Cultivation of Critical Thinking
(First published in The Island/20th August 2010)
Education is good just so far as it produces well-developed critical faculty . . . A teacher of any subject, who insists on accuracy and a rational control of all processes and methods, and who holds everything open to unlimited verification and revision, is cultivating that method as a habit in the pupils. Men educated in it cannot be stampeded . . . They are slow to believe. They can hold things as possible or probable in all degrees, without certainty and without pain. They can wait for evidence and weigh evidence . . . They can resist appeals to their dearest prejudices. Education in the critical faculty is the only education of which it can be truly said that it makes good citizens.
Sumner, W.G. (1940)
We belong to the species known as homo sapiens (the thinking/rational/wise human) which, according to the Webster’s Encyclopedic Dictionary (1996), is “characterized by a brain capacity averaging 1400 cc (85 cubic in.) and by dependence on language and the creation and utilization of complex tools” Thinking is innate in us. It is this characteristic that distinguishes us from other animals.
We humans use our thinking capacity basically to meet three native drives: self-gratification, self-interest, and self-preservation. Because by nature our thinking is imperfect this can lead to problems. Our thinking is often prejudiced, unfair, and plainly wrong, as Dr Richard Paul (Director of Research of the Center for Critical Thinking, and the Chair of the National Council for Excellence in Critical Thinking, California, USA) points out, due to our innate ego-centrism (‘It’s true because I believe it’) and our innate socio-centrism (‘It’s true because that’s what my group believes’); it also results from our innate wish fulfilment (‘It’s true because I want to believe it’) and our innate self-validation (‘It’s true because I have always believed it’), and our innate selfishness. Flawed thinking causes trouble in our day-to-day life and also in more serious matters such as education, business, politics, diplomacy, communication, etc which touch the destinies of whole societies.
If confirmation of this is demanded, we have a plethora of evidence around us. There’s the notorious Sakvithi case in which some four thousand eager investors were swindled out of a billion rupees and in which the fraudster escaped into hiding under the very nose of the authorities, until apprehended recently with the help of some watchful public-spirited citizen; in spite of the wide publicity given to this event over the media we still hear about people getting defrauded in new scams; the general public is perplexed by the inefficient, awkward way measures to control the deadly dengue epidemic are being carried out; we may refer with national shame to the failed CFA with the terrorists which, although it was clearly forced on us through ‘international’ complicity with the separatist criminals, was negotiated with the involvement of some of our leaders, a few of whom were reputed intellectuals, later offering only to defend it before the public, instead of at least expressing some reservations; we may talk about how we are regularly sickened by news about fatal accidents involving children at play, or about undergraduates who resort to violent demonstrations, and get involved in fratricidal conflicts at the instigation of insignificant outsiders. All of these and countless other similar disastrous acts of commission and omission would have been easily avoided, had the victims or those responsible for them acted with some forethought.
Training in critical thinking should be considered as an educational priority in Sri Lanka today, like training in language and computer, particularly for students on the threshold of higher education. In this connection, we need to remember that training in critical thinking is not possible without training in language, in which I include both the mother tongue of the students and English. My feeling is that more attention should be paid to this aspect of education than ever before.
It may be good to introduce critical thinking as a major component of a compulsory language paper or even as a separate paper at the AL. To accommodate critical thinking in the curriculum without adding to the workload that the students must cope with at this level the amount of ground to be covered in the ‘speciality’ subjects may be appropriately curtailed. The reason is that what matters in education ultimately is not how much one knows but how well the educated person can think in a given field of knowledge and in general life. Albert Einstein, often described as the greatest scientist of the twentieth century, wrote in his book Ideas and Opinions (1954) thus:
It is not enough to teach a man a speciality. Through it he may become a kind of useful machine but not a harmoniously developed personality. It is essential that the student acquire an understanding of and a lively feeling for values. He must acquire a vivid sense of the beautiful and of the morally good. Otherwise he – with his specialized knowledge – more closely resembles a well trained dog than a harmoniously developed person. He must learn to understand the motives of human beings, their illusions, and their sufferings in order to acquire a proper relationship to the individual fellow-men and to the community…Overemphasis on the competitive system and premature specialization on the ground of immediate usefulness kill the spirit on which all cultural life depends, specialized knowledge included. It is also vital to a valuable education that independent critical thinking be developed in the young human being, a development that is greatly jeopardized by overburdening him with too much and with too varied subjects. Overburdening necessarily leads to superficiality (pp. 66-67).
Dr Richard Paul, when asked to define ‘critical thinking’, said that definitions are at best “scaffolding for the mind”, and produced the following “bit of scaffolding” for the questioner to construct the meaning of the term: “critical thinking is thinking about your thinking while you’re thinking in order to make your thinking better” (Think Magazine 1992).
I found this scaffolding built into a fuller definition by Dr Richard Paul and his partner Dr Linda Elder:
Critical thinking is, in short, self-directed, self-disciplined, self-monitored, and self-corrective thinking. It requires rigorous standards of excellence and mindful command of their use. It entails effective communication and problem solving abilities and a commitment to overcome our native ego-centrism and sociocentrism. (2007)
Out of a number of mutually compatible definitions, I picked this up as a valid and sufficiently comprehensive statement of what constitutes critical thinking. In terms of this definition, critical thinking is a dynamic process that improves itself by analysing, assessing, and reorganising; according to the same source the analysis of thinking involves identifying its purpose, the question at issue, the data available, inferences, assumptions, implications, main concepts, and the point of view. To assess one’s own thinking means to check it for clarity, accuracy, precision, relevance, depth, breadth, significance, logic, and fairness. Critical thinking is thinking under control, which calls for a high degree of self-discipline, together with effective communication and problem solving abilities. Our thinking often loses its objectivity by our ego-centrism (our natural human tendency to ignore the rights and needs of others in our selfish concern with our own interests) and sociocentrism (similar self-serving concern with the interests of the group that we identify ourselves with); critical thinking demands a commitment to overcome these shortcomings.
Dr Richard Paul and Dr Linda Elder, in their “Miniature Guide to Critical Thinking” (2007) set out eight elements of thought that should be applied with sensitivity to the universal intellectual standards of clarity, accuracy, precision, relevance, depth, breadth, logic and significance. The eight elements of thought are: purpose, question at issue, information, interpretation and inference, concepts, assumptions, implications and consequences, and finally point of view.
I’ll briefly explain what these terms mean. We analyse thinking in terms of the eight elements of thought, the first of which is purpose. We always think for a purpose; the critical thinker identifies this purpose clearly. It is equally important for the thinker to be clear about the question or the issue to be resolved. Information is the data, the facts that are collected for solving the problem that has been identified. Inferences are the conclusions that you draw about the issue using the information you have. Assumptions are what you consider to be true or valid, or what you take for granted as a basis for your conclusions. Implications and consequences are those that would follow if someone accepted your position. Concepts are the theories, definitions, laws, principles, models that implicit in your analysis. The point of view means the frames of reference and perspectives from which the problem is approached.
According to Drs Richard Paul and Linda Elder students new to critical thinking move from their Unreflective thinker status to the Challenged thinker position (where they realise the inadequacy of their thinking capacity and decide to improve it); from there they move on to the Beginning thinker stage in which they learn what critical thinking involves; the next step is for them to become Practical thinkers and engage in conscious practice; further practice leads them to the Advanced learner stage, from where they proceed to the Master thinker stage; in this final stage, critical thinking becomes second nature to the cultivated thinker.
