C. Wijeyawickrema, LL.B., Ph.D.
At a time when the word LAW
has become a ‘dirty’ word, because of the problems created by lawyers, Bar
Association, AG’s Dept., judges, some CJs, behavior of some courts, Ranjan
Ramanayaka’s tapes, and how the yahapalana parliament cheated supreme court in
passing laws, the black-white-filled legal education council found a panacea to
all these ills: GO BACK TO ENGLISH MEDIUM QUICKLY WITHIN 3 YEARS between
2022-24 (Government Gazette 30/12/2020).
I consider this a
sickening decision; one more example of Sinhale (Ceylon) going down the drain.
This council of legal education is part of the Evil Triangle (politician-officer-NGO/citizen),
destroying the country and the nation. I pointed out cussedness of this English
fever, in two essays written in 2001 and 2008 respectively, both printed in the
Island newspaper. How timely they are now in 2021! The 2008 essay, a response
to a Chief Justice then, is copied below. The 2001 essay was an educational
task given to a promoter of the subject of superiority of the English language
as a vehicle of socio-economic progress.
The judicial branch of
governance must concentrate on how to get rid of the White man’s law.
===============================
The Island, 2008/03/19
Empowering law students with an English language tool
Courts of law and
social engineering
Comments made recently by the Chief
Justice of Sri Lanka about teaching English to law students (Daily Mirror,
March 12, 2008), prompted me to read again an essay that I wrote seven years
ago titled, “Gurulugomi to the Rescue: re-Enthronement of the English
Language” (Island, April 13, 2001). It also reminded me what one of my
wife’s relatives, a self-made goda perakadoruwa by vocation, told me
some time back. He said, “Lawyers and judges now-a-days cannot speak in
English,” and my quick reply was, “do you think in Japan, Germany,
Russia, Cuba, or Israel lawyers work in English?”
A working knowledge of any language
is useful to anybody, anywhere. I often wonder why we do not consider learning
English the same way we try to learn how to ride a bicycle. When the time
comes, we do not give it up until we get the balance and are able to take that
first magic ride to freedom. Learning a language is like learning how to type,
how to swim and how to use a computer and the Internet. A language is a window
to see the cultural world of that language. Very few people but learn or study
a language for the sake of learning. They are driven by an immediate benefit
that can be derived by knowing it. For example, in Texas, USA learning Spanish
is considered an advantage in getting a job or living in harmony with Mexican
immigrants. Tamils migrated to other countries in the world learned the
languages of those countries despite the “mental block” they had in
attaining a working knowledge in Sinhala.
Working knowledge versus re-enthronement of English
The Roman-Dutch law is the common
law in Sri Lanka, but the Anglo-American jurisprudence has been the basis of
most of Sri Lankan laws. Therefore, there is no question that a law student in
Sri Lanka should be able to read law books available in English to become a
more effective lawyer. I can remember when I was a law student, I obtained
books from three other countries. The retired law college principal Dr. Joe
Silva studied law with me. The “Flat world” is at least for now a
“flat English world.” The World Trade Organization (WTO) does its
business in English. But in USA the middle-class “soccer-mothers”
force their children to learn Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic and Hindi.
German and French classes are no longer in demand.
However, an ability to speak English
is not a short cut to Nirvana. If so those countries where English is the
mother tongue should not have poverty, unemployment or high school kids taking
guns to schools! A genuine desire to empower law students can however end up as
an unintended legal impact of restricting legal education to a privileged
social class. The efficacy of law is a fascinating field of study in this
regard. Those who routinely promote English ignore two important concepts—
proficiency in a second language and barriers to learning English in public
schools. In a former English colony promoting the first concept often becomes a
victim of the second. Proficiency in English is prevented by socio-economic
reasons. I know a monk with a first class honours degree in Buddhism, who went
to Japan and won prices in debates conducted in Japanese. He is weak in English
despite doctoral work in Japanese. Learning Sanskrit is ten times harder than
learning English or French. But when I asked him about his English
“problem” he said he could not learn English in Sri Lanka because
others laughed at him whenever he made a mistake. If he tried to learn German
and made mistakes nobody in Sri Lanka would have laughed at him. This is
because English has been a weapon of class-privilege in Ceylon/Sri Lanka.
