RELIGIOUS LITERACY AND THE ASSISTED SCHOOL

Many of you, ladies and gentlemen, are no doubt aware that I belong to Jaffna but some of you may still subscribe to the view popularised in "He Comes From Jaffna" – that all the good men remained behind in Jaffna while all the  bad  ones  migrated  Southwards. To them I have an answer. My presence in the present circumstances is a tacit admission on your part that I am indeed a good exception to that bad rule – the pernicious theory of the playwright. I come from Jaffna and naturally partake of the peninsularity of Jaffna. I do not however propose to explain even briefly what that has exactly meant to my character or career in view of the extreme necessity that exists on an  occasion  of  this  nature  to  eschew  entirely such autobiographical references.

 

Though I am new to many of you here present, I do not feel myself a stranger in your midst, for there are many ties binding me to your school. In the first place your Principal – we have always known him as Orator Subramaniam – belongs to the same University College Hostel as myself and we both  belong  to  the  same age – the age of the Jaffna Youth Congress which inaugurated a new era in Ceylon politics under the able and inspiring guidance of Mr. S.H. Perinbanayagam now an experienced counsellor, then a fiery youth. And now both of us, your Principal and myself are endeavouring to solve the same school problems set by the changing demands of a changing society in a changing Ceylon.

 

We both did learn a little Latin – unavoidable in those days – and like many we forgot much. Yet we both have continued to remember two of the quotes – that is the modern word – appended to the lessons in the Latin Reader so widely used then. Firstly bis dat qui cito dat- He gives twice who gives quickly. Even those School-Principals who know no Latin yet do know the truth of this  maxim  by  instinct and by experience. The other and more important one is Via Media Tutissima est – which by acclaiming the virtues of the Middle Path has induced in  us an abhorrence of any form of extremism – whether in politics or education or elsewhere. This would explain our warm friendship and easy collaboration as members of the ACUT and the Ceylon Headmasters' Conference. The achievements of your present Principal during his stewardship of the School are seen in true perspective only when it is remembered that there have been greater changes in the educational sphere during the last twelve years than during the last twelve decades. Changes have followed one another with such a bewildering rapidity that before the results of one change can be seen and assessed we are called upon to embark upon yet a  new  venture  with  greater enthusiasm but without adequate experience.

 

There are other ties binding me to your School…. Three of your former Principals. I know them well, one was my master, one a class-mate and one is a good friend and colleague.

 

The  first  of  them  is  Mr. V.  Muttukumaru. He is responsible, I understand, for the present appellation of your School which betokens the devotional attitude that prevails here. What was said of Thring of Uppingham -The Man Who Made A School – may appropriately be stated of Mr. Muttukumaru "He fought his Governors continuously, his staff periodically, his boys occasionally  and  the  accepted educational theories of his time furiously  and  unceasingly." His  nationalist  fervour  and  his  love  for agriculture have stayed broad and deep in the minds of many pupils of his. Mr. S.  Srinivasan  is the famous son of a famous Headmaster. He was a classmate of mine at Ramakrishna Mission Vaidyeshwara Vidyalaya to which I was privileged to belong during the primary stage of my education. Even at that young age he had his love for English Literature in which he has since specialized.  Mr. S. Sivapathasunderam  is  now  successfully guiding the destinies of a Sister School having been mellowed at Skantha Varodaya and uncorrupted by the bureaucratic influences that enveloped him during the interim period.

 

And thirdly there is the still closer link. Having been a student at Vaidyeshwara  Vidyalaya  and  late at Jaffna Hindu I am not alien to the atmosphere of your school, nor am I unaware of the ideals that are being pursued perseveringly within these premises. It is not without significance that both your school and mine, Skantha Varodaya and Zahira, were started in the   same   year  1892,  yours   known  as   Kantherodai   School,  and  mine Al-Madrasazthu Zahira. The establishment of these two schools one in the North and the other in the South indicated that by this time both the Hindus and the Muslims had realized that English education as it was then imparted with partiality and prejudice entailed for them the loss of their self-respect and the undermining of their dearly held faiths which no material advantage could adequately compensate. To this situation they reacted wisely and well, without passivity or despair – thanks to the leadership that  was then provided by men of the calibre of  Candiah Upathiar, your Foundermen, who were undaunted by the taunts of the very orthodox and obscurantist in their midst and undismayed by the attitude of their contemporaries who were then able to give but would not give or give well. These leaders, and unfortunately there were not many of them, have left behind them schools of the type of Skantha Varodaya – which serve as imperishable monuments to their memories and compelling reminders to us of our duties.