The authors summarise the qualities of a well cultivated critical thinker as follows. Such a thinker
• identifies important issues, formulating them clearly and precisely,
• Collects and assesses relevant information, using abstract ideas to interpret it effectively,
• Arrives at well-reasoned conclusions and solutions, testing them against relevant criteria and standards,
• Thinks with an open mind within alternative systems of thought, recognizing and assessing, as needs be, their assumptions, implications, and practical consequences, and
• communicates effectively with others in figuring out solutions to complex problems.
The need for the cultivation of critical thinking cannot be exaggerated, especially for the youth of the country who are its future. The unfortunate truth, however, is that for generations it has not been given the attention that is due to it. Training in critical thinking comes within the purview of education. Critical thinking must be included in the school curriculum as a part of the language syllabus, if not as a separate subject at Grade 12, for the young people most need it when they are in higher education. This is necessary for creating a future Sri Lankan society consisting of good citizens who are cultivated critical thinkers.
I wish to wind up this essay with another extract from William Graham Sumner who writes in his Folkways (1906):
The critical habit of thought, if usual in society, will pervade all its mores, because it is a way of taking up the problems of life. Men educated in it cannot be stampeded by stump orators ... They are slow to believe. They can hold things as possible or probable in all degrees, without certainty and without pain. They can wait for evidence and weigh evidence, uninfluenced by the emphasis or confidence with which assertions are made on one side or the other. They can resist appeals to their dearest prejudices and all kinds of cajolery. Education in the critical faculty is the only education of which it can be truly said that it makes good citizens.
(Mainly based on information drawn from the criticalthinking.org website)
Rohana R. Wasala
End
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
Looking forward to a Future of Prosperity
Looking forward to a Future of Prosperity
(Previously published in The Island/13th August 2010)
Beginning with the 1948 Independence we have had five watersheds that determined in turn the orientation of the Sri Lankan national polity over the past sixty-two years, the other four being 1956 (political empowerment of the common people), 1972 (the reinforcement of political independence through a republican constitution), 1978 (introduction of the executive presidency and open market economic strategies by a new constitution), and 2009 (achievement of a high level of political stability and national unity in the wake of the elimination of separatist terrorism, with enhanced prospects of accelerated economic development ).
The victory over terrorism to which we were held hostage for thirty long years allows us to look forward to a well earned future of peace and prosperity. It’s a grand vision. The Government has articulated this vision as that of transforming Sri Lanka into the commercial hub of Asia or Asia’s Economic Miracle in fact, which is by no means too far-fetched an ideal.
I personally believe that we have had only six national leaders of vision among the eleven ruling (from an executive position) at different times to date since Independence, six leaders able to imagine a better future based on their clear understanding of the existing state of affairs: Mr D.S. Senanayake, Mr S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike and his widow Mrs Sirima Bandaranaike, Mr J.R. Jayawardane and his successor Mr R. Premadasa, and the incumbent Mr Mahinda Rajapakse. Only leaders of vision make a lasting, positive impact on the course of a country’s history. Successful politicians, like great scientists, are persons of imagination.
A situation has evolved that fosters hopes of a bright future for Sri Lanka. Seven important factors, in my view, characterise the status quo: a stable administration under an able leader, a well established democratic form of government with a vibrant, discriminating electorate, broad international support secured without compromising national autonomy, the possibility of an unprecedented national consensus, major development programmes underway across the island, positive key economic indicators (though subject to fluctuation), and realistic expectations of future oil revenues. Of course, not everyone will share my optimistic assessment of the situation; besides, I am not unaware of the unfortunate reality that each factor mentioned above is undermined by its own intrinsic imperfections. Yet, I believe that unlike the average politician, the vast majority of us ordinary citizens prefer to focus on the benefit that accrues from each of these factors to the nation rather than on its potential for affecting the petty electoral fortunes of those on either side of the government-opposition divide, and will not fail to appreciate good things done for promoting the national interest, whoever is their author.
Mr Mahinda Rajapakse has been voted in for a second term at the helm, which he will start next November, in three months’ time. His re-election and the landslide win by the UPFA which he leads at the subsequent parliamentary election furnish clear proof of the public endorsement of his way of ruling and the popular recognition of his successful performance at the top. Ridding the country of terrorism amidst so much overt and covert opposition, both internal and external, was entirely due to his resourceful leadership. But the nature of politics being what it is, no politician can be expected to be perfect; there’s a tendency for certain individuals near and dear to him (not his brothers), though their loyalty to him is apparently absolute, to embarrass him with their quirky excesses. This the public still seem to be ready to tolerate (in the belief that our pragmatic President will bring them under control somehow), because they are anxious to have him lead the country for some years more until the victory over terrorism that he achieved is further consolidated and the country rebuilt. The President himself shows genuine concern with building democratic consensus about the decisions that he must make.
No one can deny that democracy broadly prevails in Sri Lanka today. One might express reasonable reservations, though. Institutions of democracy are intact: there’s media freedom; elections are held in due course, but naturally an element of strategic manipulation is not absent in their timing. The rule of law generally holds, and the government’s writ operates through the length and breadth of the country including the north and east for the first time in nearly thirty years. For a country just emerging from almost four decades of armed insurgency (first in the south under the JVP, then in the north and east under the LTTE) this is a remarkable situation.
In my opinion, it’s a national achievement, and it’s mainly due to the mature, patient, and intelligent electorate that Sri Lanka is lucky to have, more than to the exertions of politicians of every colour who try to influence its will. The vast majority reject every form of extremism, though we are saddled with a few extremist politicos, who are appropriately left in the doldrums. The opposition’s belly-aching about the high cost of living is incredibly naïve as a strategy to create disaffection with the government among the voters in spite of many examples of its extensive development efforts in evidence throughout the country. Do these purblind politicians think that the hundreds of thousands of ordinary people who have been converging on Hambantota over the past few days from all parts of the island just to have a glimpse of the bottom of the harbour basin before it permanently disappears under water will believe that the government is doing nothing by way of development?
Unlike some of his antagonists Mr Rajapakse has a great deal of empathy with these ordinary voters and likes to move among them, sit, talk, and eat with them whenever there’s an opportunity. He knows that they are literate people with a mature political sense; they are proud people who don’t like to be dictated to, and especially resent what they see as unnecessary foreign interference in their affairs. In Mr Rajapakse they believe they have a national leader who is strong enough not to be fazed by the impositions of the so-called international community, and who acts with great diplomatic aplomb as well as foresight in courting friendship with countries outside the circle of our traditional ‘allies’. Sri Lanka has been able to garner enough diplomatic support and protection from our foreign friends in the face of subtle attempts to condemn us in world forums at the instigation of the few well entrenched terrorist sympathizers among Tamil expatriates. We enjoy dynamic friendly relations with more countries in the world now than under previous administrations, and that too, without compromising our sovereignty and autonomy.
Prospects for developing national unity embracing all sections of the polity are brighter today than ever. Even some ex-Tiger members are now with the government, which sends a clear signal to those among expatriate Tamils who had supported the terrorists before their destruction, and who are the sheet anchor that some LTTE remnants might try to fall back on in order to pursue their separatist goal, although that would prove a doomed enterprise. The government has already successfully reached out to a section of the leadership of Tamils abroad with an invitation to take part in the development of the war affected areas, and there are signs that many of them are willing to return home to Sri Lanka. This trend is likely to go on, but the anti-Sri Lanka media blitzkrieg still sustained with some success by those who lived on the business of supporting separatist terror has yet to be effectively neutralized.
