Extract from the Zahira College Prize Day Report of Saturday,
15th February, 1958
Two World Wars with the threat of a Third have taught us that the method of discussion and the method of discovery bring us no peace within or without unless we pursue in addition the method of devotion. While the past generations were confronted with the conflict between one set and another set of spiritual values and ideals, we of this generation witness an altogether different conflict, more acrimonious and more extensive – a conflict between the affirmation and the denial of spirituality itself.
In the words of Radhakrishnan, “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… 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, and with all the powers that we have developed, we are unable to live in peace and safety. We are grown in knowledge and intelligence but not in wisdom and virtue.”
Only through worship and religion can knowledge and intelligence lead us to wisdom and virtue. Therefore it is essential that religious illiteracy should be liquidated at all levels in order that true standards of criticism and judgement will prevail. In this the school “as a workshop in which humanity is moulded” has a more important role than society’s other institutions, for the school alone can adequately train 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 and his final purpose even while they deal with their day to day problems. That the State in Ceylon is not unaware of the need for religion in schools is evident by the statutory provision that already exists for religious instruction in Government Schools.
Religious instruction or knowledge however is only a part of Religious Education. In the words of the Norwood Report, “Religious Knowledge is definitely a subject of the curriculum but Religious Education 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 be fostered and promoted so satisfactorily as in those Assisted Schools founded with the avowed purpose of ensuring that the young grow up steeped in their own culture and religious faith. These schools therefore are always in a superior position to create the necessary atmosphere for Religious Education as well as “to discover ways of sensitising human beings to high and worthy incentives, to right moral and ethical conduct.”
In these circumstances the future of such Assisted Schools is indeed a matter of deep concern to the Country and is of vital consequence to us who belong to a challenged generation and yet gifted with the opportunities which Freedom has brought in its train. The problem is not one of mere disposal of the buildings and equipment that at present belong to these schools; nor the just conferment on the teachers in service of the privileges of railway warrants and rent allowances; nor the simple denial by the Government of the financial assistance now provided. All these are but minor aspects of a major problem – complex in its implications and far reaching in its consequences. The problem of the Assisted school system cannot be dissociated from the philosophy of the State that the Ceylonese Nation has resolved or is prepared to accept -whether Ceylon is to pursue the path of democracy with zeal and success or prefer the totalitarian way of life, whether religion is to occupy in our Society a place of honour and importance or whether it is to be discarded deliberately or otherwise as an obstacle to progress and opium for the masses, whether we still believe that “it is the duty of Government to improve the moral quality of its citizens to the maximum extent possible and through the use of all religions” and whether, we are determined to see that “in the reorganization of the educational system of our Country the spiritual needs of the Country will be met to the fullest.”
Some have demanded that the State should take over the assisted schools without any further delay on the ground that there is no other way to promote effectively and establish firmly the unity of the Nation. To this, others have replied that there is nothing wrong with the assisted schools which are conducted so efficiently as to earn the envy of many. The problem has thus become oversimplified – and to that extent confused – to one of State Management versus Status Quo. As a result, no serious attention is being paid to the constructive criticisms that have emerged from the current controversy now raging. Instead, accusations and counter-accusations are being hurled in profusion without any adequate analysis of facts and figures and without any objective assessment of the evidence for and against. Nor has there been a vivid apprehension of the underlying philosophy that our Country would find itself committed to, if the proposal of liquidation, whether outright or in installments, were to succeed.
While the protagonists of the two extreme views concentrate respectively upon the rights of the State and the rights of the Parent, the rights of the Child to a complete education are being ignored and thereby the national interest is prejudiced.
This situation is all the more regrettable when it is widely, almost universally, accepted that, in the circumstances prevailing in Ceylon (I quote from the Ceylon Observer of May 5, 1957 the words of Mr. P. de. S. Kularatne) “there is no doubt that a denominational school well conducted and organized is the best school for a child of the same denomination”. The Assisted Schools, however, are not free from problems; to cite a few :- the problem of religious education in respect of those pupils whose parents do not profess the religion of the proprietor of the school, the problem of the Owner-Manager who does not promote the national interest in any way, the problem of the uneconomic employment, from the national point of view, of specialist teachers in the collegiate sections of assisted schools. These are problems that should be faced and solved but not avoided. By the abolition of the Assisted School System there will be introduced greater evils than those now complained of.
Therefore the stage has been reached when the entire Assisted School System should be reviewed by a Commission or a Special Committee appointed early by the Government composed of competent persons who will, without partiality or prejudice, give all concerned ample opportunities of supporting their views with facts and figures so that this all-important question may be discussed in all its aspects and the possibility of continuing the Assisted School System shorn of the evils proved may be fully explored.