 

Tribute has already been paid by Mr. Perinbanayagam feelingly and felicitously to your Founder. It is a happy thought that Candiah Upathiar lived long and long enough to see his child, this institution, your school raised to the rank of a First Grade College due mainly to the policy and programme of the present Principal and the Staff and to the encouragement received by them from your present manager Dr. S. Subramaniam whose philanthrophy is so well known, in Jaffna and outside and whose future benefactions, I am sure, will adequately meet the pressing needs that have been enumerated before us by the Principal in his Report. May I be permitted to say that I know of no other instance where a practising teacher attained the status of the Founder of the very institution wherein he taught by assuming the duties of the Manager when  the  Manager  himself had   been  so  overawed by the prevailing circumstances, financial and otherwise, as to give up his task in despair. May the memory of your Founder – Candiah Upathiar inspire us – you and me – to greater efforts especially at this stage in our history when as members of a challenged generation,  the task has fallen on us of gathering the fruits of freedom by cultivating the force of mind and the strength of will necessary to grapple successfully with the new problems of our country which freedom inevitably brought in its train.

 

What Candiah Upathiar knew from the experiences of the sages, seers and saints of  the  East, we have known also from the experiences of our generation – "Kattrathanalaya Payanenkol Valarivanattal Tholarenin." All our knowledge  will  avail  us  naught  if  we  worship  not  the  All Knowing – knowledge so assiduously acquired and promisingly promoted.

 

Two World Wars  with the possibility of a third one as well as the conflict of ideologies in the political sphere both at national and international levels has taught us that methods of discussion and discovery bring us no peace within or without unless we intently pursue in addition the method of devotion.  The events we  have witnessed should convince us that Power without Vision, Science without Religion and Politics without Morality would lead humanity to a sure perdition both in the Here and Hereafter. While Candiah Upathiar in his time and in his generation was confronted with the conflict between one set and another set of spiritual values we of today and of this generation witness a different kind of conflict more acrimonious and more extensive – a conflict  between  spirituality  and  its entire denial. We are therefore constrained to concentrate upon the central core of our respective religions  even  at  the  sacrifice of some of their doctrinal subtleties and metaphysical speculations and to proclaim of education by our words and by our deeds that religion is "its innermost core."

 

In the words  of  Radhakrishanan  in Recovery of Faith – his most recently  published  book, "Sensitive and informed minds believe that the fundamental  need  of  the  world, far deeper than any social, political or economic readjustment, is a spiritual reawakening, a recovery of faith. Great movements of spirit arise when despair at the breakdown of civilization makes the mind susceptible to the recognition of the insufficiency of the existing order and the need for rethinking its  foundations  and  shifting its bases. Science with its new prospect of a possible liquidation of the world by man's own wanton interference reminds us of the warning that the wages of sin is death….. a world in arms divided into two apparently irreconcilable camps, each preparing to  fling  itself  on  the other, dominates our thoughts and emotions. The shape of the  future  gives  us much concern. With all the resources at our command, with all the  gifts  with  which we have been endowed, with all the powers that we have developed, we are unable to live in peace and safety. We have grown in knowledge and intelligence but not in wisdom and virtue."

 

Only  through  worship  can knowledge and intelligence lead us to wisdom and virtue. All our knowledge will avail us naught if we worship not the All-Knowing. To be wise and virtuous we must replace new cults with old faiths, we must have Religion enthroned in our hearts and we must abandon secularity  for  spirituality. And we must ensure that religious illiteracy is liquidated at all levels in order that there will always prevail true standards of criticism and judgement. In the achievement of this object the school "as a workshop in which humanity is moulded" has a more important role than any other institution of Society; for the school is truly responsible for the training of the future citizens of the Country who will not be able to avoid questions of ends and goals and of right and wrong and of the nature of Man even while dealing with their immediate and day to day problems. In this the State in Ceylon  has  shown a  keen  awareness  for  the  need  of religion in schools and has  since 1947 wisely  made  provision  for  religious instruction in Government Schools in the Education (Amendment Ordinance of that year Instruction in the religion of the parent of each pupil in a Government School shall be given to that pupil as part of his course of studies in the school by a person  who  is  an  adherent  of  that  religion. " State  neutrality in religion has thus been interpreted to mean equal encouragement of all religions; the previous definition of such neutrality as no encouragement to any religion having been abandoned. The State is thus wisely and directly committed to expenditure on religious teaching in Government Schools.