The Rajapakse administration started rebuilding the war ravaged north and east even before the war was well over. Its numerous development programmes launched in accordance with the ‘Mahinda Chinthana’ (The Vision of Mahinda) manifesto in such vital sectors as education, roads and railways, agriculture and fisheries, air and naval communications, trade, and energy now cover the whole country. A mega seaport is being built at Hambantota, and a big airport at Mattala in the same area. The first phase of the Hambantota port which commenced construction work just over two years ago has been completed and will be declared open by the President on 15th Sunday; on that day, the harbour basin will be filled with water. There are new power projects, express motorways, railroads, communication towers, bridges, tourist hotels, and other infra-structure facilities being added to the country’s resource base. The government also encourages private sector participation in development work.
Of course, when major projects are embarked on, allegations of corruption, mismanagement, misappropriation of funds etc are normal as is the likelihood of corruption. However, the problem with many charges of corruption raised by opposition politicians is their ritual nature: politicos out of power customarily sling mud at those in power, hoping to bring them down; there’s hardly any attempt to substantiate these allegations, and so, to the public it becomes clear that these politicians’ concern is not with the elimination of corruption if any, but with improving their own chances of making political capital out of such allegations. If there’s enough reason to believe that there is corruption, then it must be duly investigated and put an end to; that responsibility devolves not only on the government, but on the opposition as well. The development work that is going on should not be scuttled merely on account of unsubstantiated charges of corruption.
Most of Mr Rajapakse’s first term was taken up with resolving the problem posed by the terrorists. First he made a genuine attempt to resolve the crisis through negotiations, but finally, his hand being forced by their intransigence, he managed to finish them off militarily. Even during this unsettled period the country’s GDP grew at an average rate of 5%. Between 2007 and 2009 Sri Lanka’s foreign exchange reserves rose significantly. Today the GDP growth rate has reached 5.5%, with the GDP at LKR 2582.95 billion.
There is encouraging information about the feasibility of tapping petroleum and gas reserves around the country. The oil industry will provide employment for our young people, and also save the large amount of foreign exchange that we now spend for importing petrol and gas. It is claimed that the oil reserves potentially available are in excess of our needs, which means, very likely, we’ll be exporting some of our oil in the near future.
So, the government has set the scene for a gamut of development activities; a new vista of progress has opened. But success will depend on the cooperation of every Sri Lankan citizen. The key activists in this national endeavour will be politicians, public and private sector workers, and civil society leaders. It should be completely free from all political, ethnic, religious, or class considerations.
The war against terrorism was won amidst cynical opposition from internal and external sources. The ramshackle alliance of forces ranged against the government during the most critical stages of the humanitarian operations closed ranks amongst themselves and tried to bring down a popular regime that was succeeding in its humanitarian campaign. It was made out that toppling the Rajapakse rule was more urgent than overcoming terrorism! Fortunately for the country, some patriotic opposition politicians joined the government, breaking ranks with their leadership. Ordinary Sri Lankans today hope that the development programmes now in progress will forge ahead under similar circumstances, perhaps with even more explicit across the board collaboration.
It is high time that all of us realized that Sri Lanka will economically stagnate so long as we are not truly united as one nation. Some communalist politicians seem to wrongly believe that the minorities they claim to represent cannot have their rights unless the majority community remains divided into several camps. A true patriotic politician is one who struggles for the rights of every Sri Lankan irrespective of their ethnicity, religion, language, gender, politics, or culture. For such a politician, “my people” means all the people of Sri Lanka; when politicians behave like that, others will more than readily fall in line, because that is the vision of ordinary Sri Lankans.
National unity and economic development go together; each sustains the other. I sometimes think that the chances for separatist demands would have been minimized or nipped in the bud if we were rich enough. Which community in the world would want to secede from an affluent state whose economic and political power results from national unity rather than from ethnic, religious or any other kind of fragmentation, on allegations of real or perceived discrimination, and condemn themselves to a life of poverty and privation?
The most critical issue to be resolved was the separatist terrorism that was a near insurmountable roadblock to the country’s forward march. Now, thanks mainly to Mr Mahinda Rajapakse’s stewardship, we have put it behind us. But, a shadow of a revival of separatist sentiments, however ineffectual these may be, will not fade away until we remove a major pretext for the interference of those countries that consider it their prerogative to have some influence over Sri Lanka in order to serve their own geopolitical interests, by ensuring that the benefits of the victory over terrorism are shared equitably by all the communities in a free, democratic Sri Lanka, and by maintaining heightened vigilance and appropriate defence readiness.
We have arrived at the most propitious moment ever since Independence for embarking on national development: the country is peaceful after the demise of the terrorist threat; we’ve are well on our way towards economic recovery; people are convinced that something is being done in earnest, which is essential for public acknowledgement of and participation in the nation-building process. There’s a clear vision, and a well thought out strategy to translate it into reality.
Where visions and strategies are matched, success is assured. Success in our case is the survival of Sri Lanka as a free prosperous nation, which will ultimately depend on our ability to feed and protect ourselves (i.e. economic independence and national security, respectively).
(Previously published in The Island/13th August 2010)
Beginning with the 1948 Independence we have had five watersheds that determined in turn the orientation of the Sri Lankan national polity over the past sixty-two years, the other four being 1956 (political empowerment of the common people), 1972 (the reinforcement of political independence through a republican constitution), 1978 (introduction of the executive presidency and open market economic strategies by a new constitution), and 2009 (achievement of a high level of political stability and national unity in the wake of the elimination of separatist terrorism, with enhanced prospects of accelerated economic development ).
The victory over terrorism to which we were held hostage for thirty long years allows us to look forward to a well earned future of peace and prosperity. It’s a grand vision. The Government has articulated this vision as that of transforming Sri Lanka into the commercial hub of Asia or Asia’s Economic Miracle in fact, which is by no means too far-fetched an ideal.
I personally believe that we have had only six national leaders of vision among the eleven ruling (from an executive position) at different times to date since Independence, six leaders able to imagine a better future based on their clear understanding of the existing state of affairs: Mr D.S. Senanayake, Mr S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike and his widow Mrs Sirima Bandaranaike, Mr J.R. Jayawardane and his successor Mr R. Premadasa, and the incumbent Mr Mahinda Rajapakse. Only leaders of vision make a lasting, positive impact on the course of a country’s history. Successful politicians, like great scientists, are persons of imagination.
A situation has evolved that fosters hopes of a bright future for Sri Lanka. Seven important factors, in my view, characterise the status quo: a stable administration under an able leader, a well established democratic form of government with a vibrant, discriminating electorate, broad international support secured without compromising national autonomy, the possibility of an unprecedented national consensus, major development programmes underway across the island, positive key economic indicators (though subject to fluctuation), and realistic expectations of future oil revenues. Of course, not everyone will share my optimistic assessment of the situation; besides, I am not unaware of the unfortunate reality that each factor mentioned above is undermined by its own intrinsic imperfections. Yet, I believe that unlike the average politician, the vast majority of us ordinary citizens prefer to focus on the benefit that accrues from each of these factors to the nation rather than on its potential for affecting the petty electoral fortunes of those on either side of the government-opposition divide, and will not fail to appreciate good things done for promoting the national interest, whoever is their author.
Mr Mahinda Rajapakse has been voted in for a second term at the helm, which he will start next November, in three months’ time. His re-election and the landslide win by the UPFA which he leads at the subsequent parliamentary election furnish clear proof of the public endorsement of his way of ruling and the popular recognition of his successful performance at the top. Ridding the country of terrorism amidst so much overt and covert opposition, both internal and external, was entirely due to his resourceful leadership. But the nature of politics being what it is, no politician can be expected to be perfect; there’s a tendency for certain individuals near and dear to him (not his brothers), though their loyalty to him is apparently absolute, to embarrass him with their quirky excesses. This the public still seem to be ready to tolerate (in the belief that our pragmatic President will bring them under control somehow), because they are anxious to have him lead the country for some years more until the victory over terrorism that he achieved is further consolidated and the country rebuilt. The President himself shows genuine concern with building democratic consensus about the decisions that he must make.
