Social media, if willed, can be a potent tool to manipulate thought, opinion and perception. However, social media is an effective manipulator not simply because of its features that allow easy propagation of messages with not much accountability. In Sri Lanka, our school system has played a huge role in making us easy prey in the games played in social media.
Our education system’s weaknesses
* Rote Learning
We have an education system that comprises primarily of students memorizing notes given by the teacher and reproducing that same note in exams. Neither the teacher nor the student knows much beyond the note. Hence, more than an education system, what we do have is a system that hones in memorization.
Consequently, our education system does not teach essential disciplines such as to question the contents of the note or make independent analysis through one’s own research or deduction. Thus, for generations we are taught to simply accept the written note given to us.
This makes social media campaigns so much easier. The short, succinct messages that do not offer any background material are taken at face value by most users. Unlike the published content on conventional media as a newspaper, social media content is often without an owner.
Yet, the credibility attached to content from social media is incredible. This is mainly due to our education system’s failure to train to think independently instead of blindly accepting content.
The depth of this problem can be assessed by the fact that students are actively discouraged from venturing their own independent answers or analysis. Instead, they are advised to memorize the scripted answers that are followed by the examiners marking the answer sheets. Anything outside this script, even if correct, may not get the credit it deserves due to the limitations of the examiner’s own knowledge.
The main reason for this contraction of knowledge in our educators is their poor pay. This forces many educators to offer private tuition after school hours as well as throughout the entire day during holidays. For this to be a profitable venture, one must conduct at least two classes per day on an average school day. This leaves the educator very little time to read and update their own knowledge on the subject matter. Teaching has thus become a rote business. 
Facilities offered through the Internet to have online classes have only exacerbated this problem. Through online classes, some teachers conduct classes into the night as late as 10 pm and some start their lessons as early as three or four in the morning. Thus most children grow without adequate sleep, but also without nutritious food as many opt for quick snacks that boost energy rather than a balanced diet.
The mental fatigue children suffer through this systematic abuse can be assessed by the high suicide rate amongst them. Especially after the conclusion of the GCE Ordinary Level (O/L) exam and then immediately after results are released, there is generally a spike of suicide cases amongst these teenagers who sat for that exam. Few years ago, a child committed suicide even before the mathematics results were released. She was so afraid of her performance.
Society generally looks down on those who take such drastic measures and derides them for being of a weak mentality. Instead of this apathetic view, attention must be urgently focussed on what makes a child grow with such a fragile mentality.
* The answer is always ‘no’
One of the biggest mistakes committed by our educators is to deny children their adventures. In our quest to educate our young, one of the first privileges we take away from a child is their playtime. A child’s development is literally condensed into a score card. From the first grade itself, the objective is to prepare the child to face the O/L exam. If we faced life the way our education system prepares us for O/L exams, then from day one all we would do is lie still in practice for our day in the coffin.
According to our current education system, children’s success depends mostly on their ability to memorize. Therefore, following lessons during school hours is simply not enough. Most children must therefore spend hours of their time after school pouring over notes to memorize it. Many need extra tutoring to reinforce the lessons learnt in school.
This leaves children very little time to explore and get to know the environment or the people around them. Most children now cannot climb a tree or have not jumped into a muddy puddle. They no longer build playhouses or created any other inventions of their own. The situation has got so bad that the environmental studies syllabus itself must teach the child the shape of the trees around us. This is how most children, especially in the cities, now learn to differentiate between the jackfruit tree from the mango tree though both grow in abundance in all cities in Sri Lanka.
The ‘no’ does not stop at just denying playtime. Throughout the schooling career, the most common response a child can expect from an adult is the answer ‘no’. Young children like colour. Yet, a major part of their waking hours are spent in a white uniform, which is the most colourless of all colours. This uniform does not flatter any figure.
Ironically, due to the prevailing economic crisis, our Treasury cannot even afford this uniform any more. For 2023, it was the Chinese Government that donated 70% of the nation’s requirements. Still, it has not occurred to us that the day has come to do away with this uniform that does nothing to the student’s personality. Perhaps a dress code instead of a rigid uniform is what would work best for us right now.
