Education has been the cheapest means available to climb the social ladder, in Sri Lanka. Hence no wonder the education of one's offspring is considered as the primary function of a parent.
Anyone can climb the ladder, provided the parents have a minimum income to support the family and send him/her to school and later to the tuition classes. Hence children value education equally well and are ready to make sacrifices and investments.

A country where suppression based on caste had been a crude reality; this has given large numbers to free themselves from the bonds of the old caste structure, though the caste might still haunt in marriage and even in other circumstances in a limited sense. Later when money and power became equally suppressing factors, again education came to the rescue; by education any one could acquire money and power to a certain extent.

In a society, where resources and opportunities are limited and hence there is lot of competition for the two, education becomes the qualifying factor to access both resources (including know-how and information) and opportunities (jobs). It is a ticket to enter in to different levels of resources and opportunities ladder. It creates feeling of righteousness and fairness about the access process. Higher you qualify higher your opportunities to reach the higher resources and better opportunities, which could be easily justified.

Education in that sense had been a great social leveler. Any attempt to tinker with education is therefore treated with suspicion and contempt.

But as a result, education has been quite stagnant for a long time. It has outlived the times. It is becoming outdated at an alarming rate that it is losing its power as a great social leveler. However many who vowed to fight to death on any attempt to tinker with education does not realize that they are on a self-defeating battle. If they win they are the people who will really lose. It is therefore a tragedy; one of the greater tragedies Sri Lanka facing among many other tragedies.

Industry is not keen in absorbing the products of education any more. Some industry recruiters prefer failures of the system as some of them have the attributes what they might not find in the successors. They look for people who play rugby than the graduates of Universities.

There are numerous reasons why the education system does not produce the required quality. Let us look at the system in detail.

The Driving Purpose

The driving purpose of the education has been to equip the students with knowledge about different subjects. Lot of facts and figures is poured to be memorized by students only to be poured back at the exam in the same order to get marks. When one look at the growing syllabus you find more and more facts added each year. Student is not to infer different perceptions out of the facts and figures poured but the already made inferences are given to be memorized again, like the facts. Knowledge is transferred but not the competency.

System is of the view that knowledge should be made available through the standard text books and does not appreciate the other sources. Different schools of thought about a subject are not encouraged but a single school of thought is given to be memorized.

Learning is done through reading notes and textbooks but very rarely students are directed to engage in activities that provide better learning opportunities. Explicit knowledge is given importance over the implicit knowledge. Students who cannot play a single drum beat can name different drums at the end of a Fine Art course.

Learning Process

Students are not supposed to question the teacher. It will be taken as a threat or a challenge. A lesson or two will be taught to the students so that he/she will never dare to do the same

Students are supposed to learn without making mistakes. So when an incomplete answer is given they are pulled up and humiliated. They are classified as idiots or lazy. Pressure is exerted so that they will not make a mistake again. But this stifles the initiatives. Students are scared not only to question but also to answer. Dialog is thus replaced by monologue. Students become passive recipients of the flow of facts and figures poured out monotonously.

Learning Unit

World is divided in to different subjects and each subject is treated separately in the school system. Economics teacher comes and tell that there is fish around the island which is a valuable resource that could be extracted while the Buddhism teacher comes and tell you that killing animals is bad. Students get used to give answers looking at the subject or the teacher and build up compartments around the subjects and teachers. Uni-disciplinary approach is cultivated early in life which prevents them perceiving an issue in all its forms and facets.

Subject wise treatment of the world may be easy when going deep but then students have to be exposed to real assignments that will require wider consideration, across subjects, for them to appreciate the width of an issue.

Managing Students

Students are classified in to good or bad; capable or incapable; white or black. Students who are capable and obedient are good (white) and others are bad (black). It is either black or white; no shades of grey.

Once classified and labeled it is difficult to remove the classification or the label. Once bad is always bad.

It is a fixed attribute like a characteristic of a particular machine part. It could be either replaced (bad) or kept (good). Time to time testing has to be done to keep it under control.

It is not considered as something that will grow in to a different thing given the nutrients and water. Teacher assumes the role of the 'mechanic' but fail to be the 'gardener'. Students are considered passive machines that have to be controlled and not living beings that could be inspired and facilitated.

