Schools and the flowering of creativity

The government's announcement that it would be launching a countrywide scheme to develop 5000 primary schools, happily coincides with the naming of a road in Gampaha after the late eminent Sinhala writer K. Jayathileke. We consider these simultaneous developments to be highly momentous in nature, although the two events may seem to be totally unrelated.

However, when examined more than superficially it would dawn on the observer that K. Jayathileke and public education bear a close relationship to each other and a searching look at this link would help drive home the vital importance of the state education sector to the common weal.

It is beyond dispute that the late K. Jayathileke was a Sri Lankan creative writer of the highest distinction. He was easily one of our 'Greats' in the Sinhala literary field and it could be said that it was the state-run education system, which is a mainstay of the rural people, which provided the foundation for his rise to eminence as a writer and a public figure. Jayathileke's novel Charitha Thunak remains to this day a hard to beat 'Evergreen' in contemporary Sinhala Literature and a uniquely insightful mirror to rural Lanka.

However, Jayathileke is just one of the scores of eminent Sri Lankans who rose to fame, thanks to the solid academic foundation provided by our public school system. There are scores of artistes, scientists, jurists and public figures of this country who owe a considerable part of their success to the enduring grounding in learning provided by the public school system.

The likes of K. Jayathileke prove the point that the country's public school system must be continuously developed on account of its innate strengths. The women and men of distinction produced by our rural milieu ought to also remind us that there is probably an abundance of talent which is going untapped in the provinces on account of the fact that they do not rise to public prominence amid the constraints which are part and parcel of the rural situation. They live and die unsung and unappreciated in 'rural obscurity', whereas, the lot of the average town dweller is not as burdensome and is comparatively bristling with interesting possibilities.

Accordingly, it is most judicious of the state to make it a declared aim to keep our public school system in fine trim. We do not see any reason why the average rural-based student should seek admission to city-based 'prestigious schools' if the provincial public school system is developed to meet his essential educational needs. If the primary and secondary school systems are vibrant and continuously upgraded there would be no need for the now customary wild scramble for admissions to so-called big schools. Therefore, the state's programme of developing 5000 primary schools would receive a 'thumbs-up' from the more enlightened sections of Sri Lanka.

However, the good work must be continued on a sustained basis. The cynics would greet the state's announcements of development plans and the like with the acerbic rejoinder that these are mere 'election goodies', but the government must prove these deriding sections wrong.

Education is too sacred a thing to be trifled with. The educated woman and man is an invaluable asset to her and himself and society. Frankly, no worldly power could undermine them or bring about their downfall because their achievements are usually impregnable and unassailable.

It just would not do for the state to lay the foundation for a multitude of schools and even ensure that their physical structures come into being and thereafter do nothing about them. Such negligence and moth-balling would prove the cynics right.

These schools must be developed qualitatively to such a degree that they could hold their own with the so-called best in the land. This is no pipe dream. The Central School system of yore easily matched the 'good schools' of the city. It is such a system which produced men of the stature of K. Jayathileke. The Central School era must be reproduced.