Death of English medium in schools
Source:Island
There have been several articles on the deterioration of the English education in the country. My friend Dr. Weeraratne has pointed out some relevant facts about the need to improve English Education ( The Island, 14/11/2022) but it also has some factual errors. English medium in the sciences was abolished in the early 1970s and not in1957. This was due to an ill-conceived action taken by Mrs. Bandaranaike with the help of the then minister of education, Baduideen Mohomad. Almost overnight English medium was abolished and this had an enormous impact on the science education of this country. It is true that some students who followed science courses in the swabasha medium have excelled in their relevant fields. However, those who could not enter the universities lost the golden opportunity of learning English in the schools which would enable to those left out of universities to have better job prospects, specially, in the private sector.
During the time when I was a student in the 1960s, there was a gradual shift to the English medium from about grade 7. At that time Science and Mathematics were taught in the English medium and from grade 7 and from grade 9 onwards, all subjects in the sciences were taught in the English medium. I learned my English because of the English medium and not because English was spoken in our homes. All the students in the class were able to speak, read and write in English when they completed school education. Abolition of the English medium from schools resulted in an entire student population losing the golden opportunity of developing competency in English.
Education in the English medium has distinct advantages to enhance social harmony between Sinhala, Tamil and Muslim students when they sit in the same classroom. During the 1950s, Ananda College had Tamil and Muslim students who studied along with the Sinhala students. Although politicians talk about national harmony, the role of a common link language in the classroom has largely been ignored.
English is the language of science. When we had to shift to the English medium, we did not find any difficulties since the technical words in English involved words which we used in everyday parlance. On the other hand, learning science in swabasha involved Pali and Sanskrit words which we never use in our day to day lives. For example, anyone with even a rudimentary knowledge of English understands words like acceleration and the technical word used for this is thwaranaya which we never use in our day to day lives. Hence understanding science in English has its distinct advantages.
English was later reintroduced as a medium of instruction in schools in the late 1990s and at that time several cabinet ministers spoke against it believing that this is an unwise move. Ironically these minsters have sent their children to international schools where the medium of instruction is English. These selfish ministers never thought of the advantage of the English medium for children in Government schools. The biggest hurdle for its successful implementation was the lack of competent teachers. Government at that time took some meaningful steps to train the teachers but with the change of Government all these efforts were forgotten. Years of neglect of the English language in schools resulted in difficulties in recruiting teachers competent to teach in the English language. Even now, English medium is not so widespread in our school system due to a dearth of competent teachers and the lukewarm attitude of our politicians. Meanwhile, International schools registered with the BOI mushroomed from about 100 in 1998 to about 500 today. The initial attempt at introducing the English medium in schools from the GCE ordinary level was a failure because students were hesitant to change the vernacular to an entirely new medium.
Lack of competency in English made it impossible for Sri Lankans to share the global knowledge through the world-wide web. This has also prevented those who studied in the vernacular in obtaining better employment from both local and foreign companies where only those who attended international schools had the advantage. Politicians believed that English was a symbol of western imperialism which made them resist its widespread use as a medium of instruction in schools. They do not realise that it is a tool for furthering their job opportunities and succeed at an international level.
An interesting anecdote is the attitude of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru towards the English medium. When one of his advisors suggested that, now that we have received independence, we should change the medium of instruction in the universities and schools to Hindi, he paused for a moment and said, I will think about it 60 years from now. Such was the vision of this great politician since he saw the advantage of retaining English which exposes Indian students to the International world. We often see on television, the excellent English spoken by cricketers and actors/actresses from India compared to those from Sri Lanka. Nehru never used ultra-nationalism to win popular votes like in Sri Lanka, where our politicians promoted Sinhala only policies just to win votes at elections. The Official Language Act, commonly referred to as the Sinhala Only Act, was an act passed in the Parliament of Ceylon in June 1956. This act replaced English with Sinhala as the sole official language and this was the beginning of our neglect of English further aggravated by the abolition of the English medium from schools in the early 1970s.
We can learn an invaluable lesson from Singapore, where its founder Lee Kuan Yew changed the medium of instruction in schools almost overnight to English. He was educated at Cambridge and wanted to give similar opportunities to ordinary Singaporeans unlike our Bandaranaike, who was educated at Oxford but did not want to give that opportunity to the ordinary people of Sri Lanka. During the National Day celebrations in Singapore the master of ceremonies conducted the proceedings in English and Lee Kuan Yew claimed that he was a proud man that day. The success of Singapore as a nation is largely due to a particular reason, it is built on a solid foundation of education with emphasis on English. We just have to get out of this shell of ultra-nationalism if we ever have to develop our country in an increasingly globalised world.
Prof. O. A. Ileperuma