No one can deny that democracy broadly prevails in Sri Lanka today. One might express reasonable reservations, though. Institutions of democracy are intact: there’s media freedom; elections are held in due course, but naturally an element of strategic manipulation is not absent in their timing. The rule of law generally holds, and the government’s writ operates through the length and breadth of the country including the north and east for the first time in nearly thirty years. For a country just emerging from almost four decades of armed insurgency (first in the south under the JVP, then in the north and east under the LTTE) this is a remarkable situation.
In my opinion, it’s a national achievement, and it’s mainly due to the mature, patient, and intelligent electorate that Sri Lanka is lucky to have, more than to the exertions of politicians of every colour who try to influence its will. The vast majority reject every form of extremism, though we are saddled with a few extremist politicos, who are appropriately left in the doldrums. The opposition’s belly-aching about the high cost of living is incredibly naïve as a strategy to create disaffection with the government among the voters in spite of many examples of its extensive development efforts in evidence throughout the country. Do these purblind politicians think that the hundreds of thousands of ordinary people who have been converging on Hambantota over the past few days from all parts of the island just to have a glimpse of the bottom of the harbour basin before it permanently disappears under water will believe that the government is doing nothing by way of development?
Unlike some of his antagonists Mr Rajapakse has a great deal of empathy with these ordinary voters and likes to move among them, sit, talk, and eat with them whenever there’s an opportunity. He knows that they are literate people with a mature political sense; they are proud people who don’t like to be dictated to, and especially resent what they see as unnecessary foreign interference in their affairs. In Mr Rajapakse they believe they have a national leader who is strong enough not to be fazed by the impositions of the so-called international community, and who acts with great diplomatic aplomb as well as foresight in courting friendship with countries outside the circle of our traditional ‘allies’. Sri Lanka has been able to garner enough diplomatic support and protection from our foreign friends in the face of subtle attempts to condemn us in world forums at the instigation of the few well entrenched terrorist sympathizers among Tamil expatriates. We enjoy dynamic friendly relations with more countries in the world now than under previous administrations, and that too, without compromising our sovereignty and autonomy.
Prospects for developing national unity embracing all sections of the polity are brighter today than ever. Even some ex-Tiger members are now with the government, which sends a clear signal to those among expatriate Tamils who had supported the terrorists before their destruction, and who are the sheet anchor that some LTTE remnants might try to fall back on in order to pursue their separatist goal, although that would prove a doomed enterprise. The government has already successfully reached out to a section of the leadership of Tamils abroad with an invitation to take part in the development of the war affected areas, and there are signs that many of them are willing to return home to Sri Lanka. This trend is likely to go on, but the anti-Sri Lanka media blitzkrieg still sustained with some success by those who lived on the business of supporting separatist terror has yet to be effectively neutralized.
The Rajapakse administration started rebuilding the war ravaged north and east even before the war was well over. Its numerous development programmes launched in accordance with the ‘Mahinda Chinthana’ (The Vision of Mahinda) manifesto in such vital sectors as education, roads and railways, agriculture and fisheries, air and naval communications, trade, and energy now cover the whole country. A mega seaport is being built at Hambantota, and a big airport at Mattala in the same area. The first phase of the Hambantota port which commenced construction work just over two years ago has been completed and will be declared open by the President on 15th Sunday; on that day, the harbour basin will be filled with water. There are new power projects, express motorways, railroads, communication towers, bridges, tourist hotels, and other infra-structure facilities being added to the country’s resource base. The government also encourages private sector participation in development work.
Of course, when major projects are embarked on, allegations of corruption, mismanagement, misappropriation of funds etc are normal as is the likelihood of corruption. However, the problem with many charges of corruption raised by opposition politicians is their ritual nature: politicos out of power customarily sling mud at those in power, hoping to bring them down; there’s hardly any attempt to substantiate these allegations, and so, to the public it becomes clear that these politicians’ concern is not with the elimination of corruption if any, but with improving their own chances of making political capital out of such allegations. If there’s enough reason to believe that there is corruption, then it must be duly investigated and put an end to; that responsibility devolves not only on the government, but on the opposition as well. The development work that is going on should not be scuttled merely on account of unsubstantiated charges of corruption.
Most of Mr Rajapakse’s first term was taken up with resolving the problem posed by the terrorists. First he made a genuine attempt to resolve the crisis through negotiations, but finally, his hand being forced by their intransigence, he managed to finish them off militarily. Even during this unsettled period the country’s GDP grew at an average rate of 5%. Between 2007 and 2009 Sri Lanka’s foreign exchange reserves rose significantly. Today the GDP growth rate has reached 5.5%, with the GDP at LKR 2582.95 billion.
There is encouraging information about the feasibility of tapping petroleum and gas reserves around the country. The oil industry will provide employment for our young people, and also save the large amount of foreign exchange that we now spend for importing petrol and gas. It is claimed that the oil reserves potentially available are in excess of our needs, which means, very likely, we’ll be exporting some of our oil in the near future.
So, the government has set the scene for a gamut of development activities; a new vista of progress has opened. But success will depend on the cooperation of every Sri Lankan citizen. The key activists in this national endeavour will be politicians, public and private sector workers, and civil society leaders. It should be completely free from all political, ethnic, religious, or class considerations.
The war against terrorism was won amidst cynical opposition from internal and external sources. The ramshackle alliance of forces ranged against the government during the most critical stages of the humanitarian operations closed ranks amongst themselves and tried to bring down a popular regime that was succeeding in its humanitarian campaign. It was made out that toppling the Rajapakse rule was more urgent than overcoming terrorism! Fortunately for the country, some patriotic opposition politicians joined the government, breaking ranks with their leadership. Ordinary Sri Lankans today hope that the development programmes now in progress will forge ahead under similar circumstances, perhaps with even more explicit across the board collaboration.
It is high time that all of us realized that Sri Lanka will economically stagnate so long as we are not truly united as one nation. Some communalist politicians seem to wrongly believe that the minorities they claim to represent cannot have their rights unless the majority community remains divided into several camps. A true patriotic politician is one who struggles for the rights of every Sri Lankan irrespective of their ethnicity, religion, language, gender, politics, or culture. For such a politician, “my people” means all the people of Sri Lanka; when politicians behave like that, others will more than readily fall in line, because that is the vision of ordinary Sri Lankans.
National unity and economic development go together; each sustains the other. I sometimes think that the chances for separatist demands would have been minimized or nipped in the bud if we were rich enough. Which community in the world would want to secede from an affluent state whose economic and political power results from national unity rather than from ethnic, religious or any other kind of fragmentation, on allegations of real or perceived discrimination, and condemn themselves to a life of poverty and privation?
The most critical issue to be resolved was the separatist terrorism that was a near insurmountable roadblock to the country’s forward march. Now, thanks mainly to Mr Mahinda Rajapakse’s stewardship, we have put it behind us. But, a shadow of a revival of separatist sentiments, however ineffectual these may be, will not fade away until we remove a major pretext for the interference of those countries that consider it their prerogative to have some influence over Sri Lanka in order to serve their own geopolitical interests, by ensuring that the benefits of the victory over terrorism are shared equitably by all the communities in a free, democratic Sri Lanka, and by maintaining heightened vigilance and appropriate defence readiness.
We have arrived at the most propitious moment ever since Independence for embarking on national development: the country is peaceful after the demise of the terrorist threat; we’ve are well on our way towards economic recovery; people are convinced that something is being done in earnest, which is essential for public acknowledgement of and participation in the nation-building process. There’s a clear vision, and a well thought out strategy to translate it into reality.