As children grow, they like to experiment with their wardrobe and hair. This is treated almost as a scandalous deed. Fashion within boundaries is not a terrible deed. Given the chance, the carefree mind can paint a universe in the tiny canvas of a nail.
In this manner, for over a decade, our children are denied colour, individuality or develop a personality. At the end of the day, we produce a generation with a robotic mindset prepared to reject and be rejected.
It is unfortunate that even sports and games are allowed if only the child will participate in it competitively. The worst consequence of micromanaging a child’s free space is that many grow without a constructive hobby or an interest outside their textbooks. Most Sri Lankan students score well in exams but are sadly lacking in general knowledge. This is a very serious problem indeed.
* Teaching without
understanding
More often than not, most teachers themselves are unaware of the significance of the matter they teach. The manner the poem ‘Sirimath Mage Saki’ is often taught illustrates this point well.
This poem was composed by the great patriot and poet Kumaratunga Munidasa. He composed this poem at an era when a foreign force, forcibly occupying the land, was ridiculing our ways. This had a debilitating and a demoralizing effect on the people.
To counter this wicked effort, the great Poet composed ‘Sirimath Mage Saki’, through which he praised the characteristics of a Sri Lankan child. Therefore, this poem is not about any particular child but of all children in the land.
Most teachers do not know this history. Therefore, many interpret the poem as that of a certain child. In the process of teaching this poem, many would compare this ‘child’ with the students and advocate them also to be like this ‘child’. Little do they realize that the ‘child’ in the poem is none other than the student before the teacher.
Those who can, would memorize the poem and score marks from the questions asked about it at the exam. However, neither the student nor the teacher would have an inkling of that poem’s objective or the extraordinary challenge the poet sought to counter.
* A sadistic curriculum
Though we have 14 universities dotted around the country, we still do not have the capacity to allow every student who qualifies into tertiary education a seat in the university. In fact, less than 30 percent make it into university.
With modern technologies, this problem can be resolved fairly effectively. However, our chosen mode is to make exams harder. This has given most graduates a superiority complex. They pride themselves as the cream of the crop for they are the ones who made it across the great hurdle.
It is unfortunate that most of our educators live to run this fact on the younger generations. Hence the textbooks and exam papers they set are made deliberately difficult as they try to show off their superiority of knowledge.
Social media and weaknesses in education system
Social media platforms thus literally find our minds as blank slates. Even though we are wiser than we were in 2012-14, we are still susceptible to the games played in social media.
For instance, during the early part of the 2022 anti-Government protests, many were under the impression that they were in an apolitical movement. However, the very fact that the protest was against the then prevailing Government and against the shortages of essentials and power outages, makes the movement political.
Politics by definition means the participation of matters of governance. This includes tariffs, interest rates, ensuring goods and services and basically everything that facilitates our lives. Therefore, one cannot possibly have an opinion of matters that are decided and managed through a political framework and claim to be apolitical.
Unfortunately, most of those who initially participated in the anti-Government protests did not realize that one does not need to be aligned to a political party to be political. It is at this infant stage that lies our general knowledge.
At the very least we do not question this fantastic notion of democracy. As parents, we try to impress on our children not to give into peer pressure. Yet, the one or the policy with the most votes wins. This is quite an anomaly.
We protest and demand with gusto. We want the Government to resolve all our social and economic irritations. Yet, neither the Government nor the public has solutions. For instance, when the Gotabaya Rajapaksa Government balked at approaching the IMF, the demand was to seek a bailout from the IMF. Now that the Government has done just that and is in the process of following the IMF prescriptions, there are bowls of protests against the measures taken. This implies that those who advocated an IMF solution did not have a proper understanding of what that solution would entail.
Social media can be harnessed as think tanks as much as agitation sites. However, we do not see this kind of think tanks emerging on the Internet. This is due to the terrible consequences rendered by our education system that has built walls within us from seeking solutions. We are waiting for someone else to provide us with the answers. We are used to a cruel system, always denying and taunting us. This makes us defensive and aggressive, which is clouding our own judgement. While we are in this mentality, it is very easy to manipulate us and sow seeds of resentment and suspicion.
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