation within manageable limits. Our local standard should not alienate itself from the English of global communication.
Thus, staying close to British and American English will be to our advantage. A too exclusively Sri Lankan variety of English, which may entail the tolerance of obvious but typical Sri Lankan solecisms (that deviate from what could be considered as the emergent neutral international standard) can lead to problems relating to global intelligibility. As Professor J.D. Bowen of USA once pointed out, second language Englishes tend to deviate from each other more and in more directions than native Englishes in which the dialects are mutually supportive.
The ground realities in the local ELT scene should not be forgotten. When we talk about the “abysmal failure” of the local English language teaching programme, we still think of our failure to teach the traditional variety of English we have always been concerned with, that is, the local version of British English; we gauge the proficiency of teachers in terms of their mastery of that variety. If the adoption of the “local standard” includes the acceptance of usages previously condemned as “non-standard” and, more importantly, as interfering with efficient communication on that account, then such an innovation will not lead to any amelioration of the current ELT situation.
Concluded
by
Rohana R.Wasala
(This present article appeared in the Midweek Review of The Island newspaper on 23rd June 2010)
A truncated version of this article first appeared in The Ceylon Daily News of Wednesday April 24, 2002 under the title “Sri Lankan English? The question of an acceptable model”. The same article in its complete original form, though now naturally dated, is being offered here to the Island readers because of the relevance of its subject to the current revitalized state English Language Teaching (ELT) enterprise. I have slightly edited it without altering its general content - RRW.
The reality that we encounter in the English language teaching domain today is that we no longer can claim that there is a single form of English which we could adopt as the universal standard; instead we have many standards, all equally correct and acceptable. We are obliged to talk about Englishes, not English.
The multiplicity of standard forms of English is a formidable problem for the practical teacher in the language classroom. In Sri Lanka where we teach English as a second language at all levels from the primary to the tertiary we obviously cannot tell our pupils, “Unlike in the past we now believe that there are many acceptable standard Englishes, not just one. You must learn the variety of English that is the most appropriate one for you”. Such advice may be enlightening to people who already know their English quite well. Where learners are concerned, it is teachers who must deal with the problem of “standard” in terms of which they may arbitrate on matters of linguistic acceptability/correctness.
This is where “the importance of advocating a standard for the language” comes. In fact, the question regarding a suitable standard for us to adopt in teaching English as a second language is in the process of being settled by local scholars in a context where the “many Englishes” idea is accommodated. This means that a standard Sri Lankan variety of English is being identified. However, there is still a lot of uncertainty, controversy and unfinished work surrounding the subject, which is naturally likely to put off those who, in any case, have not taken kindly to what appear to be deviations from the “standard English” of yesteryear.
The main aim of this present article is to suggest how “old” views about “correct” English could probably be reconciled with current perceptions and practices as far as “Sri Lankan English” is concerned. Let us have a closer look at the situation.
It is well known that the English language has never had anything like the academie francaise of France, i.e. a central authority invested with the power of regulating its use. Nevertheless, over the last two hundred years or so of its roughly 1500 year history to date the two predominant varieties – British English and American English – have provided models of accuracy or standards against which to judge the acceptability of the language in use. Although these two major English dialects have existed as two distinct standards, the divergences between them in terms of grammar and vocabulary are minimal; even the differences in spelling and pronunciation (which are more readily noted) are never so wide as to render them mutually incomprehensible in the least. In effect, they represent nearly identical models of correctness.
However, with the recent emergence of English as the global medium of science, technology, industry, trade, culture, computer, communications, etc the function of serving as a measure of authenticity is being rapidly decentralized away from the native British and American standards to peripheral non-native forms of English such as Canadian, Caribbean and Indian. In other words, there is a growing tendency among users of English as a foreign or second language in different regions around the globe to consider the varieties of English evolving in their own sociocultural contexts to be as “respectable” as, and, for their particular purposes, even more effective and efficient than, Standard American or British English.
Consequently, it is difficult today to talk about one single authoritative form of English. Rather it is the case that there are a number of Standard “Englishes” - a notion that could be reprehensible to some of us who were educated when the English we were taught was securely bound to the flagship of Standard British English (or whatever was locally supposed to constitute it) and characteristic deviations from “the norm” among the local users of the language, whether they resulted from an imperfect mastery of the standard or from natural sociolinguistic causes, were rightly or wrongly outlawed as erroneous forms, or as “Ceylonisms”.
While the persistent conservative standpoint is understandable, the global trend appears to be an accommodating attitude towards the phenomenon of a plurality of Standard Englishes. In terms of this tendency which may, in fact, be seen at one level as a manifestation in the field of language of a certain desire amongst previously colonized peoples for emancipation from lingering Western dominance, some of us in Sri Lanka too might feel justified in trying to adopt a Standard English of our own. If what could be identified as the local educated variety of English is to be accepted as our autonomous model, this must be done in such a way as not to depress even further the already low levels of competence in English among our students.
It is even possible to imagine a worse scenario than the mere decline of proficiency levels: the threatened extinction in Sri Lanka of English as we know it today, or its final degeneration into an autonomous tongue, a creole perhaps, alienated from the rest of the world! However, where English is concerned, such fears may be baseless because the centrifugal movement towards diversity is being countered by an opposite movement towards uniformity in the context of easy international communication and the virtual obliteration of national borders due to globalization.
