Studying in English, the way forward

There is a school of thought that since Independence, Sri Lanka has been toeing a path of regression, whether in terms of the economy, handling of ethnic groups and in the all important matter of how we educate our children. In nationalistic fervour and with little long term vision, Sri Lankan leaders scrapped education in the coloniser’s tongue and chose instead to school the future generation in the vernacular languages, relegating the English language to a mere formality, studied in its most elementary form until a student reaches basic education standard also known as the Ordinary Level.

We did so to our own detriment. The privileged continued to speak the language of the colonisers in their homes, had access to rich English language reading material and managed to come out of the local school system relatively unscathed or adversely affected by the switch in education mediums. They left schools, some pursued higher education while others did not – but in the end, they were all viable in the commercial world, equipped with the language competency that has become integral in the job market.

Not so the child schooled entirely in Sinhala and Tamil. They struggled from the word go. It did not matter that they excelled in school or passed out of university with the highest honours, once they left the education system, they were the pariahs of the commercial world, often unwanted by prospective despite their expertise because the lacked the necessary linguistic skills with which business was to be conducted. Having inflicted the crisis on them, the state had to come up with ways in which to bail them out and so began the never ending cycle of a demand for state jobs that just did not exist.

It is, if one were to look closely, the bane of our society and the reason for the class struggle as it exists today. It is most likely the cause of two bloody insurrections, orchestrated by the JVP fighting allegedly on the behalf of those frustrated and disillusioned youth that the system itself had created.

Modern English, sometimes described as the first global lingua franca, is the dominant international language in communications, science, business, aviation, entertainment, radio and diplomacy. The initial reason for its enormous spread beyond the bounds of the British Isles, where it was originally a native tongue, was the British Empire, and by the late nineteenth century its reach was truly global. A working knowledge of English has become a requirement in a number of fields, occupations and professions such as medicine and as a consequence over a billion people speak English to at least a basic level.

It is in this backdrop that the JVP’s call for Sri Lanka to revert to Sinhala and Tamil medium teaching alone in schools becomes incongruous. Successive governments, after having studied the impacts of low standards of English being taught in schools, decided to reintroduce English as a medium by which to teach all subjects. The plan has been implemented in a handful of schools, where English language teachers in all subjects are available.

The teachers themselves are victims of a poorly thought out scheme, being as they are from a generation which has studied only the local languages, but some steps have been taken to implement teacher English training programmes to remedy this issue. The JVP now claims that students who study in English obtain lesser grades than their counterparts who pursue their studies in the vernacular languages. Far be it from the JVP to admit that this is more to do with a lack of efficient teachers rather than the fault of the language, but it is intent, on convincing the government to rethink its English medium education policy.

The party’s newly formed Education Policy Planning Committee say that the education authorities should not change the medium of instruction of school children from the mother tongue to a foreign language.This embodies the problem with the JVP in its role as the ‘new left’ in modern politics. Where the Old Left lobbied for equality by making the oppressed upwardly mobile, the JVP thrives on bringing the privileged down to the level of the oppressed – and in this do they see their social equity. It bodes well for the JVP to look inward at what really ails the youth and social classes they claim to be fighting for. Will they continue to drag them down further, or will they acknowledge global realities and give the future generations a leg up to meet the challenges of a modern world?