Lord Macaulay’s grandchildren
Because access to learning English
is not available to common people and poor children, any qualifying requirement
of English will prevent them entering law college or universities. This will
then take the clock back to pre-1956 era. The solution should be to teach
English as a second language effectively at public schools and then teach
English as a required subject at higher educational institutions. Otherwise, in
general, those who speak or write about this subject in former British colonies
unknowingly commit the same sin, a superiority complex, committed by Lord
Macaulay in 1835—who could deny that a single shelf of a good European
library was worth the whole literature of India and Arabia,” Macaulay:
The Shaping of the Historian by John Clive, Random House, 1973, p.372. It could
give the appearance that the new masters to whom the white masters transferred
the ruling power have volunteered themselves to take the “White Man’s
burden” upon their shoulders.
Law College was for the rich and the powerful
In the case of the Law College this
is even more relevant because it was a trade school for the rich and the
powerful to serve their sons and daughters who could not enter the university
or who could not go abroad to study. The change of medium of instruction
altered this historical function. This is why the words “senseless and
foolish” need some sort of judicial re-adjustment. If the judicial branch
of a country is limited to a particular elitist class of people, the general
complaint against the law is nothing but a weapon in the hands of the ruling
elites (the social norms favourable and acceptable to the ruling class becomes
laws) ends up in double jeopardy attracting extra-judicial remedies by way of
rebellion or sabotage (example: JVP 1971, 1988-9).
The value of the mother tongue
Why students should learn in their
mother tongues and receive a working knowledge in a foreign language is not
just a socio-political issue. The colonial education policy of the British
Empire was aimed at killing the mother tongues of the natives, just like the
colonial economic policy was designed to drain the resources of the colony to
London or Liverpool. In Ceylon, Colombo harbour became the outward mouth of the
drain. In India it was Bombay, Calcutta, Karachchi and Madras.
For a detailed history of the
colonial education policy, the best source is chapter 12 “Indian
Education: The Minute” of Clive’s book on Macaulay. There were two
opposing views. “Engrafting” Western knowledge upon Indian cultural
traditions by means of Sanskrit and Arabic and “downward filtration,”
the creation of an educated elite who would themselves become teachers to other
great mass of poor Indian people. The latter policy had an evangelical and
utilitarian bias. So Macaulay said, “we must at present do our best to
form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we
govern; a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste,
in opinions, in morals, and in intellect.” Who could deny that NM,
Leslie, Colvin, Lalith, Gamini, JRJ, Dudley, Sir John, Sir Oliver, Sir Solomon
Dias, DS Senanayake, Ranil, Neelan-GL, CBK and so many past native Chief
Justices did not qualify as grandchildren of Macaulay?
Since its top priority was making
profits, the colonial government left education in the hands of religious and
private organizations. As summed up by Nehru, colonial masters supported a
policy of “education for clerks.” In 1851, Radha Kanta Dev, a
progressive Calcutta merchant warned against a system, whereby, “..with
a smattering knowledge of English, youths are weaned from the plough, the axe
and the loom, to render them ambitious only for the clerkships for which hosts
would besiege the government and mercantile offices…” Dev favoured
agricultural and industrial schools, where skills could be taught. For him the
prerequisite for these was a solid vernacular education. Lord Curzon who
divided Bengal into two in 1905, made the same point half a century later
(Clive, p. 416).
Gandhi once said, “It was
nothing less than scandalous that people should devote the best years of their
lives to mastering a foreign tongue.” The Buddha said twenty-five
hundred years ago that one’s mother tongue was the most appropriate medium of
education. He used Magadhi (Pali), the people’s mother tongue and not Sanskrit
(the Brahmin masters’ language). Sir D. B. Jayatilaka, who opposed the
introduction of universal suffrage, was convinced that originality of thought
was inextricably bound with one’s own mother tongue. He asked, “We have
had English education in this country over a century…but has anyone left a
single book in English verse or prose which will survive a generation?”
(Legislative Council Debates, 1928:368). As cited in Professor K. N. O.
Dharmadasa’s book, Language, Religion and Ethnic Assertiveness (1992, p. 215),
Ananda Coomaraswamy, who was fluent in ten languages, went even further to
endorse strongly, the link between one’s creative and intellectual development
and his/her mother tongue.
The era of teaching Sinhala in English
A group of dedicated Sri Lankans
fought to open the doors of the university to the common people of Sri Lanka.
When the plug was removed, big-fat-rich kids from Colombo and other big cities
had no chance. In the early days university admission decisions were made after
a personal interview. And at the interview, as reported by Felix Dias B, Sir
Ivor asked him, “Since your father is a judge of the Supreme Court are
you also planning to be a judge of the Supreme Court?” to which FDB
replied, “No, I want to be the vice chancellor of the university so
that I could select students.” They were just scratching each other’s
backs! While Royal, St. Thomas’ and even the St Joseph’s dropped out of the
scene, village students with 8 distinctions at G.C.E. (O.L) flooded the
university.