David Graddol writes in his The Future of English? (London: British Council, 1997) “The widespread use of English as a language of wider communication will continue to exert pressure towards global uniformity as well as give rise to anxieties about ‘declining’ standards, language change and the loss of geolinguistic diversity. But as English shifts from foreign- language to second- language status for an increasing number of people, we can also expect to see English develop a larger number of local varieties” (Graddol, 1997, p.56).
In the same context Graddol attributes these opposite strains that English is presently undergoing to the fact that “… English has two main functions in the world: it provides a vehicular language for international communication and it forms the basis for constructing cultural identities…”. The former pushes towards uniformity, intelligibility and common standards, whereas the latter tends to lead towards fragmentation through the creation of local forms and hybrid varieties.
However, there is no evidence to suggest that English is in any danger of breaking up into an infinity of mutually unintelligible dialects. The diversity of varieties of English is nothing new after all. Different brands of English have always existed. What is new is that with the unprecedented expansion of its adoption in every part of the world this plurality of standard forms of English has become more evident than before.
The best future we may perhaps extrapolate for English from the current trends is that, notwithstanding the localizing movements leading to “polycentrism” (i.e. a number of standard forms), the momentum towards global uniformity will prevail and that, as a result, “a supranational” (Graddol’s phrase) will emerge, transcending all these competing “native” and regional varieties. Strevens (1992), quoted by Graddol, speculates that the ELT industry will play a significant role in maintaining such an international standard for both communication and teaching purposes. The prevailing tendency though is towards the recognition of non-native regional models.
The replacement of what once enjoyed a monolithic status as the correct form of English with a regional variety will obviously have important implications for ELT activity as well as international communication. While lack of uniformity could hinder easy exchange of information, it may also pose problems for ELT practitioners in the matter of designing curricula and compiling teaching materials. Nevertheless, the current advocacy of a standard Sri Lankan variety of English for teaching will not, I believe, lead to such a complete break with the native varieties of English,( especially British and American, however protean and elusive to boot these themselves may be) as to hamper our communication with the outside world. Curriculum designing, material preparation, and other pedagogical problems will not be insurmountable obstacles either.
Probably a major reason for championing a local brand of English in our country is the recognition of the changed image and function of English as opposed to its past. Under the British, it was the language of administration and business, associated with elitism and power, and the colonialists restricted its availability to a subservient minority for their own purposes. Even for most of the half century of independence since 1948 English has been almost exclusively the prerogative of the power-wielding national bourgeoisie. As a result of the spirit of resurgent nationalism which swept the country in the wake of Independence (and which culminated in the 1956 political changes), English was given a back seat in the national consciousness, but this was temporary. Even during this time, Sri Lanka’s educational policy makers were not oblivious of the importance of English for the development of the country through education. A programme was implemented to teach English as a second language to all school children irrespective of their social class.
Education through the medium of national languages began to be available to far larger numbers of students than education through the medium of English ever was under colonial rule. This immensely benefited many children of the dispossessed classes who were previously denied that opportunity. A rapid expansion of mother tongue education happened broadly between the 1960’s and 1980’s during which period English education was virtually downgraded. The reality today is that English is being restored to its position of prominence in all important spheres – education, economic development, communication, business, industry, etc. Most of all, there is a widespread reawakening to the immense significance of English in the field of education.
The vast majority of those who learn English intend to use it as a second language, especially in education and work. First language English is still confined to a small percentage of the population. Therefore English is mainly important for us as a second language.
Local academics in the field generally assume that we have a distinctly identifiable variety of English with its own characteristic pronunciation, vocabulary and idiom. However, as outlined in The Oxford Companion to the English Language (ed. Tom McArthur, 1992), Sri Lankan English “… is not itself a monolithic system; it consists of a range of subvarieties based on proficiency in it and the users’ language background. It is in fact a subvariety of South Asian English similar to Indian English with which it shares many features…”
Out of this range of subvarieties the form of English that is normally used by educated Sri Lankans is the one that can be described as Standard Sri Lankan English, which is the variety generally accepted as correct. I believe that the educated variety of Sri Lankan English derives from what used to be regarded as Standard British English. The reason is that the British have dominated general education in Sri Lanka including the teaching of English during most of our two hundred year association with them. Particularly in educated English medium discourse we used to believe that we were following the British standard. Even our conscious accommodation of the other major national standard – the American variety – began relatively recently. Out of all major forms of English, it is “British” English that is most readily intelligible to us in its spoken and written forms. The other varieties are comprehensible to us to the extent that they resemble the (assumed) standard British model.
The “British” habit is so ingrained in us, at least in some of us, that we should be excused if we appear to cling on to a so-called British Standard that is being debunked, and exorcised by modern linguists. Yet, I believe that this British connection is an essential link between the Sri Lankan variety that is being advocated, and the global English that is probably emerging in the world at large.
In this context, the usual confusion between standard and accent must be resolved. The standard form of a language is the form that enjoys the greatest prestige in educational and official contexts, in the media, and in writing systems; accent usually refers to features of pronunciation that reveal a speaker’s regional or social background. There was a time when Standard British English was identified with RP (Received Pronunciation) among native British speakers. Today this is no longer the case. Standard English is now spoken with a variety of accents. The “Standard” is maintained more in grammar and vocabulary (not without occasional lapses) than in pronunciation. Even in Britain, only about 3% of the population are said to speak RP.
