Prof. F. R. Jayasuriya:

Pioneer of a silent revolution

Palitha SENANAYAKE

The centenary birth aniversarry of Prof. F.R. Jayasuriya, who pioneered a silent revolution in Sri Lanka by facilitating the liberalisation of education to the country’s dormant majority, fell yesterday.

Prof. Jayasuriya should be best remembered as the person who took up the challenge to implement the educational reforms during the transition of education from English to Swabasha

A nation that commemorates its patriots is not only a ‘grateful nation’ but also a nation that rekindles its aspirations and self values set out by those pioneering icons. It is in that spirit that the Nation should commemorate Prof. F.R. Jayasuriya who did so much to so many without the slightest expectation of a return for himself.

Revolutionist

Education, they say is the ‘mother of all the revolutions’ and Prof. Jayasuriya was a revolutionist who was silent but yet effective. He was silent because his achievements were shadowed by personalities of incomparable political and national stature and he was effective because he fought successfully not only against the might of the British empire’s interest in Ceylon but also against the local leaders whose sincerity of purpose appears to be in question.

His pupils knew him as a teacher par excellence with a benign influence and in general he was known as a Professor and Head of Economics at the Kelaniya University. But the real benefactors of his dedicated life’s work are the thousands of aspiring graduates who did not know him at all.

Prof. Jayasuriya should be best remembered as the person who took up the challenge to implement the educational reforms during the transition of education from English to Swabasha. Apart from the size and scale of this transition which in itself was onerous, the fact that the reforms were opposed by the imperialist, their vested interests and shunned by many as an ‘unattainable exercise’ made the task near insurmountable. But such was the indefatigable courage and determination of this unique personality that he not only took it upon himself to accomplish the ‘impossible’ but also went that extra mile to convince the country at large the necessity of the transition.

He almost by himself authored the course material, translated the textbooks and prepared the glossaries to enable prospective Swabasha students to pursue their higher education.

Greatest gift

Starting from Economics he did this to a range of subjects including Modern Banking, International trade, Political Science, Statistics and the subject he introduced as ‘Current topics’.

Buoyed by Prof. Jayasuriya’s work, the professionals and academia in other fields of education, such as Law and Accountancy started to convert themselves into Swabasha.

Prof. Jayasuriya firmly believed in the adage that ‘the greatest gift a society can bestow on its younger generation is education’. With only six per cent of the population in Sri Lanka having any level of competency in English at the time, language was certainly standing in the way of liberalising the education. The new leaders of independent Ceylon were either reticent or reprehensive in translating the meaning of independence to the general masses.

Hence up to 1956, a near 94 per cent of the country’s population was, administered, justice dispensed and educated, (or not educated) in a language they did not understand. What was worst was that the six per cent Anglicized minority considered education to be their rightful colonial legacy. It was in this milieu that Prof. Jayasuriya took up the cause of under privileged and down trodden like a beacon of hope and inspiration.

External Degree

In addition to broad basing the University he campaigned vigorously for the introduction of External Degree examinations in the University. When his proposals did not find favour with the Educational establishment, Prof. Jayasuriya travelled from North to South to convince his case to the school principals and educational authorities and obtained 144 signatures from the school authorities to support his case. Prof. Jayasuriya believed that the job opportunities for the higher educated will look after themselves once the people are educated.

Agreed

To those who were involved in University education in the 40s, Prof. Jayasuriya’s running battles with Sir Ivor Jennings, the then imperial strong man of Sri Lankan education was almost legendary. However, there is one area in which they both agreed as reported in the biography of Sir Ivor Jennings written by HAI Gunetileke. That was in the area of the use of mother tongue in imparting education up to secondary level in Sri Lankan schools.

A scrutiny of the examination results of the Examination Department reveals that it was from the 1960s that the Advanced Level students started scoring high marks for Science and Mathematics making the University Entrance examination competitive.

This was after these subjects were being taught in the mother tongue and this is ample proof to confirm that it was only after this transition that the students started understanding these subjects in their fundamentals. Before that what the students had been learning was English, rather than Science and Mathematics in their essence.

These students who entered the universities in the 60s and 70s today form 100 per cent of the country’s mathematics and science professionals.

A large number of them went abroad, worked in the English medium, some in French, German or Japanese and obtained their post graduate qualifications. Most have become international experts/ specialists in their own fields.

English education

Acccording to Dr. Daya Rohana Athukorala, “ Students who go to non- English speaking countries such as China, Japan, Germany and France have become very conversant in those languages within a matter of few months. But what is happening in Sri Lanka is that we are in a mighty hurry to make our students very fluent in English from the Kindergarten.

As a result students don’t learn the actual subjects properly and they only learn English. And some don’t even learn that! Many organizations, especially those in the private sector, use fluency in English as the main criteria for recruitment of personnel.

Interviews are conducted in English and hence a large number of locals from rural areas are shut out of employment despite having obtained good gradings at O/L and A/L examinations”. There have also been instances where the private sector recruits telephone operators with sole emphasis on the fluency in English, only to find that the majority of the clients and staff converse in Sinhala.

Even right at this moment there is a debate going on in this country as to whether Sri Lanka should stick to Swabasha or adopt English for its future. All what Sri Lanka has to do, in search of empirical lessons, is to look for countries in Africa and Asia who opted for English in place of their mother tongue.

They are all mired in some controversy or the other. The only two exceptions are the apartheid South Africa and Singapore. In SA things are now changing and Singapore is too small a place to be called a state.

To be continued tomorrow