Kuppi Talk

Reading the manifestos of presidential candidates in the run-up to the elections, many search for hope for the future. Studying the content in the manifestos on higher education, I soon realised that they engage little with the ‘real’ subjects that occupy my thoughts, for instance, the everyday challenges of those working in the Sri Lankan university system. These include the endless responsibilities of an academic, the desire to engage in impactful research amidst pressures of having to ‘produce’ and ‘publish’, balancing excessive administrative loads with teaching and research, addressing numerous issues of students, coping with everyday interactions of academic, non-academic staff, administrators, and striving to co-create a meaningful learning experience.

I recently had the opportunity to read Sari Andapu Pirimi (‘Men Draped in Sarees’) by Vishnu Vasu, a powerful narrative that sheds light on the lived experiences of the LGBTQ+ community in Sri Lanka. Through personal stories of discrimination, within families, in society, and by the country’s legal framework, the book offers a heart-rending look into the systemic marginalization faced by individuals who do not conform to the country’s dominant heteronormative norms.

I teach in a postgraduate programme on gender and health offered by the Faculty of Medicine, Colombo. In the module I coordinate on gender-responsive healthcare, we discuss, among other things, the experience of LGBTIQ+ persons within the health sector. The situation is quite bleak. According to the activists who teach in the module, most health professionals lack basic training on delivering sex-/gender-responsive health services. A 2023 study carried out by EQUAL GROUND in six districts (Colombo, Galle, Jaffna, Kandy, Matale, Polonnaruwa) describes varied experiences of stigmatization, discrimination, verbal/physical abuse and sexual harassment in the hands of healthcare providers.

We often perceive the public university as a space for intellectual inquiry and knowledge production. While our discussions generally revolve around the academic contribution made by universities and how the education they offer could be improved, we do not lay enough emphasis on the reality that universities are also spaces created out of work and labour and that the welfare and wellbeing of all those who work there is important to the functioning of the system. Sadly, our universities are riddled with divisions and hierarchies.

Panduka Karunanayake’s article “Education’s ‘Three E’s’ and the McUniversities: Some Heretical Thoughts” published in the University of Colombo Review (2021, volume 2 issue 1) swiftly traces the emergence of ‘McUniversities’, where the goal of educating has been changed to be more ‘efficient’, using the Weberian concept of instrumental rationality. This model might increase efficiency, but only at the cost of some important principles. In other (my) words, what seems to matter more, is that a student may graduate sooner, with a sellable qualification but the question of whether he/she has acquired any moral or socio-political values at university becomes immaterial.

In her Kuppi Talk article “The dispossession of a voice through English in Sri Lanka” (6 February 2024), Selvaraj Vishvika delves into the myriad troubles that accompany the imposition of standards on the English language learner in Sri Lanka. Chief among her reflections is the sordid reality every ELT (English language teaching) practitioner must face at some point: that we do in fact disallow for learners’ expression of ideas when we get myopic about maintaining ‘standards’. Extending this argument further, Maduranga Kalugampitiya (“Positioning the idea of Sri Lankan English in the field of English language teaching in Sri Lanka”, published 2 April 2024) argues that a realistic standard should necessarily be one that contextualises itself to its locality, allowing for users to adapt it to their circumstances.

Free education is one of the strongest pillars of our society. In this column, I address the consequences for the education sector, after Sri Lanka’s first-ever default on its external debt and the IMF’s arbitration of debt restructuring with the country’s external creditors.

The term ‘digital divide’ emerged in the 1990s in the US to describe regional and class-based inequities in access to information technology (ICT) resources and later came to signify such inequities on a global scale. Such inequities range from access to devices, access to the internet, the speed and quality of internet access and the uneven spread of what is called ‘digital literacy’ – or the ability to use ICTs. During the COVID-19 pandemic and physical closure of schools and universities we witnessed the stark realities of this divide within Sri Lanka and how it amplified pre-existing inequities in the country’s education system.

The National Education Policy Framework, (NEPF) the latest in a series of misdirected government interventions to reform education, has by now been roundly critiqued and hopefully no longer relevant. (For a critique of NEPF in this column see Ramya Kumar’s Kuppi of March 19 2024). The Parliament’s Sectoral Oversight Committee on Education (SOCE) has made useful observations on the language with which the policy is framed and expressed a lack of agreement on many of its recommendations.

Having been raised and schooled in Kandy, I have watched the festivities of the Esala Perahera at least 10 times, as a child, and drawn it at least five times during my school years. August was the best month for schools in Kandy Lake Round. We used to get a long school vacation as schools closed to house the forces providing security to the Esala Perahera. Ice cream carts, cotton candy vendors, popcorn, isso-wadai, balloon animals, sadda-nalaa [whistles for the lack of an English equivalent], glowsticks; August was carnivalesque for my childhood self. Growing up, I saw it more as a circus. Why do crowds raise their arms with “saadu saadu”? Why are elephants in this procession? Why do new mothers take their children under the belly of elephants for good luck? Do elephants have healing powers? Are they divine? Why are they chained then? Are they beastly?