RP could never be a model for our ELT purposes. Perhaps it never was. Naturally, as speakers of our own native languages whose sound systems are significantly different from each other as well as from English, we cannot pronounce English the way either the native or other non-native speakers of the language do unless we undergo special training to do so. We must adopt our own Sri Lankan accent, which itself is heterogeneous on account of the diversity of the mother tongue backgrounds within Sri Lanka. I think that since the time that Sri Lankans started learning English in a local context they have always been using their characteristic accents, because they cannot acquire any other accent in their specific circumstances: their teachers usually share the same mother tongues; they start learning English as a second language only after they have mastered the sound system of their native language, and so on.
Of course, there are a few who try to put on a “posh” accent, which is nothing but a ludicrous attempt to improvise what they imagine to be a “native-speaker-like” pronunciation.
Many foreigners would say that our mastery of English grammar and vocabulary is excellent, but that our pronunciation is not quite so good. This is perhaps not a fair assessment. Non-native speakers of a language can rarely achieve native-speaker pronunciation unless specially trained. Most English speech sounds are new to us; some of our own sounds are not even remotely identical with them. Where a competent teacher’s guidance is not available for the correct production of authentic English sounds, second language learners tend to substitute approximate native (i.e. mother tongue) equivalents for them.
English pronunciation can be problematic for our students for two basic reasons among others: the first is the novelty of certain English phonemes; the second, the far more difficult but also more significant problem concerns their lack of familiarity with the syllable stress and intonation patterns of English. In English it is important to stress the correct syllables to convey meaning. We do not have this feature in Sinhala, and when we speak English, our delivery is a flat even flow of speech without the correct pattern of stresses that a native speaker of English would generally produce.
Foreigners will find it difficult to understand our English speech if we fail to produce reasonably authentic English sounds and stress patterns. Since we learn English for international/global communication as a major aim of our effort, our commitment to a totally “Sri Lankan” model of English should not be at the expense of mutual intelligibility with other varieties of English, not only at the level of grammar and vocabulary, but also at the level of accent (“accent” here is intentionally simplified to mean characteristic features of pronunciation that signal the second language speakers’ mother tongue background).
Our target need not be a British or American accent, but a natural Sri Lankan pronunciation approximating the normal or neutral English pronunciation we hear around the world. The two major “native” varieties of English (British and American) which are really merging into each other, are closer to this nascent form of “global English” than any other manifestation of English. We need not bother about being able to copy a supposed native-speaker pronunciation; but we should aim at the mastery of basic phonemic distinctions and stress patterns, which are likely to cause us trouble as non-native speakers of English, but which are essential for universal comprehensibility.
The pronunciation of educated Sri Lankan speakers of English is yet to be described, and pronouncing dictionaries compiled by researchers; adequate linguistic corpora must be put together to define and describe the “educated Sri Lankan variety of English”; reference books must be written to guide teachers and students and language teaching materials have to be produced, too.
Until such time as these are ready we should turn to source materials and other relevant literature produced by native British and American authors and non-native experts who are close to the two major national standards. Going after the Indian or Caribbean varieties just to spite the alleged “English power base” will not take us anywhere.
The reason for making such an assertion is my belief that anything that is identified as Standard Sri Lankan English cannot be very different from the English found in international circulation, whose remarkable common core uniformity is due to its general similarity to the two predominant “native” standards (i.e. British and American) in terms of grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation within manageable limits. Our local standard should not alienate itself from the English of global communication.
Thus, staying close to British and American English will be to our advantage. A too exclusively Sri Lankan variety of English, which may entail the tolerance of obvious but typical Sri Lankan solecisms (that deviate from what could be considered as the emergent neutral international standard) can lead to problems relating to global intelligibility. As Professor J.D. Bowen of USA once pointed out, second language Englishes tend to deviate from each other more and in more directions than native Englishes in which the dialects are mutually supportive.
The ground realities in the local ELT scene should not be forgotten. When we talk about the “abysmal failure” of the local English language teaching programme, we still think of our failure to teach the traditional variety of English we have always been concerned with, that is, the local version of British English; we gauge the proficiency of teachers in terms of their mastery of that variety. If the adoption of the “local standard” includes the acceptance of usages previously condemned as “non-standard” and, more importantly, as interfering with efficient communication on that account, then such an innovation will not lead to any amelioration of the current ELT situation.
Concluded
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Buddhism is introduced to the little island kingdom
Buddhism is introduced to the little island kingdom
(First published in the Sunday Times/ 15th June 2003)
The colonization of the island by a North Indian tribe and the subsequent introduction of Buddhism can be described as the two most significant events in the early history of Sri Lanka. The Buddhist monks who committed them to recorded history, about seven hundred years later, richly embellished the stories relating to these events with legendary details. However, their historical authenticity is well borne out by a profusion of evidence. While the account of the landing of Prince Vijaya and his retinue in the island lends itself to controversy among scholars as regards its actual date and the contemporary historical context, the introduction of Buddhism took place in historically more verifiable circumstances. It was in 247 BC during the reign of the Indian monarch Asoka (269-232 BC).