 

 

This provision is  indeed a  recognition that purely secular schools cannot cope with the demands of the present when it has been found and in many parts of the world that education divorced from religion is woefully inadequate to fulfil the tasks of democracy. To bring Religion into School different methods have  therefore  been  adopted in different countries. In England the Education Act of 1944 has definitely raised the status of religious instruction in the county schools  by  the introduction of the New Agreed Syllabus  and  the  encouragements  of the Collective  Worship Religious Instruction is treated seriously and inspected just as much as other subjects. In USA the popularity of Bible Reading in its Public Schools, once the citadel of  secularity  and  the  experiment of the  Released –  Time indicate the inadequacy of the old conception of the Public School and show us the new trends.  Recent  events  in  France  support the view that a good deal of rethinking is going on in this matter in that State of Secularism. In South East Asia, recent changes in the political status of several of the countries have accelerated the growth of industrialistion in them. These and other factors are leading to the inevitable transformation of the Family as an Institution and Social Unit. In the changed circumstances the Family cannot cope adequately with its obligations in respect of the religious education of the young. And in the absence of a sufficient number of Voluntary Organizations with either adequate resources or administrative traditions, the Government Schools in these countries are required to take on this work of religious education or a good portion of it. The Ceylon solution should therefore prove attractive to many.

 

It would be almost platitudinous on my part to refer at this stage to the essential distinction between religious knowledge or instruction and religious education.  In the words of the Norwood Report, Religious Knowledge is definitely a subject of the curriculum but Religious Educatin is not and we believe it to be  very much the more important…. the development of the religious consciousness is not, and cannot be, the subject of a syllabus; it grows from the environment….. it is obvious that these intangible spiritual values come not so much from what teachers say and teach, from curricula and examinations, but from what they are, and what they are seen to be, inside and outside the class room……"

 

While  Religious  Knowledge   can  and  should  be  imparted  in Government Schools Religious Education cannot thrive so well as in Assisted Schools which like Skantha Varodaya and Zahira have been founded by men of vision and of lofty ideals with the avowed purpose of ensuring that the young grow up steeped in their own culture and religious faith. They had farsightedly and with deep insight realized that "education is not a body of knowledge; It is a quality of mind." These Schools therefore are always in a superior position to create the atmosphere of desire on the part of the pupils which is so essential for religious education and also "to discover ways of sensitizing human beings to high and worthy incentives, to right moral and ethical conduct." This cannot be achieved so well in the Government Schools which have a centralised organization and a transferable staff.

In this context the future of such Assisted Schools should be a matter of deep concern to the Country. There was a time in our recent history, that was during the years  1945 to 1951, when their future was uncertain and their status unspecified. The White Paper of 1950 and the subsequent Education (Amendment) Act of 1951 did allay the fears then felt and expressed by the unequivocal expression in them that Assisted Schools were co-partners with the State in  the  task  of  erecting  an  educational  structure strong and satisfactory to cope with the needs of a New and Free Lanka. With the change of the Government that has been brought about by the recently held General Election the question is being asked whether the status of these Assisted Schools will be preserved.

 

This discourse of mine on the status and future of the Assisted Schools must have, I fear, sounded dull and tedious to the student – members of my audience,  Nevertheless,  it  is a  subject that concerns them as deeply as teachers and parents, for any uncertainty as regards the future status of the Assisted Schools is bound to affect adversely all members of the School-Community irrespective of age and attainment.

 

To you too students, I therefore stress the importance of the Assisted Schools and the traditions of immeasurable value to the Country that have grown up in them – traditions of piety and learning as well as of discipline and devotion, traditions which cannot be created overnight or produced to order, but are plants of slow growth which must be tended with love and labour. To the growth of these traditions have gone the self sacrificing instincts and endeavours of several generations of distinguished Ceylonese – Ceylonese whether by adoption, birth or choice.

 

It now remains for me to congratulate the winners on the prizes awarded, to wish the losers better luck next time and to thank you Mr. Principal once again for the great honour you have paid me today which I prize highly and to offer to all of Skantha Varodaya my sincere good wishes for a very happy and prosperous future.