What had happened to the Philippine
Islands, Africa or to some South American cultures or more recently to South
Korea did not happen in Sri Lanka, because of life-sacrificing acts of Walane
(Panadura) Siddharta (1811-68), whose wisdom resulted in the establishment of
Vidyodaya (1873) and Vidyalankara (1875) Pirivenas, Migettuwatte Gunananda
(1823-90), Hikkaduwe Sumangala (1827-1911), Colonel Olcott (the first white
Buddhist) and many others. It is true that some children of school principals,
postmasters and village landowners had an opportunity to enter the University
of Ceylon. But the Kannangara Free Education Reforms did not reach the masses
until the people’s revolution in 1956 and the decision to teach in Sinhala and
Tamil in the university. In the 1960s, to supplement the university bursary
system, Dr. N. M. Perera, added a university students’ bank loan scheme through
the People’s Bank. But it was not an easy victory. We all know what Sir
Nicholas, the dean of medical faculty told F. R. Jayasooriya when the former
was approached to teach medicine in Sinhala, “first go and teach your
Sinhala in Sinhala and then come to me.” In this effort FR had the
backing of I. D. S. Weerawardena, who pioneered teaching political science in Sinhala,
with the support of his English wife, until his untimely death by a
misdiagnosis of chickenpox. Tamil professors did not join the swabhasha
movement because rich Tamils went to the Madras University for higher
education. The language of medicine in Ceylon was class privilege and money.
Private medical schools and private universities are not bad ideas per se
if we know the real reason behind them. People who get rich by just means
taking risks must be allowed to enjoy their wealth. Is this against Buddhism?
Colonialism and English
Our admiration of the West and the
English language need not become an obsession. Blind faith in everything
Western and American could become a mental sickness. For example, why are
people from Colombo embrace things coming from America, which even the
Americans in America, are rejecting? A good example is the McDonald hamburgers
notorious as an unhealthy fast food (The McDonaldization of Society, George
Ritzer, 1993).
A Buddhist Jataka story tells us not
to take the raft on to our shoulders after we used it to cross the river.
English is only a raft and it need not be a Kaduwa. English is a very
economical language. Because it is so widespread proficiency in English is a
passport to see the world. It has a rich vocabulary, flexible and has
relatively simple spelling and pronunciation. If a standard western typewriter
keyboard were to expand to take in every Chinese ideagraph it would have to be
about 15 feet long and 5 feet wide (The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got
That Way, Bill Bryson, 1990, p. 118). There is no reason to love English, and
there is no reason to hate it. Politicians and their henchmen-officers are
playing the same old game when they say that Sri Lanka is in a mess because
English was ignored. It is better if the judiciary does not get involved in
such issues.
Barriers to English Proficiency
All what a Sri Lankan child needs is
one class period of quality English every school day from grades 2-10. As Dr.
S. Kariyawasam reported (Island, May 4, 2000), of the 40,000 English teachers,
nearly 19,000 recruited in 1972, came with a credit pass in English at the
G.C.E. (O.L.). Three decades later are we doing a better job in solving this
problem of quantity and quality of English language teachers? How many schools
even within a 25- mile radius from Colombo could claim that they have enough
qualified English teachers? Teaching English as a foreign language is not the
same as speaking English. The failure of the Education Department in this
regard has helped tuition masters to make money without paying taxes.
Sri Lanka had a reasonably good
textbook translation service in the 1960s and who killed it? There is no single
path to make children proficient in English. It can be done without killing
their mother tongue. Those days there were night schools attached to temples
where English was taught free. Who killed that concept? Why cannot this method
be revived? This is a low cost, village level approach suitable for those who
are genuinely concerned with helping the masses. We commemorate with gratitude
what the American Olcott did for us in the 1880s. He helped to establish
schools for the Buddhists at a time the government was not willing to help.
Ironically, those who had the responsibility of continuing Olcott’s mission
neglected teaching English to Buddhist monks attending the pirivenas. It is
much harder to learn Sanskrit, but student-priests learned Sanskrit and Pali
and not English. Buddhist priests had to rely on the English knowledge of the
lay Buddhist leaders. Same thing happened with the Marxists. The leaders spoke
English but the ordinary members, the labourers and clerks did not know it.
Providing a working knowledge of
English to those who study in their mother tongue should not be a matter of Anto-Jata-Bahi-Jata.