Emperor Asoka was the grandson of Chandragupta of the Mauryan clan, who reigned over the whole of North India in the last quarter of the fourth century BC. Fascinated by the calm and composed demeanour of a young Buddhist samanera (a novice monk) named Nigrodha, he invited him to the palace and inquired into the teaching of the sage whose disciple he was. The monk's explanation of the Buddha Dhamma appealed to the king, who had been traumatized by the horrendous scale of suffering that he himself had caused to hundreds of thousands of people during his military conquest of Kalinga. He became an ardent Buddhist and with single-minded devotion adopted Buddhist principles in the administration of his far-flung empire, assuming the role of 'father' to his subjects whom he called his 'children'. His edicts inscribed on rock and metal (which can still be seen all over India) communicated royal messages and admonitions; their express purpose was the moral edification and physical well being of his people.
"This astonishing ruler," writes Jawaharlal Nehru in his 'Discovery of India' (1946), "beloved still in India and many other parts of Asia, devoted himself to the spread of Buddha's teaching, to righteousness and goodwill and to public works for the good of the people..."
After embracing Buddhism, Asoka turned his mind from military conquest to righteousness. He sent missionaries to all countries with which India had political and trade links like Sri Lanka, Syria, Egypt and Macedonia. To Sinhaladweepa he sent the Thera Mahinda (Asoka's own son according to popular tradition) and later his daughter Sangamitta, who brought with her a sapling from the Bodhi Tree at Buddha Gaya, under which Prince Siddhartha Gautama attained Enlightenment. This act of sending his own children as missionaries to Sri Lanka indicated that he had special concern for the little island kingdom to the south of his empire.
When the missionaries arrived here their work was facilitated by a number of favourable circumstances. The first was the royal patronage extended to them. There is reason to believe that there had been friendly relations between Emperor Asoka and King Devanampiya Tissa (250-210 BC) of Lanka even before the introduction of Buddhism. The second factor was that the missionaries spoke in a language not very different from the local one, i.e. Sinhala, which was most probably a fusion of the indigenous tongue with the Aryan tongue of the settlers. A third congenial circumstance was the absence of a well-organized religion in the relatively recently established colony, which meant that the new creed met no serious challenge or opposition. Probably the people of Lanka at that time were animists who worshipped local deities and demons. The Buddhist religion did not come into conflict with the indigenous cults because its preachers aimed to instill Buddhist virtues in the people, not to make them abandon their accustomed gods. Finally, the settled lifestyle made possible by the agricultural economy left the Sinhalese enough time for religious activities.
Within two centuries Buddhism spread to every inhabited part of the island. The religious uniformity gave the islanders of diverse tribes and classes a strong sense of unity. It was the common Buddhist values and cultural ideals that the monks instilled in the people that united them into a harmonious society.
The values taught by the monks appealed at least to the more intelligent members of the society. The law of karma was accepted as a more rational explanation of the vicissitudes of life than the mere caprice of gods and devils, and it made them understand that happiness and suffering were the result of their own actions in their present or past births.
The ethical teachings of Buddhism led them away from original barbarous practices and savage ways to a more civilized mode of life. Religious observances such as the Five Precepts gave them a sense of discipline, mental purity and orderliness. This obviously contributed to peace and harmony amongst the people, which eventually led to their material progress as well.
Cultural advancement was a natural concomitant of the conversion of the whole country to Buddhism. There is no evidence to suggest that there was any literary tradition in pre-Buddhist Lanka. The Buddhist scriptures constituted the first literary works that came to our country. The Aryan dialect in which these works were composed was Pali. The Sinhalese Buddhist monks used it for writing books. Borrowings from Pali especially in the areas of religion, ethics and philosophy immensely enriched the Sinhalese language. Buddhist themes and stories provided the subjects for religious and creative works that came to be composed in Sinhalese.
Another important development that came with Buddhism was the art of writing. The earliest inscriptions of Sri Lanka were made in the Brahmin script. The modern Sinhalese alphabet evolved from this system of writing.
The development of an impressive form of architecture was also due to the cultural changes that accompanied the arrival of Buddhism. Stupas and monasteries were prominent among the earliest architectural creations in the island. With the image-house becoming an essential feature of every vihara, the art of sculpture too started to flourish. The Buddhists had not made statues of the Master, in order not to identify Him with the gods of Hinduism; they had instead represented the Buddha by symbols such as the Footprint (Sri Pada), the Wheel of the Law (Dharmachakra) or the Umbrella (Chatra). The distinctive Buddhist art that the Sinhalese developed was inspired by the Indo-Bactrian art that flourished in India after the advent of the Greeks in that country under Alexander the Great (356-323 BC) in the fourth century BC.
The introduction of Buddhism, in which Emperor Asoka, Arahat Mahinda and King Devanampiya Tissa were the key figures, had a seminal influence over the growth of our culture. We believe that this event happened about two thousand three hundred years ago on a full moon day. The Poson Poya day, which this year fell on Saturday June 14, was observed in remembrance of this great event
(First published in the Sunday Times/ 15th June 2003)
The colonization of the island by a North Indian tribe and the subsequent introduction of Buddhism can be described as the two most significant events in the early history of Sri Lanka. The Buddhist monks who committed them to recorded history, about seven hundred years later, richly embellished the stories relating to these events with legendary details. However, their historical authenticity is well borne out by a profusion of evidence. While the account of the landing of Prince Vijaya and his retinue in the island lends itself to controversy among scholars as regards its actual date and the contemporary historical context, the introduction of Buddhism took place in historically more verifiable circumstances. It was in 247 BC during the reign of the Indian monarch Asoka (269-232 BC).