Where visions and strategies are matched, success is assured. Success in our case is the survival of Sri Lanka as a free prosperous nation, which will ultimately depend on our ability to feed and protect ourselves (i.e. economic independence and national security, respectively).
Friday, August 20, 2010
Where There's Oil - There's Turmoil
Where there’s oil – There’s turmoil
(First published in The Island/30th July 2010)
We are almost certainly on the threshold of a new era of economic development and international diplomacy ushered in by the imminent discovery of oil. Drilling is due to start in the Mannar Basin next January. This opens before us exciting prospects of economic prosperity as well as daunting challenges posed by players in the arena of global political and diplomatic relations.
When prospecting for petroleum in Sri Lanka began nearly forty years ago at the initiative of the government, we were silently jubilant at the promise of a comfortable petrodollar-rich future for the country, which enhanced the general euphoria experienced in the wake of the adoption of the republican constitution in 1972. However, the Russian engineers who conducted the search at Pesalai in Mannar failed to find any oil. The grandiose project was abandoned, and the matter forgotten after a few laughs at jokes about certain fake samples of oil claimed to have been extracted from the area aimed at convincing an increasingly sceptical public. Ironically, though unconnected with the search for oil, separatist terrorism erupted from the north and east which we had originally hoped would be a source of unprecedented prosperity; terrorist violence devastated the country for thirty long years. We have just emerged from that dark phase of our history to be happily greeted by the news that Sri Lanka possesses substantial oil reserves. This naturally revives our hope of a bright future; a decisive reversal of our fortunes appears to be in the offing.
The initial attempts four decades ago at finding oil drew a blank probably because of the inadequacy of the prospecting technology adopted at that time. The situation today is different. We now enjoy the advantages of highly advanced modern technology in the matter. The many geological surveys and seismic tests carried out with the help of foreign organizations have revealed the existence of exploitable deposits of petroleum and gas in parts of the northern, eastern and southern regions of the island, both onshore and offshore. The major portion of the oil resources is reported to be concentrated in the area above an imaginary line joining Chilaw and Trincomalee, i.e. the north.
The coincidence of the elimination of separatist violence and the discovery of oil augurs well for the country. But the way ahead is not without risks. It is strewn with international landmines of political manipulation and interventionist pressure, which demands an extremely high level of political acumen and courage, and a selfless commitment to consensus building, on the part of our national leaders for Sri Lanka to remain whole. This is something that even a cursory glance at the oil-dominated twentieth-century global power (im)balance among nations will be sufficient to convince us of.
All countries depend on cheap oil for their economic development, and demand unrestricted access to it. This makes oil a “strategic asset” in the hands of powerful countries that are involved in the general scramble for a share of it.
The United States of America (USA), the European Union (EU) and China are the biggest consumers of oil (25.9%, 19.1%, and 6% of the world’s oil respectively). Their contributions to the global oil supply are as follows: USA – 10.7%, EU – 4.3%, and China – 4.4%. They may be identified as the main players in the global oil rush. Their partners in this “oil game” are the generally less industrialized oil producing nations.
From the very beginning Britain and America have been engaged in political and colonial manoeuvring for the sake of cheap oil. The quest for oil in the Middle East started when Iran struck oil in its Masjed Soleiman oil field in 1908. Iran was a part of the British Empire then. While Britain had no oil of its own Iran and the Middle East had an abundance of it. The British wasted no time in contriving strategies to help themselves to the vast oil resources found there. The Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC) was founded in 1909 to exploit the oil resources of Iran. The British devised a clever arrangement called “concessions”. This was based on the complementary relationship between the two countries: Iran owned the oil, but had no technical know-how that would enable them to extract, refine, store, and sell it; neither did Iran have a market for the oil; on the other hand, Britain had no oil, but needed it very much; Britain also possessed the technological expertise necessary for extracting and refining the oil. Foreign companies vied with each other for concessions across the Middle East. Under the concessions arrangement the owner of the oil fields or the “host” country (eg. Iran) was paid a “concession” on the output. The bigger the output the bigger the concession. In other words the more oil the foreign companies extracted and sold, the more money the owner countries got.
Decades later (in 1951) Iran under democratically elected Prime Minister Dr Muhammad Mossadeq nationalized the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company in order to retain the oil profits within the country. The US and Britain were strongly opposed to the move. They responded by causing the ouster of Dr Mossadeq through a coup, and installed in power Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi in 1953. The nationalized British oil interests were returned to British control; similarly the American oil concessions were retained by eight private oil companies which were given 40% of the Iranian oil industry.
Saudi Arabia ( created in 1935 and named after Ibn Saud its ruler) possesses 25% of the world’s oil reserves. It is the only “oil superpower” in the world. In 1945 President Roosevelt met Ibn Saud on US cruiser Quincy in the Suez canal to sign an agreement in terms of which the US pledged to support Saudi Arabia militarily in return for access to its oil through their Arab-American Oil Company (ARAMCO). The USA exploited this relationship to develop its economy and build its military strength over the next half a century. When the Americans waged war on Iraq at the beginning of the 1990’s they used Saudi Arabia as their base. That special relationship still remains intact.
Iraq has the second largest proven oil reserves in the world next to Saudi Arabia. The western involvement in the country’s affairs led to a devastating war against it on rather dubious grounds (as it is being revealed now), and UN embargoes, etc with genocidal consequences on the innocent Iraqi citizens, primarily because of the American thirst for cheap oil. Organizations such as the Global Policy Forum (GPF) maintain that Iraq’s oil is “the central feature of the political landscape”. According to the GPF, under US influence the 2005 constitution of Iraq has been made to “contain language that generates a major role for foreign companies”.
Venezuela is said to have 77.2 billion barrels of proven oil resources – the largest in the western hemisphere. It nationalized its oil industry in 1975-76. The incumbent president Hugo Chavez rejects the privatising policies of his predecessors. His attempts to renegotiate a sixty year old royalty payments agreement with Philips Petroleum and Exxonmobil (both large oil companies) did not endear him to the Americans. Under these agreements the corporations had to pay taxes as low as 01% of the tens of billions of dollars in revenues.
Of course, western hegemony in the oil world has not been unchallenged. Venezuela pioneered the idea of establishing the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in 1949, approaching Iran, Gabon, Libya, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. But the OPEC was set up in 1960 when the US imposed import quotas on Venezuelan and Persian Gulf oil to support the Canadian and Mexican oil industries. Antagonized by American bias towards Israel the OPEC exercised its power by imposing an oil embargo against the US and Western Europe in 1973.
China, taken as an individual country, is the second largest consumer of oil. At present it imports 30% of its oil. This figure is forecast to double by 2020, which will see China in much more desperate need of oil.
The Chinese obtain 10% of their oil from Sudan. The economically poor Sudan is riven by civil conflict between the Christian and animist south and the Islamist north. The Sudanese government is accused of evicting the civilians of the southern Darfur region from land they have occupied for generations, and even of massacring them in its determination to clear the area for oil extraction. When the UN wants to condemn Sudan over these allegations, China provides it diplomatic protection. China makes massive investments in Sudan in addition to delivering oil revenues and supplying arms to be used in its more than twenty year old civil war. Washington has blacklisted Sudan as a state supporter of terrorism, and US companies are not permitted to do business there, which provides a wonderful opportunity for the Chinese.
With the economic and military strength gained from its oil dealings with China, Sudan has been able to stand up to the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA). The SPLA are threatening to expel the Chinese from Sudan if they come to power for the support the latter are giving to the Sudanese government. Obviously, peace for the Sudanese is not in the best interests of the Chinese.
