The conundrum of the curriculum: how not to govern and how not to oppose

Opinion
By Editor_1
Sri Lankan students eating breakfast in their classroom at a school in Colombo. The government has said the Grade Six reforms will not be implemented this year but in 2027 - Chamila Karunarathne/EPA/File

By Kassapa

The furore over proposed educational reforms hasn’t died down. If anything, the cacophony about the controversy has increased. The opposition is demanding that they be withdrawn. The government has yielded but only slightly: the Grade Six reforms will not be implemented this year but in 2027.

The opposition claims this is a major victory. The government states it is not a retreat from their original stance but a temporary step back, so the reforms could be studied in more detail, offering more consultation with all stakeholders for the greater good of all.

The reality is that the tussle between the government and the opposition was never about the curriculum. It was not even about Prime Minister Harini Amarasuriya, who suddenly found herself at the centre of a political storm and the subject of rude, vile, ruthless personal abuse.

When the opposition discovered there was an offending link to an adult website in a textbook designed for Grade Six students, they realized they had struck gold. Here was an opportunity to hold the government accountable, blame them for the lapse and demand answers.

They did that, but the greater emphasis was on a different issue. The opposition tried to heap blame not on Amarasuriya’s competence as Minister of Education but question her personal life, claiming that she was trying to push her alleged personal lifestyle choices through the reforms.

That took the protests in an entirely different direction. We saw opposition politicians of all hues and religious leaders band together to attack the Premier with a familiar slogan, the ‘destruction of our cultural heritage’. It was a ruse to mobilize mass opinion against the government by tapping into their base instincts instead of having a rational and meaningful discussion about educational reforms.

The Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) was up to its old tricks. Here was a chance to save our ‘2500-year-old heritage’ with a little help from the ‘usual suspects’, Buddhist monks loyal to them. It was a familiar refrain. Surprisingly, the supposedly enlightened Samagi Jana Balavegaya (SJB) was no different. Some of the utterances of their backbench MPs were unprintable.

Joining the chorus was the Sarvajana Balaya led by Dilith Jayaweera and the Jathika Nidahas Peramuna. The latter’s leader, Wimal Weerawansa, starved of the limelight for many months now, grabbed the opportunity with glee, engaging in a satyagraha near the Education Ministry in Battaramulla. However, he made it clear it was not a fast unto death.

In the middle of all this, the government rushed Amarasuriya to Kandy for an audience with the Mahanayake theras who gave her a patient hearing. Even at that stage, President Anura Kumara Dissanayake was publicly saying that the reforms would go ahead, no matter what.

Then came Minister K.D. Lalkantha saying there was someone who was still living in the jungles in Mihintale. It was a clever and thinly veiled reference to the Chief Priest of Mihintale, who was critical of the reforms in a rather derogatory manner. Accused of insulting the Buddhist clergy, Cabinet spokesman Nalinda Jayatissa pointed out that no one was named by Lalkantha.

This was perhaps what tipped the balance. The tide of public opinion, which had so far held with the government, was slowly turning. We saw the spectacle of those opposing educational reforms smashing coconuts at temples, highlighting just how badly those reforms were needed. Faced with an avalanche of protests and the discovery of many more mistakes in other textbooks and modules, the government withdrew the Grade Six reforms. That is only for now, they say. The Opposition crowed from the rooftops, claiming victory.

What all this has shown is that the government, yet again, has been unable to implement a program of work properly. The reforms were rushed, poorly researched, there was little consultation, no proper preparation, the public awareness campaign was inadequate, and they walked blindly into a storm of protest. As a result, a golden opportunity to enact a meaningful set of reforms as per their mandate was lost.

They will, of course, say that the reforms have not been abandoned, only postponed, but what is the guarantee they won’t encounter the same resistance in 2027? Educationists who sincerely wanted to see the reforms through are livid with the degree of incompetence shown by Amarasuriya in her capacity as Education Minister and her top officials.

What of the opposition? They are no better. They have demonstrated that they are still the same primordial set of politicians with their ‘frog in the well’ mentality. Anyone who believes in this day and age that same gender attraction can be promoted through a campaign belongs in a museum. That is what they were equating sex education to. With several media outlets and an army of social media foot soldiers, they were making inroads into the mindset of a poorly educated population. Ironically, the exact reason why educational reforms were needed – the poor social awareness of the masses – was also what was exploited by the opposition.

Should the government have taken a gamble and proceeded with the reforms? They should have, but to do so, they needed to have done their homework and prepared properly. They didn’t and were caught hopelessly off guard with Harini Amarasuriya firmly in the cross-hairs of the opposition. Weighing the potential political cost, they have retreated, saving face by saying that they will reintroduce the reforms next year.

There is a massive lesson to learn from this for the ruling party. They may control the government with an overwhelming mandate, but after six decades of being in the opposition and only one year in government, they still have only a very vague idea of how a government runs. They haven’t tackled that invisible beast, the bureaucracy, which behaves in its own idiosyncratic manner, since political interference is minimal now.

As for the opposition, what they have proved is that they will never learn. They prefer to keep Sri Lanka in the dark ages, so they could hoodwink the masses and gain power. In that sense, Lalakantha’s comment about ‘living in the jungles’ was well deserved.

So ends Episode One of the ‘Educational Reforms’ saga. Brace yourself for Episode Two, due for release early next year!       

-This article was originally featured on counterpoint.lk

Editor_1
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