Emperor Asoka was the grandson of Chandragupta of the Mauryan clan, who reigned over the whole of North India in the last quarter of the fourth century BC. Fascinated by the calm and composed demeanour of a young Buddhist samanera (a novice monk) named Nigrodha, he invited him to the palace and inquired into the teaching of the sage whose disciple he was. The monk's explanation of the Buddha Dhamma appealed to the king, who had been traumatized by the horrendous scale of suffering that he himself had caused to hundreds of thousands of people during his military conquest of Kalinga. He became an ardent Buddhist and with single-minded devotion adopted Buddhist principles in the administration of his far-flung empire, assuming the role of 'father' to his subjects whom he called his 'children'. His edicts inscribed on rock and metal (which can still be seen all over India) communicated royal messages and admonitions; their express purpose was the moral edification and physical well being of his people.
"This astonishing ruler," writes Jawaharlal Nehru in his 'Discovery of India' (1946), "beloved still in India and many other parts of Asia, devoted himself to the spread of Buddha's teaching, to righteousness and goodwill and to public works for the good of the people..."
After embracing Buddhism, Asoka turned his mind from military conquest to righteousness. He sent missionaries to all countries with which India had political and trade links like Sri Lanka, Syria, Egypt and Macedonia. To Sinhaladweepa he sent the Thera Mahinda (Asoka's own son according to popular tradition) and later his daughter Sangamitta, who brought with her a sapling from the Bodhi Tree at Buddha Gaya, under which Prince Siddhartha Gautama attained Enlightenment. This act of sending his own children as missionaries to Sri Lanka indicated that he had special concern for the little island kingdom to the south of his empire.
When the missionaries arrived here their work was facilitated by a number of favourable circumstances. The first was the royal patronage extended to them. There is reason to believe that there had been friendly relations between Emperor Asoka and King Devanampiya Tissa (250-210 BC) of Lanka even before the introduction of Buddhism. The second factor was that the missionaries spoke in a language not very different from the local one, i.e. Sinhala, which was most probably a fusion of the indigenous tongue with the Aryan tongue of the settlers. A third congenial circumstance was the absence of a well-organized religion in the relatively recently established colony, which meant that the new creed met no serious challenge or opposition. Probably the people of Lanka at that time were animists who worshipped local deities and demons. The Buddhist religion did not come into conflict with the indigenous cults because its preachers aimed to instill Buddhist virtues in the people, not to make them abandon their accustomed gods. Finally, the settled lifestyle made possible by the agricultural economy left the Sinhalese enough time for religious activities.
Within two centuries Buddhism spread to every inhabited part of the island. The religious uniformity gave the islanders of diverse tribes and classes a strong sense of unity. It was the common Buddhist values and cultural ideals that the monks instilled in the people that united them into a harmonious society.
The values taught by the monks appealed at least to the more intelligent members of the society. The law of karma was accepted as a more rational explanation of the vicissitudes of life than the mere caprice of gods and devils, and it made them understand that happiness and suffering were the result of their own actions in their present or past births.
The ethical teachings of Buddhism led them away from original barbarous practices and savage ways to a more civilized mode of life. Religious observances such as the Five Precepts gave them a sense of discipline, mental purity and orderliness. This obviously contributed to peace and harmony amongst the people, which eventually led to their material progress as well.
Cultural advancement was a natural concomitant of the conversion of the whole country to Buddhism. There is no evidence to suggest that there was any literary tradition in pre-Buddhist Lanka. The Buddhist scriptures constituted the first literary works that came to our country. The Aryan dialect in which these works were composed was Pali. The Sinhalese Buddhist monks used it for writing books. Borrowings from Pali especially in the areas of religion, ethics and philosophy immensely enriched the Sinhalese language. Buddhist themes and stories provided the subjects for religious and creative works that came to be composed in Sinhalese.
Another important development that came with Buddhism was the art of writing. The earliest inscriptions of Sri Lanka were made in the Brahmin script. The modern Sinhalese alphabet evolved from this system of writing.
The development of an impressive form of architecture was also due to the cultural changes that accompanied the arrival of Buddhism. Stupas and monasteries were prominent among the earliest architectural creations in the island. With the image-house becoming an essential feature of every vihara, the art of sculpture too started to flourish. The Buddhists had not made statues of the Master, in order not to identify Him with the gods of Hinduism; they had instead represented the Buddha by symbols such as the Footprint (Sri Pada), the Wheel of the Law (Dharmachakra) or the Umbrella (Chatra). The distinctive Buddhist art that the Sinhalese developed was inspired by the Indo-Bactrian art that flourished in India after the advent of the Greeks in that country under Alexander the Great (356-323 BC) in the fourth century BC.
The introduction of Buddhism, in which Emperor Asoka, Arahat Mahinda and King Devanampiya Tissa were the key figures, had a seminal influence over the growth of our culture. We believe that this event happened about two thousand three hundred years ago on a full moon day. The Poson Poya day, which this year fell on Saturday June 14, was observed in remembrance of this great event
Saturday, June 12, 2010
Korean Jobs for Our English Teachers
Korean Jobs for Our English Teachers: A Way to Eat the Cake and Have It Too
(This first appeared in the Midweek Review of the Island on Wednesday 9th June, 2010)
“Is the new Minister of Education getting off on the wrong foot?” I wondered when I first heard the news a few days ago that he had agreed to send some 2000 English teachers to work in South Korea. Reading the news item in the papers I felt that this was being touted as a significant achievement on his part, and even as a promise of similar achievements in the future. Although I wanted to express my worse than negative opinion about the matter in an article like this as a concerned citizen reasonably well informed regarding the local ELT scene, I desisted from actually doing so in the hopeful belief that persons with the necessary political influence closer to the decision-making circles would intervene before the proposal was implemented.