(Of course, this reference to China should not be misconstrued as implicitly critical of that country in relation to Sri Lanka. Oil or no oil, their proven friendship will last; it was certain other powers that wanted to fish in troubled waters.)
The above paragraphs outline just a few instances of the global turmoil due to intense competition among nations for the acquisition of oil. To date Sri Lanka has only been a relatively insignificant customer in the global oil market. Soon, however, we’ll be among the producing nations. The new position will be economically advantageous to us, no doubt. But it will also expose us to international political and diplomatic manoeuvring. Probably potential signs of such manipulation are already apparent. These are too plain for me to state explicitly.
It’s time we put all forms of internal conflicts behind us, and looked forward to this new promising future. There’s only one future for all of us; if we are divided among ourselves and try to pursue separate goals, there will be no future for any of us.
(I owe some of the ideas and information to Paul Middleton’s “A BRIEF GUIDE TO THE END OF OIL”, 2007)
(First published in The Island/30th July 2010)
We are almost certainly on the threshold of a new era of economic development and international diplomacy ushered in by the imminent discovery of oil. Drilling is due to start in the Mannar Basin next January. This opens before us exciting prospects of economic prosperity as well as daunting challenges posed by players in the arena of global political and diplomatic relations.
When prospecting for petroleum in Sri Lanka began nearly forty years ago at the initiative of the government, we were silently jubilant at the promise of a comfortable petrodollar-rich future for the country, which enhanced the general euphoria experienced in the wake of the adoption of the republican constitution in 1972. However, the Russian engineers who conducted the search at Pesalai in Mannar failed to find any oil. The grandiose project was abandoned, and the matter forgotten after a few laughs at jokes about certain fake samples of oil claimed to have been extracted from the area aimed at convincing an increasingly sceptical public. Ironically, though unconnected with the search for oil, separatist terrorism erupted from the north and east which we had originally hoped would be a source of unprecedented prosperity; terrorist violence devastated the country for thirty long years. We have just emerged from that dark phase of our history to be happily greeted by the news that Sri Lanka possesses substantial oil reserves. This naturally revives our hope of a bright future; a decisive reversal of our fortunes appears to be in the offing.
The initial attempts four decades ago at finding oil drew a blank probably because of the inadequacy of the prospecting technology adopted at that time. The situation today is different. We now enjoy the advantages of highly advanced modern technology in the matter. The many geological surveys and seismic tests carried out with the help of foreign organizations have revealed the existence of exploitable deposits of petroleum and gas in parts of the northern, eastern and southern regions of the island, both onshore and offshore. The major portion of the oil resources is reported to be concentrated in the area above an imaginary line joining Chilaw and Trincomalee, i.e. the north.
The coincidence of the elimination of separatist violence and the discovery of oil augurs well for the country. But the way ahead is not without risks. It is strewn with international landmines of political manipulation and interventionist pressure, which demands an extremely high level of political acumen and courage, and a selfless commitment to consensus building, on the part of our national leaders for Sri Lanka to remain whole. This is something that even a cursory glance at the oil-dominated twentieth-century global power (im)balance among nations will be sufficient to convince us of.
All countries depend on cheap oil for their economic development, and demand unrestricted access to it. This makes oil a “strategic asset” in the hands of powerful countries that are involved in the general scramble for a share of it.
The United States of America (USA), the European Union (EU) and China are the biggest consumers of oil (25.9%, 19.1%, and 6% of the world’s oil respectively). Their contributions to the global oil supply are as follows: USA – 10.7%, EU – 4.3%, and China – 4.4%. They may be identified as the main players in the global oil rush. Their partners in this “oil game” are the generally less industrialized oil producing nations.
From the very beginning Britain and America have been engaged in political and colonial manoeuvring for the sake of cheap oil. The quest for oil in the Middle East started when Iran struck oil in its Masjed Soleiman oil field in 1908. Iran was a part of the British Empire then. While Britain had no oil of its own Iran and the Middle East had an abundance of it. The British wasted no time in contriving strategies to help themselves to the vast oil resources found there. The Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC) was founded in 1909 to exploit the oil resources of Iran. The British devised a clever arrangement called “concessions”. This was based on the complementary relationship between the two countries: Iran owned the oil, but had no technical know-how that would enable them to extract, refine, store, and sell it; neither did Iran have a market for the oil; on the other hand, Britain had no oil, but needed it very much; Britain also possessed the technological expertise necessary for extracting and refining the oil. Foreign companies vied with each other for concessions across the Middle East. Under the concessions arrangement the owner of the oil fields or the “host” country (eg. Iran) was paid a “concession” on the output. The bigger the output the bigger the concession. In other words the more oil the foreign companies extracted and sold, the more money the owner countries got.
Decades later (in 1951) Iran under democratically elected Prime Minister Dr Muhammad Mossadeq nationalized the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company in order to retain the oil profits within the country. The US and Britain were strongly opposed to the move. They responded by causing the ouster of Dr Mossadeq through a coup, and installed in power Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi in 1953. The nationalized British oil interests were returned to British control; similarly the American oil concessions were retained by eight private oil companies which were given 40% of the Iranian oil industry.
Saudi Arabia ( created in 1935 and named after Ibn Saud its ruler) possesses 25% of the world’s oil reserves. It is the only “oil superpower” in the world. In 1945 President Roosevelt met Ibn Saud on US cruiser Quincy in the Suez canal to sign an agreement in terms of which the US pledged to support Saudi Arabia militarily in return for access to its oil through their Arab-American Oil Company (ARAMCO). The USA exploited this relationship to develop its economy and build its military strength over the next half a century. When the Americans waged war on Iraq at the beginning of the 1990’s they used Saudi Arabia as their base. That special relationship still remains intact.
Iraq has the second largest proven oil reserves in the world next to Saudi Arabia. The western involvement in the country’s affairs led to a devastating war against it on rather dubious grounds (as it is being revealed now), and UN embargoes, etc with genocidal consequences on the innocent Iraqi citizens, primarily because of the American thirst for cheap oil. Organizations such as the Global Policy Forum (GPF) maintain that Iraq’s oil is “the central feature of the political landscape”. According to the GPF, under US influence the 2005 constitution of Iraq has been made to “contain language that generates a major role for foreign companies”.
Venezuela is said to have 77.2 billion barrels of proven oil resources – the largest in the western hemisphere. It nationalized its oil industry in 1975-76. The incumbent president Hugo Chavez rejects the privatising policies of his predecessors. His attempts to renegotiate a sixty year old royalty payments agreement with Philips Petroleum and Exxonmobil (both large oil companies) did not endear him to the Americans. Under these agreements the corporations had to pay taxes as low as 01% of the tens of billions of dollars in revenues.
Of course, western hegemony in the oil world has not been unchallenged. Venezuela pioneered the idea of establishing the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in 1949, approaching Iran, Gabon, Libya, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. But the OPEC was set up in 1960 when the US imposed import quotas on Venezuelan and Persian Gulf oil to support the Canadian and Mexican oil industries. Antagonized by American bias towards Israel the OPEC exercised its power by imposing an oil embargo against the US and Western Europe in 1973.
China, taken as an individual country, is the second largest consumer of oil. At present it imports 30% of its oil. This figure is forecast to double by 2020, which will see China in much more desperate need of oil.
The Chinese obtain 10% of their oil from Sudan. The economically poor Sudan is riven by civil conflict between the Christian and animist south and the Islamist north. The Sudanese government is accused of evicting the civilians of the southern Darfur region from land they have occupied for generations, and even of massacring them in its determination to clear the area for oil extraction. When the UN wants to condemn Sudan over these allegations, China provides it diplomatic protection. China makes massive investments in Sudan in addition to delivering oil revenues and supplying arms to be used in its more than twenty year old civil war. Washington has blacklisted Sudan as a state supporter of terrorism, and US companies are not permitted to do business there, which provides a wonderful opportunity for the Chinese.
