{"id":69047,"date":"2017-08-18T16:53:56","date_gmt":"2017-08-18T23:53:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=69047"},"modified":"2017-08-18T16:53:56","modified_gmt":"2017-08-18T23:53:56","slug":"the-agenda-of-missionary-schools","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2017\/08\/18\/the-agenda-of-missionary-schools\/","title":{"rendered":"The Agenda of Missionary Schools"},"content":{"rendered":"

Extracted from\u00a0Senaka Weeraratna’s submissions to the LLRC<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

Missionary schools<\/strong><\/p>\n

” Christian schools in the ultimate sense have a different agenda which is not in line with the national agenda. While Christian schools do provide an education of value to kick start a career of a young student, it is by no means in their scheme of education to bring students close to the dominant Buddhist culture or the national ethos of the country. In fact, the Christian Church is by definition missionary. Its primordial goal is evangelization.<\/p>\n

I remember reading in one of Professor G.P. Malalasekera’s articles of an incident relating to\u00a0Reverend\u00a0Reginald Stephen Copleston, Bishop of Colombo (the youngest at that point in time).<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong>\u00a0Father Copleston was appointed Bishop of Calcutta in 1902. On taking up appointment in Calcutta, he delivered a lecture at the local Y.M.C.A. on the system of education at St. Thomas College. During question time members of the audience had asked Father Copleston whether he was enrolling Buddhist students and if so, why he was spending valuable resources on the education of non – Christians. Father Copleston had then replied by saying that their primary aim through education was to convert a Buddhist student to Christianity. However those who fail to be converted to Christianity would always remain weak Buddhists, he had added.<\/p>\n

Dr. N.M. Perera in his (incomplete) autobiography published in the ‘Sunday Observer’ some years ago referred to attempts made by a teacher at St. Thomas College to convert him to Christianity while he was a student there which were unsuccessful, and he further said that when he changed schools from St. Thomas to Ananda College in the early 1920’s he had experienced a wide difference in the respective school cultures. The focus of attention in the former was usually on matters outside Sri Lanka, while at Ananda College the class room discussions were centered around day to day events in this country and imbued with a patriotic flavour. ”<\/p>\n

Extracted from\u00a0Senaka Weeraratna’s submissions to the LLRC<\/p>\n

https:\/\/llrclk.files.wordpress.com\/2011\/02\/submission-senaka-weeraratna.pdf<\/a><\/p>\n

Reginald Copleston<\/h3>\n

https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Reginald_Copleston<\/a><\/p>\n

The Objective of St. Thomas College<\/p>\n

” College of St .Thomas the Apostle, Colombo was opened with the objective of training a Christian Clergy and to make Children good citizens under the discipline & supervision of Christianity.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/S._Thomas%27_College,_Mount_Lavinia<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Extracted from\u00a0Senaka Weeraratna’s submissions to the LLRC Missionary schools ” Christian schools in the ultimate sense have a different agenda which is not in line with the national agenda. While Christian schools do provide an education of value to kick start a career of a young student, it is by no means in their scheme […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-69047","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-forum"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69047","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=69047"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69047\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69047"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69047"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69047"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}