School

School is considered a place where students are disciplined and controlled. Their hair has to be cut to a particular size (not short and not long). Their faces have to be clean shaven. They have to wear a uniform that has very strict specifications. Their shoes have to be of particular design. The wristwatches have to be worn in a particular way, etc and etc.

They are supposed to do what they are being told by the authorities and nothing else. There is very little room for arguments and different opinions.

Dissent is taken very seriously and treated with venom. It is not a place where different abilities and different attributes could be sharpened (sometimes not even within the limited extra curricular activities, which only very few rich schools can take up).

The idea of the school is to convert different students to a uniform one. It is a factory where a standard product is produced in mass scale. It never had thought itself as a garden where thousands different plants could grow and different flowers could blossom.

Teacher's Role

It is presumed that teacher knows everything under the sun. That is why they have been recruited as teachers. Once recruited very few feel that they should acquire additional knowledge. Many feel that knowledge is finite and with a degree or diploma you have conquer everything else. Many don't appreciate that the knowledge changes; old knowledge is discarded and new knowledge is adopted.

Hence teacher always try to be in the driving seat. The students become passengers in the journey.

It is very rarely felt that the students could take turns in the driving seat under the guidance of the teacher to learn better.

Spectrum of Subjects

History is taught but not the future as a subject. Logic and analysis are taught but not synthesis and design to the same extent. Specific religions are taught but not the full spectrum together. Abstract and specific sciences are taught but not the industries that work with variety of sciences. Sciences and humanities are taught separately but not about institutions that operate using both science and humanities.

Problem Identification and Solution Creation

Separate factors for particular outcomes are identified but the inter-relationships of contributing factors are ignored. Causes for particular effects are established, but solutions for the effect are rarely done and even when it is done, the solution is given without looking for all possible alternatives. It normally boils down to removal of the cause.

Assessing Strategies

In exams, quite often the knowledge in the form of facts and figures is checked. More often, what measured is not what students know but what they don't know (to discriminate the students, the examiner has to do it). Exact answer, according to the authority, is looked for not the possible answers one could imagine.

Main stream thinking is expected as answers, as given in the text books, but dissenting view points of other schools of thought are not entertained (in spite they could become the mainstream thinking in time to come).

Exams that ensure the objective nature of assessment are valued over assignments, which are of subjective nature, as fairness is always believed to be accomplished through objective means.

Trends that Influences the Education

While education is having inherent weaknesses on its own that has lead to a crisis, the environment also has created challenges.

The opportunities available for learning are widening with World Wide Web, offering many alternatives. There are also books, off-line e-learning methods, media that has taken over education from the schools. Tuition classes have mushroomed and nowadays you will not find a student who passes AL without attending the tuition classes. There are private and international schools that have come up that provide alternative learning forums. There are foreign universities that offer degree and post-graduate programs either directly or through local franchises. There are local institutions that provide alternative education opportunities, especially in the field of IT and English, where schools have failed to make any significant impact.

Internal weaknesses added to these external threats, education is at a cross roads.

Dilemma

These issues, either in parts or probably in full, have or might have been discussed in many forums and some changes in the education system had been made as a result of those deliberations, but without any substantial results.

One reason is that they have not addressed all the issues but some issues. Example, they want children to be less competitive in exams and focus on broader personal development, but still not doing anything to lower the competition; by providing wider access.

The other reason is that they are reluctant to disturb the social leveler and go in to bad books.

So without taking the bull by the horn, educationists have taken it by tail to end up in disasters.

Result is that education is getting less and less investment from the government, where balance is extracted from parents, making it a burden that does not pay as in the past. Return on that meager investment is also getting less and less every year, where the tax payer (now everyone is a tax payer with the introduction of the VAT) and the nation as a whole not getting value out of the investment. The products of education getting frustrated day by day and not know what to do about it while the industry laments about not getting the human resources that is expected and only can complain.

Earlier we act the damage could be kept to a minimum. Getting late might cost us another upheaval, on top of the current crisis, which one could attribute partially to the incomplete education as well.

The intervention necessary cannot be planned only by educationists themselves or politicians added to it, but by a larger multi-disciplinary group, representing all stakeholders.

It also requires not only overall vision but also political will to make the necessary changes in the sphere of education. Whether we will see such in this decade is a billion rupee worth question. However that should not bar us in pushing the reforms through. One find day the cry will be captured, if not now.
Nishantha Kamaladasa, CEO, Distance Learning Centre Ltd.