With the economic and military strength gained from its oil dealings with China, Sudan has been able to stand up to the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA). The SPLA are threatening to expel the Chinese from Sudan if they come to power for the support the latter are giving to the Sudanese government. Obviously, peace for the Sudanese is not in the best interests of the Chinese.
(Of course, this reference to China should not be misconstrued as implicitly critical of that country in relation to Sri Lanka. Oil or no oil, their proven friendship will last; it was certain other powers that wanted to fish in troubled waters.)
The above paragraphs outline just a few instances of the global turmoil due to intense competition among nations for the acquisition of oil. To date Sri Lanka has only been a relatively insignificant customer in the global oil market. Soon, however, we’ll be among the producing nations. The new position will be economically advantageous to us, no doubt. But it will also expose us to international political and diplomatic manoeuvring. Probably potential signs of such manipulation are already apparent. These are too plain for me to state explicitly.
It’s time we put all forms of internal conflicts behind us, and looked forward to this new promising future. There’s only one future for all of us; if we are divided among ourselves and try to pursue separate goals, there will be no future for any of us.
(I owe some of the ideas and information to Paul Middleton’s “A BRIEF GUIDE TO THE END OF OIL”, 2007)
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Parents can help children to learn English
Parents can help children to learn English
(First published in The Island/Friday 6th August 2010)
Living in a welfare state we enjoy, among other things, free healthcare and free education. However, there is much that we as citizens are obliged to do to complement or supplement these services. Unless we thus collaborate with the state the whole community will be negatively affected. The current dengue epidemic has created a situation that illustrates the importance of public awareness and the active cooperation of everyone concerned in minimizing the incidence of the disease. For the success of national education programmes too similar collaboration between the state and the citizenry is of vital importance. The domestic mentoring that parents can provide for their children in the matter of learning “English as a life skill” as outlined below may be regarded as one form of such collaboration between the state and the citizens.
Arguably, the most important as well as the most urgent national educational enterprise that has been launched in recent times is the English as a life skill programme. English as a second language is indispensable for us Sri Lankans to have a good modern education, and to be successfully competitive in the job market. This latest English teaching initiative rightly emphasises the need among our students to use the English language as a normal medium of communication in day-to-day interaction for those broad purposes (for enhancing education and employment prospects).
Now, someone’s knowledge of a language is usually represented as their ability to speak it. For example, we may ask a person, “Do you speak English?”, but not “Do you write/read English?” when we want to find out whether that person knows English. This is because ordinarily we assume that speech is the most basic form of language. Accordingly, the current programme highlights the spoken aspect of the English language training that is being provided.
But you can’t just speak English or any other language for that matter unless you have something to speak about; even when you have something that you could speak about you may not speak about it unless you feel an urge/ a desire/ a need to do so; again your urgent desire to speak about a particular subject may not make you speak about it in English if that language is not your mother tongue or first language. So speaking in English involves a strong enough motive to speak about a worthwhile matter in English, and in no other language. Providing such a motive is crucial for students to respond positively to any course of English language instruction. (Our failure to do this, due to a variety of causes/circumstances, goes a long way towards explaining why so many earlier initiatives didn’t succeed.)
Howatt (1984) identifies two “versions” of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT): a strong version and a weak version. The “strong” version is explained as “using English to learn it, instead of learning English to use it”, whereas the “weak” version is interpreted as “learning English to use it”. The first involves activities that require the use of English for authentic communication among the learners, with no focus on explicit language teaching; the learners are thought to acquire their English solely through meaningful communication. When the weaker version is applied (and this has been normal practice in CLT classrooms over the last decade or so) such communicative activities are integrated into a broader programme of language instruction. In terms of CLT (strong or weak), a major responsibility that devolves on teachers is to generate opportunities for learners to use English for meaningful communication and interaction. Along with this, it is now generally accepted by second language acquisition theorists that reading and writing activities, along with listening, speaking, and thinking promote language learning, something we discovered independently through personal experience and put to good use, too, when we were young children.
Although parents (the majority of whom are not English teachers themselves) should be spared such befuddling theory, it suggests something that parents can conveniently do to help their children learn English: What they can do is to create an environment at home which encourages their children to engage in activities that involve communicating in English. This can be achieved in a number of ways, some of which I describe below. Parents could implement some or all of the following suggestions, and even add other similar activities that they themselves may devise in their individual circumstances. Amidst other demands on their time both parents and children will encounter some difficulty in initiating the kind of domestic interaction that is necessary for such a process to be successful; but it will have its compensations in terms of quality time for parents with their children, reduced tuition costs, and education for themselves. From a language learning point of view, parental involvement in helping their children in the privacy of the home can create a very good context for meaningful interaction through English; the home provides a better affective atmosphere than any classroom outside. (The word ‘affective’ means ‘arising from or influencing emotion’; in a classroom context, the students’ affective needs are those connected with positive feelings such as a sense of security, freedom from anxiety, fear, etc, a feeling of being accepted, loved, and so on; these affective needs should be met before successful learning can take place.)
Parents need not be always talking with their children in English, thereby denying themselves and the children the natural intimacy and informality which is only possible when they interact in the mother tongue. Instead, they can set aside some time everyday or as often as possible, say before supper, for an “English hour”. During this time, they must switch off the television, and devote all their time and attention for English. Everybody must talk in English about whatever topic they are required to in the situation; parents can help children revise their school lessons including those about other subjects (but only in English during the English hour) or get older siblings to help the younger ones with lessons. English should remain the focus of the activities.
The day’s news can provide a topic for discussion. Children may be asked to take turns in answering the questions that a journalist filing a report on any newsworthy event usually answers: who, what, when, where, why, and how. For example, in the case of a motor accident, Who was the driver? Who was injured? Who reported it to the police? Where did this happen? When?, etc. It is also a good idea to encourage learners to find vocabulary that is necessary to talk about special events such as the opening of parliament, an earthquake, floods, religious events, and so on.
Even parents without any English knowledge can get their children to interact among themselves through English with the help of older children who have at least some knowledge of the language.
Once a week, they can extend the duration of the “English Hour”, turning it into a kind of social get-together. Since the number of participants is an important factor for its potential for success, it would be a good idea to invite other children who are relatives or neighbours to take part. Let the children organize the event. They can have a variety of items such as short speeches, songs, dances, stories, playlets, etc all in English. Neighbours can take turns in hosting such an event. If for practical reasons, such camaraderie is not available, let it be in the privacy of one’s own family.
By getting the children to read a lot of English, parents can help them develop their vocabulary, and improve their speaking and writing skills. Parents should buy them story books, magazines, papers, etc that are appropriate for their age. Local newspapers, especially their Sunday editions, carry children’s supplements with a wealth of reading materials including English medium lesson materials. It is good to introduce children to these irrespective of the medium of instruction that they have chosen. As far as possible English learning activities should be integrated into the study of other subjects.
Before the proliferation of avenues of education and entertainment accompanying advances in communication technologies like telephony, television, and computer, reading was a major source of knowledge as well as a popular pastime. Today the easy availability of computer-based education and entertainment seems to have driven reading as we knew it to a secondary position, particularly among the young. Literacy itself is acquiring a new meaning. It has begun to mean a more composite, multimodal capacity than represented by its conventional definition. Text is being replaced by image, as it were.