It is well known that the country is in critical need of teachers of English, especially for its rural districts, teachers with a high level of language proficiency, and professional acumen; it’s a problem of quality as well as quantity. We don’t have enough English teachers for our own needs; and the majority of the teachers we already have must be put through further education and training before they may be expected to do their job with a degree of success. In this context, offering to help another country in an area where we ourselves, willingly or unwillingly, depend on foreign assistance, is nothing short of a joke, something comparable to “a man too poor to clothe himself making dresses for his dogs”, to translate a local idiom.
To my knowledge, there has been no sign of the proposed move being challenged as it should among responsible people. The only protesting voice I heard was that of the All Ceylon Union of English Teachers (ACUET) as reported in The Island of Thursday 4th June 2010. The Union has appealed to the President on the basis of obvious reasons to put an end to the idea. Anyone with an iota of concern for the promotion of English language proficiency among our students, and a degree of appreciation of the presidential drive towards that goal would wholeheartedly agree with the ACUET’s position in this regard.
I had reached this point in my essay when I read the Sunday Island editorial today (6th June) on “Exporting English Teachers”. The Island editor hits the nail on the head as he always does regarding any matter of national importance. I share his utter disapproval of the scheme, and join him in asking “… in a situation where we could not guarantee the provision of quality English teachers to meet our own needs, to what degree could we satisfactorily meet South Korea’s needs of this kind?”
Yet, in my opinion, a totally negative reaction to a plan that many teachers and their families would consider as offering a golden opportunity to improve their economic status – could not be very popular among these key players in the field; they might feel aggrieved that they are being robbed of such an opportunity, and get demoralized. But, on the other hand, there probably is a way to turn the scheme into something positive for the country, both economically and educationally.
Suppose, in spite of everything, the authorities find themselves committed to carrying through some prior agreement with South Korea, or irresistibly attracted to the scheme because of some potential advantage for the country, and are thus unable to allow wiser counsel to prevail in this instance. Then probably, they could think of something like what I have just hinted at, a way to transform a potentially negative thing into a positive one. Let me elaborate.
If those responsible handle the scheme in a thoroughly professional way, free from all political interference, nepotism, patronage, etc. as a means to reward dedicated teachers who have performed well, with special recognition for having served in difficult areas, it will cancel out the likely deleterious fallout of such a scheme. Teachers who are to be sent presumably on a government-delegated basis should be signed for a stipulated, non-extendable period of contract; fresh batches of teachers may be similarly delegated for foreign employment in the future when those who have completed their periods of contract return.
The process of selecting teachers for such foreign employment will be naturally a complicated affair, but not prohibitively so. Not any and every teacher should be allowed to apply. Prospective applicants must produce an eligibility certificate issued by relevant local ELT authorities who are satisfied with their qualifications, competence, and proven performance (in terms of exam results achieved, supervisors’ testimonials, awards won, etc) with bonus points for difficult area service. The candidates must successfully take a written test that gauges their knowledge of English, followed by an oral examination with Korean and Sri Lankan ELT experts. The selection of teachers to be sent abroad should be done on this stringent basis.
Recruitment for service abroad after such an exacting selection process will be then considered as conferring on the selected teachers high professional recognition, which will be a milestone in their career, and will stand them in good stead when they apply for professional advancement in the future.
Such a scheme will be a godsend for the many conscientious teachers who already serve the nation in an exemplary manner in spite of the fact that, at present, there is little proper supervision of teachers, and even less recognition, and rewarding of good performance where it exists. This will generally encourage others to work well, too.
Selecting teachers indiscriminately on other than strictly professional grounds will run the risk of sending persons who are neither knowledgeable nor competent, which will only earn a bad name for the country; that kind of anomaly will spread disaffection among the more deserving teachers who get overlooked in the process. Besides, the Koreans will not be remiss in regularly supervising the foreign teachers they bring into their country at great expense, and in demanding value for their money. If they find that they are being cheated by a set of ill qualified, incompetent Sri Lankan teachers they will not hesitate to terminate their contract with us, and look elsewhere for recruiting the personnel they need. They are rich enough to choose the best for their children, be it teachers of English or anything else.
If Sri Lanka must send teachers of English to Korea, this should be accomplished in such a way that the crisis situation that exists in our own country’s English teaching arena is not aggravated. In fact, through proper management, the scheme could be exploited not only to attract qualified young people to the profession to fill in the vacancies left by teachers selected to serve abroad, but also to enhance their performance by offering a term of foreign employment as an incentive.
(This first appeared in the Midweek Review of the Island on Wednesday 9th June, 2010)
“Is the new Minister of Education getting off on the wrong foot?” I wondered when I first heard the news a few days ago that he had agreed to send some 2000 English teachers to work in South Korea. Reading the news item in the papers I felt that this was being touted as a significant achievement on his part, and even as a promise of similar achievements in the future. Although I wanted to express my worse than negative opinion about the matter in an article like this as a concerned citizen reasonably well informed regarding the local ELT scene, I desisted from actually doing so in the hopeful belief that persons with the necessary political influence closer to the decision-making circles would intervene before the proposal was implemented.
