{"id":118137,"date":"2021-09-14T16:16:28","date_gmt":"2021-09-14T23:16:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=118137"},"modified":"2021-09-14T16:16:28","modified_gmt":"2021-09-14T23:16:28","slug":"the-oath-of-kannangara","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2021\/09\/14\/the-oath-of-kannangara\/","title":{"rendered":"The Oath of Kannangara"},"content":{"rendered":"

Professor Nalin Abeysekera\u00a0 Ph.D.(University of Colombo) ,B. Sc Mkt. (Special) (University of Sri Jayewardenepura),\u00a0MBA (University of Colombo), MCIM(UK), Chartered Marketer (UK), MSLIM, MAAT, Dip in CMA<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

As Sri Lankans, most of us are blessed with the free\neducation of this country. If you compare this blessing word of free\neducation\u201d with the globe you would understand more value of this. And we have\nseen people just consider  free education\nis all about education for free\u201d and think it is merely like a product or\nservice given free of charge. In this context, Jayawardena (2013) defined free\neducation as Free Education is not only to provide \u2018education\u2019 at free of cost\nbut to provide equitable access to every child irrespective of the demography,\nexploit the individual strengths and cultivate good values to become a\nlaw-abiding citizen\u201d. The actual meaning of Free Education\u201d  needs to be the\ncommunicated for all who blessed with this as we can see people could not\nunderstand the real value of it in Sri Lanka. As per Khosla(2019) Sri Lanka\nhas shocked the world with its success in its system of education. Within less\nthan forty years of independence, the number of schools has increased by 50\npercent. In fact, the number of students has increased by 300 percent\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With this Blessed free education\u201d, we should not forget the\nname of Blessed person\u201d, Dr C.W.W Kannangara ,Father of Free education. This\nis what I have extracted from the site of  United nations Sri Lanka\n In 1943, Dr C. W. W. Kannangara the Minister of Education, introduced\nthe Free Education Bill in the State Council. After much debate, it was\napproved for implementation and on 1 October 1945 the Free Education Policy\ncame into effect. This policy states that every child above the age of five and\nnot more than sixteen is entitled to free education. It has benefited\ngenerations of students and has enabled Sri Lanka to succeed in achieving the\nMillennium Development Goal of Universal Primary Education\u201d. I have seen many\nscholars  on the globe (only few can be seen  in Sri Lanka) have written on Dr. Kannangara\nand his remarkable contribution to the education sector. This country should\nread and respect this unsung hero .One Scholar Willemijn Wuister(Colonial\n& Global History, Leiden University, Netherlands) in his study in 2018\ntitled Colonial Education: A case study of education in late-colonial Ceylon\nfrom the  1930s until independence\u201d allocated one section for Dr Kannangara\nand his contribution to education sector  . Refer to the excerpts  below<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kannangara  proposed the idea of free education, in\nwhich education would be free \u2018from Kindergarten to  University\u2019, for\nevery citizen of Ceylon.11 It meant that every pupil was free of paying any\nfees for  education. It took him 16 years of lobbying and advocating in\nthe State Council, before his plan of free  education became reality in\nCeylon in 1945. The implementation of this free education scheme made  an\nend to the social inequality that was inherently promoted by the colonial\neducation system. For this  reason, Kannangara is remembered as \u2018the\nFather of Free Education\u2019 in Sri Lanka nowadays. Wuister(2018) argued that A\nlot has already been written about education in the Commonwealth Countries. For\nunclear  reasons, Ceylon always seems to be left out of these studies.\nThis is remarkable since a system of \u2018free education\u2019 was set up in Ceylon in\nthe 1930s and implemented in the 1940s. The \u2018system\u2019 refers to all  the\nprimary and secondary schools in Ceylon and other forms of education that were\noffered, for  example the University of Ceylon which was established\nduring this period as well. An important  outcome of the implementation of\nfree education, is that the literacy rates in Sri Lanka have become very high\ncompared to other Commonwealth Countries like India, Bangladesh and\nPakistan.Nowadays, the literacy rate in Sri Lanka is much higher in comparison\nwith the world-wide standard. The period in which the fundaments of this system\nwere laid is therefore important to analyze (Wuister,2018).\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is important  to note that Immediately the\neducational reports presented in 1944 M.S. Aney who had come as a representative\nof India to listen  to the Free Education Bill walking to Dr. Kannangara\nstated that  had he presented this Bill in India as an Indian, he would\nhave  been worshipped as a god. Giving the right of free education to\n all the children in Sri Lanka was implemented\u201d(Sedere,2016).As\nSedere(2016) vividly elaborated our father of Education\u201d has lost his seat\nwithin 2-3 years after he has introduced free duction to this country To the\nsurprise of many the hero Dr. C. W. W. Kannangara who brought about free\neducation and liberated the rural poor, lost his seat at the next parliamentary\nelections in 1947. Mr. Wilmet A. Perera defeated Dr. Kannangara with the help\nof the affluent rich and the socialists camp(Sedere,2016)\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We have seen Sri Lankans are really famous for celebrating\nmany heroes. I would like to suggest everyone who has gained from Free\neducation have to take  The oath of\nKannangara\u201d  by pledging that the To mark the respect to free  education we will perform our duty to the\nnation forever by contributing to general public and country at large\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(The writer is Professor in Management Studies Open\nUniversity of Sri Lanka and You can reach Professor Abeysekera on nabey@ou.ac.lk<\/a> )<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Professor Nalin Abeysekera\u00a0 Ph.D.(University of Colombo) ,B. Sc Mkt. (Special) (University of Sri Jayewardenepura),\u00a0MBA (University of Colombo), MCIM(UK), Chartered Marketer (UK), MSLIM, MAAT, Dip in CMA As Sri Lankans, most of us are blessed with the free education of this country. If you compare this blessing word of free education\u201d with the globe you would […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[133],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-118137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=118137"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118137\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=118137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=118137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=118137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}