Of course, the use of the computer and the Internet in the country, particularly in the rural areas, may not be as widespread as we’d wish. At least those who have the facility must be encouraged to make the best use of it. The Internet is an inexhaustible source of English language teaching/learning and general education materials. Many websites offer free downloadable materials for language practice, and testing; there are many free dictionaries. Using the Internet, students can engage in activities involving all the four basic language skills; they can expose themselves to different varieties of International English. In any family, parents with some knowledge of English, or children studying in higher forms can browse through the Net, and make these resources available for the younger children. They can use these with some guidance.
Parents should encourage children to use the Internet to research topics in other subjects even though they may be studying these in Sinhalese or Tamil. This will enable them not only to learn more English, but also to improve their general scholastic performance. One important advantage that students can enjoy by using the Internet is that they can look for the newest information in any field that they have chosen.
(First published in The Island/Friday 6th August 2010)
Living in a welfare state we enjoy, among other things, free healthcare and free education. However, there is much that we as citizens are obliged to do to complement or supplement these services. Unless we thus collaborate with the state the whole community will be negatively affected. The current dengue epidemic has created a situation that illustrates the importance of public awareness and the active cooperation of everyone concerned in minimizing the incidence of the disease. For the success of national education programmes too similar collaboration between the state and the citizenry is of vital importance. The domestic mentoring that parents can provide for their children in the matter of learning “English as a life skill” as outlined below may be regarded as one form of such collaboration between the state and the citizens.
Arguably, the most important as well as the most urgent national educational enterprise that has been launched in recent times is the English as a life skill programme. English as a second language is indispensable for us Sri Lankans to have a good modern education, and to be successfully competitive in the job market. This latest English teaching initiative rightly emphasises the need among our students to use the English language as a normal medium of communication in day-to-day interaction for those broad purposes (for enhancing education and employment prospects).
Now, someone’s knowledge of a language is usually represented as their ability to speak it. For example, we may ask a person, “Do you speak English?”, but not “Do you write/read English?” when we want to find out whether that person knows English. This is because ordinarily we assume that speech is the most basic form of language. Accordingly, the current programme highlights the spoken aspect of the English language training that is being provided.
But you can’t just speak English or any other language for that matter unless you have something to speak about; even when you have something that you could speak about you may not speak about it unless you feel an urge/ a desire/ a need to do so; again your urgent desire to speak about a particular subject may not make you speak about it in English if that language is not your mother tongue or first language. So speaking in English involves a strong enough motive to speak about a worthwhile matter in English, and in no other language. Providing such a motive is crucial for students to respond positively to any course of English language instruction. (Our failure to do this, due to a variety of causes/circumstances, goes a long way towards explaining why so many earlier initiatives didn’t succeed.)
Howatt (1984) identifies two “versions” of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT): a strong version and a weak version. The “strong” version is explained as “using English to learn it, instead of learning English to use it”, whereas the “weak” version is interpreted as “learning English to use it”. The first involves activities that require the use of English for authentic communication among the learners, with no focus on explicit language teaching; the learners are thought to acquire their English solely through meaningful communication. When the weaker version is applied (and this has been normal practice in CLT classrooms over the last decade or so) such communicative activities are integrated into a broader programme of language instruction. In terms of CLT (strong or weak), a major responsibility that devolves on teachers is to generate opportunities for learners to use English for meaningful communication and interaction. Along with this, it is now generally accepted by second language acquisition theorists that reading and writing activities, along with listening, speaking, and thinking promote language learning, something we discovered independently through personal experience and put to good use, too, when we were young children.
Although parents (the majority of whom are not English teachers themselves) should be spared such befuddling theory, it suggests something that parents can conveniently do to help their children learn English: What they can do is to create an environment at home which encourages their children to engage in activities that involve communicating in English. This can be achieved in a number of ways, some of which I describe below. Parents could implement some or all of the following suggestions, and even add other similar activities that they themselves may devise in their individual circumstances. Amidst other demands on their time both parents and children will encounter some difficulty in initiating the kind of domestic interaction that is necessary for such a process to be successful; but it will have its compensations in terms of quality time for parents with their children, reduced tuition costs, and education for themselves. From a language learning point of view, parental involvement in helping their children in the privacy of the home can create a very good context for meaningful interaction through English; the home provides a better affective atmosphere than any classroom outside. (The word ‘affective’ means ‘arising from or influencing emotion’; in a classroom context, the students’ affective needs are those connected with positive feelings such as a sense of security, freedom from anxiety, fear, etc, a feeling of being accepted, loved, and so on; these affective needs should be met before successful learning can take place.)
Parents need not be always talking with their children in English, thereby denying themselves and the children the natural intimacy and informality which is only possible when they interact in the mother tongue. Instead, they can set aside some time everyday or as often as possible, say before supper, for an “English hour”. During this time, they must switch off the television, and devote all their time and attention for English. Everybody must talk in English about whatever topic they are required to in the situation; parents can help children revise their school lessons including those about other subjects (but only in English during the English hour) or get older siblings to help the younger ones with lessons. English should remain the focus of the activities.
The day’s news can provide a topic for discussion. Children may be asked to take turns in answering the questions that a journalist filing a report on any newsworthy event usually answers: who, what, when, where, why, and how. For example, in the case of a motor accident, Who was the driver? Who was injured? Who reported it to the police? Where did this happen? When?, etc. It is also a good idea to encourage learners to find vocabulary that is necessary to talk about special events such as the opening of parliament, an earthquake, floods, religious events, and so on.
Even parents without any English knowledge can get their children to interact among themselves through English with the help of older children who have at least some knowledge of the language.
Once a week, they can extend the duration of the “English Hour”, turning it into a kind of social get-together. Since the number of participants is an important factor for its potential for success, it would be a good idea to invite other children who are relatives or neighbours to take part. Let the children organize the event. They can have a variety of items such as short speeches, songs, dances, stories, playlets, etc all in English. Neighbours can take turns in hosting such an event. If for practical reasons, such camaraderie is not available, let it be in the privacy of one’s own family.
By getting the children to read a lot of English, parents can help them develop their vocabulary, and improve their speaking and writing skills. Parents should buy them story books, magazines, papers, etc that are appropriate for their age. Local newspapers, especially their Sunday editions, carry children’s supplements with a wealth of reading materials including English medium lesson materials. It is good to introduce children to these irrespective of the medium of instruction that they have chosen. As far as possible English learning activities should be integrated into the study of other subjects.
Before the proliferation of avenues of education and entertainment accompanying advances in communication technologies like telephony, television, and computer, reading was a major source of knowledge as well as a popular pastime. Today the easy availability of computer-based education and entertainment seems to have driven reading as we knew it to a secondary position, particularly among the young. Literacy itself is acquiring a new meaning. It has begun to mean a more composite, multimodal capacity than represented by its conventional definition. Text is being replaced by image, as it were.
Of course, the use of the computer and the Internet in the country, particularly in the rural areas, may not be as widespread as we’d wish. At least those who have the facility must be encouraged to make the best use of it. The Internet is an inexhaustible source of English language teaching/learning and general education materials. Many websites offer free downloadable materials for language practice, and testing; there are many free dictionaries. Using the Internet, students can engage in activities involving all the four basic language skills; they can expose themselves to different varieties of International English. In any family, parents with some knowledge of English, or children studying in higher forms can browse through the Net, and make these resources available for the younger children. They can use these with some guidance.
Parents should encourage children to use the Internet to research topics in other subjects even though they may be studying these in Sinhalese or Tamil. This will enable them not only to learn more English, but also to improve their general scholastic performance. One important advantage that students can enjoy by using the Internet is that they can look for the newest information in any field that they have chosen.
Friday, July 30, 2010
Why the Maligawa road should not be reopened
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.)
(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 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
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