It is well known that the country is in critical need of teachers of English, especially for its rural districts, teachers with a high level of language proficiency, and professional acumen; it’s a problem of quality as well as quantity. We don’t have enough English teachers for our own needs; and the majority of the teachers we already have must be put through further education and training before they may be expected to do their job with a degree of success. In this context, offering to help another country in an area where we ourselves, willingly or unwillingly, depend on foreign assistance, is nothing short of a joke, something comparable to “a man too poor to clothe himself making dresses for his dogs”, to translate a local idiom.
To my knowledge, there has been no sign of the proposed move being challenged as it should among responsible people. The only protesting voice I heard was that of the All Ceylon Union of English Teachers (ACUET) as reported in The Island of Thursday 4th June 2010. The Union has appealed to the President on the basis of obvious reasons to put an end to the idea. Anyone with an iota of concern for the promotion of English language proficiency among our students, and a degree of appreciation of the presidential drive towards that goal would wholeheartedly agree with the ACUET’s position in this regard.
I had reached this point in my essay when I read the Sunday Island editorial today (6th June) on “Exporting English Teachers”. The Island editor hits the nail on the head as he always does regarding any matter of national importance. I share his utter disapproval of the scheme, and join him in asking “… in a situation where we could not guarantee the provision of quality English teachers to meet our own needs, to what degree could we satisfactorily meet South Korea’s needs of this kind?”
Yet, in my opinion, a totally negative reaction to a plan that many teachers and their families would consider as offering a golden opportunity to improve their economic status – could not be very popular among these key players in the field; they might feel aggrieved that they are being robbed of such an opportunity, and get demoralized. But, on the other hand, there probably is a way to turn the scheme into something positive for the country, both economically and educationally.
Suppose, in spite of everything, the authorities find themselves committed to carrying through some prior agreement with South Korea, or irresistibly attracted to the scheme because of some potential advantage for the country, and are thus unable to allow wiser counsel to prevail in this instance. Then probably, they could think of something like what I have just hinted at, a way to transform a potentially negative thing into a positive one. Let me elaborate.
If those responsible handle the scheme in a thoroughly professional way, free from all political interference, nepotism, patronage, etc. as a means to reward dedicated teachers who have performed well, with special recognition for having served in difficult areas, it will cancel out the likely deleterious fallout of such a scheme. Teachers who are to be sent presumably on a government-delegated basis should be signed for a stipulated, non-extendable period of contract; fresh batches of teachers may be similarly delegated for foreign employment in the future when those who have completed their periods of contract return.
The process of selecting teachers for such foreign employment will be naturally a complicated affair, but not prohibitively so. Not any and every teacher should be allowed to apply. Prospective applicants must produce an eligibility certificate issued by relevant local ELT authorities who are satisfied with their qualifications, competence, and proven performance (in terms of exam results achieved, supervisors’ testimonials, awards won, etc) with bonus points for difficult area service. The candidates must successfully take a written test that gauges their knowledge of English, followed by an oral examination with Korean and Sri Lankan ELT experts. The selection of teachers to be sent abroad should be done on this stringent basis.
Recruitment for service abroad after such an exacting selection process will be then considered as conferring on the selected teachers high professional recognition, which will be a milestone in their career, and will stand them in good stead when they apply for professional advancement in the future.
Such a scheme will be a godsend for the many conscientious teachers who already serve the nation in an exemplary manner in spite of the fact that, at present, there is little proper supervision of teachers, and even less recognition, and rewarding of good performance where it exists. This will generally encourage others to work well, too.
Selecting teachers indiscriminately on other than strictly professional grounds will run the risk of sending persons who are neither knowledgeable nor competent, which will only earn a bad name for the country; that kind of anomaly will spread disaffection among the more deserving teachers who get overlooked in the process. Besides, the Koreans will not be remiss in regularly supervising the foreign teachers they bring into their country at great expense, and in demanding value for their money. If they find that they are being cheated by a set of ill qualified, incompetent Sri Lankan teachers they will not hesitate to terminate their contract with us, and look elsewhere for recruiting the personnel they need. They are rich enough to choose the best for their children, be it teachers of English or anything else.
If Sri Lanka must send teachers of English to Korea, this should be accomplished in such a way that the crisis situation that exists in our own country’s English teaching arena is not aggravated. In fact, through proper management, the scheme could be exploited not only to attract qualified young people to the profession to fill in the vacancies left by teachers selected to serve abroad, but also to enhance their performance by offering a term of foreign employment as an incentive.
Saturday, May 15, 2010
The Vesak Festival
THE VESAK FESTIVAL
(The following is an updated version of an article of mine first published in The Island newspaper on 17th May (the Vesak day) 2000)
The Vesak Full Moon Poya Day falls on the 27th of this month. Buddhists traditionally believe that Prince Siddhartha Gautama was born, attained Enlightenment (after which he came to be known as the Buddha) and finally passed away on a Vesak Full Moon Poya Day. The Vesak festival celebrates these three important events in the life of the Buddha. The Sinhala Buddhists attribute an additional significance to this day: they believe that the Parinibbana (Passing Away) of the Buddha and the arrival of Prince Vijaya, the legendary founder of the Sinhalese race, in the
The manner of celebrating this religious festival among the Sinhalese Buddhists, as befits its fivefold significance, is such that it provides an occasion for a host of religious and cultural activities. This makes Vesak a deeply felt experience for Sri Lankan Buddhists.
