Free misinformation

TEXT BOOKS: I had intended to stop these reminiscences about the revival of English medium last week, and in fact what I shall write about this week is only peripheral to that topic.

I felt obliged however to spend some time on it in view of the recent spate of articles about the appalling nature of the textbooks that are sent to schools by the Ministry and the NIE.

Leaving aside actual reports, about how for instance geometry was neglected in classes through tested in the examination, I was particularly struck by an article by Sumana Saparamadu that appeared in the Daily News a couple of weeks back.

Article

Sumana Saparamadu is a senior journalist, who in her characteristically forceful article mentioned two rules that she had absorbed when she started this profession. One was that all references should be checked, the second was that matters one was not certain of should be avoided.

Sadly, the standards associated with such insistence on evidence and certainty are things of the past in almost all areas. But she was certainly right in drawing attention to their absence in the field of textbooks, where the damage to readers, young minds that naturally assume what is prescribed for them is correct, is incalculable.

But, sadly, in the eighties J. R. Jayewardene decided, not just to distribute textbooks free but also, in contravention of the free market philosophy he claimed to follow, either without any understanding or else without a real commitment, to establish a State monopoly on textbooks.

Since then the children of this country have been subject to disinformation that puts them miles behind their peers in neighbouring countries. Astonishingly, the most solid adherents of the J R system, apart from those who profit from it, are the JVP who doubtless dream of a day when they can ensure that all textbooks carry only what they think is true.

Sadly, educationists, who ought to realise that debate and discussion are vital, subscribe to the monopolistic viewpoint, and never bother to consider what happens when wrong information, of the sort Ms Saparamadu so graphically put forward, is thrust into young minds.

Abuses

They continue to claim that such abuses are contingencies that will never happen in an ideal world, forgetting the inevitable deficiencies of those who are supposed to monitor such activities.

The depths to which the system had sunk became clear when the National Education Commission had a look at some of the English medium books that were to be distributed to schools.

By 2004, the work of the English Association having been effectively banned, the textbooks degenerated into pale shadows of the innovative and challenging materials we had envisaged.

Only literal translations of the Sinhala texts were permitted, with the added disadvantage that those producing them were not very knowledgeable about either English or the subject matter they were dealing with.

Textbooks

What had happened in the two years Tara was away became horrendously clear when the National Education Commission had a look at the new textbooks produced for History and Geography and Civic Education, into which the old Social Sciences syllabus had been divided, following our making Kodituwakku aware of the almost total absence of world history in the syllabuses.

Unfortunately the purpose of the change was stymied when aggressive nationalists insisted that the new history syllabus concern itself largely with Sri Lanka, with the same topics repeated over and over again as had happened previously.

This of course made a nonsense of the chronological approach that would have helped students to make intellectual connections between periods and developments.

That however, is another story. What was shocking as far as the English medium books was concerned was the nonsensical English, combined with factual inaccuracies that would be far more obvious to English medium students given that at least some of them would now have more access to better textbooks.

The Chairman of the NEC, Prof Suraweera, though bemused at some of Tara’s innovations, at least knew his basic history and was withering in his criticism of what was being inflicted upon students.

The books were being delayed, and no one quite knew who was responsible, since they had been contracted out to a private printing firm in terms of the perversion of the Multiple Book Option that had been set in place once Tara had left the Ministry.

Priority

When we were wondering how to proceed, I was rung up by a gentleman called Siyambalagoda who turned out to be the Head of the NIE’s Primary Division. It seemed that he was in charge of a team of writers who, working together with a printing firm, had won the contract for the new books.

This was totally against regulations, but Siyambalagoda made no bones about his involvement. Since the irregularities had happened long ago, and our first priority was to get the books out on time, I thought it best to work with him.

Rescued

Though he was not especially scrupulous, he was markedly intelligent, and his writers for Geography and Civics, a gentleman who worked under him at the NIE and his wife who was at the Open University, were a charming couple, anxious to learn.

To some extent at least the books were rescued, though history remained a problem, with Siyambalagoda disarmingly admitting that the writer he used was not a history specialist but had only done postgraduate work in a limited area of the subject.

It was then that I realised what we were up against in trying to set the system to rights. The idea of professional writers, with professional editing by experienced publishers, had become anathema to the bureaucrats, who had found a wonderful way of making money through this monopoly.

So the same people prescribed syllabuses and wrote textbooks, and even though systems might change they had brought to a fine art the process of ensuring that they controlled everything.

It is therefore a cabal of already involved people who write almost every textbook, as will be clear if the particular specimen Ms Saparamadu criticised is examined.

Again, members of the network appoint the so-called subject specialist team, often with no attention to qualifications, as I pointed out in a previous column here when I looked at those who were supposed to be subject specialists for English.

Far from there being any involvement of independent experts, academics, publishers, editors, it is the mixture as before. Unfortunately, this crime against our children continues to be perpetuated by the vested interests that have profited so much by it.