Whereas the Sinhala Aluth Avurudda is a secular festival celebrated with much feasting, fun and frolic, the Vesak is an occasion to be observed with religious devotion and sensual restraint. Devotional practices form the core of the Vesak ceremonies. The colourful cultural events constitute a kind of background to these.
In Sri Lanka, where every full moon day is a public holiday (being of importance to the Buddhists, the majority religious community in the island, on account of some historical event connected with the Buddhist faith in each case) the Vesak Full Moon Poya day is accorded the highest recognition amongst all full moon days. Like the Aluth Avurudda (April New Year) the Vesak Poya Day is marked with two public holidays.
The first of these is the Vesak Full Moon day which is devoted to religious observances like observing ‘sil’ (taking a personal vow to follow certain precepts in order to develop self discipline), meditation, listening to the Dhamma sermons, and giving alms, etc. These activities are usually conducted at Buddhist viharas. Since in the Buddhist faith there is little religious regimentation in terms of obligatory daily observances (the practice of religion being regarded as an individual responsibility dependent on understanding and volition), the elaborate, formal devotional programmes that are organized on the Vesak Full Moon day are in sharp contrast to the rather low key daily religious practices of the ordinary Buddhists. These programmes usually attract a large number of devotees and thus ensure massive popular participation.
Public worship in Buddhism plays only a secondary role. It is important insofar as it leads the followers of the teaching of the Buddha to autonomous pursuit of virtue, which is the essence of religious devotion for a Buddhist. There is no belief in a ‘saviour’ and hence no necessity to ‘pray’ to a higher power; they only pay their homage to the Triple Gem (Buddha, Dhamma, and Sangha), affirm their faith in them and commit themselves to the practice of the teaching.
An invariable part of the devotional performances is the offering of flowers, incense, and light to the Buddha. This is a symbolic act full of meaning to a Buddhist. The formulaic Pali stanza that the devotees utter as they offer flowers means: “I offer these flowers to the Buddha. By the merit earned thus, may I attain Emancipation from suffering! Just as these flowers will fade and die, so will my body decay, too”. Thus the act of offering flowers is accompanied by reflection on the condition of mutability, an inescapable characteristic of all existence, which is a central truth in the Buddhist teaching. The sweet scent of incense signifies the incomparable virtues of the Buddha, and light represents enlightenment that dispels the darkness of ignorance. In Buddhism wisdom takes precedence over faith.
“With Enlightenement Light arose! Wisdom arose!” so, what better way is there to worship the Buddha than to light lamps in His name on the Vesak night? The whole island is illuminated with Vesak lamps, which range from the humblest ‘meti pahan’ (clay lamps) to the most intricate electrically illuminated ‘Vesak lanterns’. The commonest form of Vesak lantern is the ‘bucket’, which is a bucket-shaped paper lamp with a candle stuck at its bottom.
Buckets are of different colours. These colours usually correspond to the colours of ‘Buddha rays’ – rays believed to emanate from the Buddha’s sacred person and form a halo. These are six in number: blue, yellow, red, white, crimson, and a mixture of all these colours. They form the circle of wisdom shown round the paintings and images of the Buddha in places of worship. They are also the colours of the Buddhist flag. Children take special delight in making Vesak lanterns following traditional as well as innovative new models. Myriads of these colourful lights can be seen on the Vesak nights. No Buddhist house is without some form of illumination to mark the Vesak. Even some non-Buddhists light lamps to express solidarity with their Buddhist neighbours and in appreciation of the message of peace and loving-kindness that the founder of Buddhism taught.
Among the thousands of Vesak illuminations that we can see are the ‘thoranas’ (arches, or ‘pandals’ as Sri Lankans call them in English), which are structures erected at such public places as markets and road junctions. They have facades on which are painted scenes from the Buddha’s life or pictures illustrating stories of religious significance. Often professional commentators describe in verse the scenes or stories depicted. On the Vesak nights thousands of sightseers move about the cities watching these ‘thoranas’. There used to be special ‘thorana service’ buses during the Vesak nights ferrying these sightseers around Colombo and the suburbs in the past before incidents of political violence disturbed the peace. (Let’s hope that those peaceful times are back for good!)
The Vesak ‘dansalas’ are another usual feature. These are temporary ‘alms centres’ which serve free food and drink as a charitable act to all those who wish to refresh themselves. The practice of giving is a cardinal virtue in Buddhism. It is connected with the idea of ‘renunciation’ – giving up worldly possessions in order to gradually eliminate ‘craving’, the root cause of being and suffering according to the Buddhist teaching.
Vesak greeting cards and carols are traditions borrowed from Christians. The exchange of Vesak cards is one way of sharing the joy of the season. The Vesak carol singers (due to another borrowed practice from Christians) are usually school children dressed in immaculate white; they go from place to place and sing the carols to the delight of the pious.
Thus the Vesak festival provides the opportunity for the Sri Lankan Buddhists to give creative expression to their religious and cultural ideals though a gamut of traditional activities. It is an important national event that reinvigorates their faith in their religion, and reaffirms their commitment to the principles of loving-kindness, peace and tolerance.
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