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Sri Lanka: Education for war must be transformed into education for peace

I Education for war

1.i. ’’Friday Forum deeply concerned about leadership training, Jayantha Dhanapala (former UN Under-Secretary General) and Savitri Goonesekere (Emeritus Prof of Law,University of Colombo) , 10 June 2011: ‘’ This programme has been introduced by theMinistry of Higher Education in a military environment under the leadership of theMinistry of Defence..... The curriculum of the training programme obtained by the FridayForum after some effort reveals extremely problematic aspects. No mention is made of the authority responsible for the curriculum but a prominent photograph of the DefenceSecretary on the cover of the study guide suggests authorship by the Defenceestablishment. .... What is more problematic is the content of the module on history andnational heritage. .... “National heritage” focuses exclusively on prominent culturalsymbols of the majority Sinhala community with none from other communities. .... Onthe whole the curriculum seems to discourage tolerance for viewpoint difference, andsensitivities for the pluralism and diversity of our country‘’ -http://transcurrents.com/news-views/archives/1190

ii.Leadership training for the principals of Sri Lanka government schools too, 26 May2011:

‘’The official said addressing a function held today at Isipathana College in Colombo that1,000 principals will be trained at Rantam be Army Training Center soon’’ -http://www.lankanewspapers.com/news/2011/5/67273.html

2. ‘’ Education must rise on the agenda of peace building. We know the wrong type of education can fuel conflict. The use of education systems to foster hatred hascontributed to the underlying causes of conflicts, from Rwanda to Sri Lanka, but also inGuatemala and Sudan’’ - Why education matters for global security, IrinaBokova(Director General, UNESCO), 1 March 2011,

http://234next.com/csp/cms/sites/Next/Home/5680782-182/story.csp

3. NGOs have been pointing out the injustice to the Tamils and trying to help the peopleneglected by successive governments which have been resenting them. But thisgovernment has been highly criticising them and even expelling some and refusing toextend visas to some others. This government has begun to use education to poison theminds of students:GCE Advanced Level(August 2009) Sinhala question paper(prepared by the Departmentof Education):http://www.lankanewsweb.com/news/EN_2009_08_19_004.htmlThere are views expressed that the actions of some non government organizations in SriLank a has had an adverse impact on the country’s independence, peace, culture andeven development. Write an essay backing your stance with reason.

4. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGhMIgnwZuA The Changing face of Wesak in Colombo and Militarizing Sri Lanka, 15 May 2009a.a school honouring ex-soldiers in a religious event with dancers in combat dress

depicting gunsb. Vesak cards with roses on guns.

5. http://siteresources.worldbank.org/EDUCATION/Resources/278200-1121703274255/1439264-1126807073059/Paper_Final.pdf Respect for Diversity in Educational Publication - The Sri Lankan Experience, AriyaWickrema and Peter Colenso, 2003: ‘’It is necessary to trace briefly the historical links between the development of theeducation system and the development of an ethnic -based politics, leading to armedconflict. ....

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Divisions were exacerbated by successive government policies discriminating against theTamil minorities. ....Divisive ethnic politics and loss of confidence in non-violent and democratic politics8fuelled the desire for autonomous, separatist solutions through the 1970s ....The Government dominates the educational publications sector in Sri Lanka through itsprovision of free textbooks to all students from grade 1 to 11 ....Tamils not involved in writing the textbooks - Textbooks written in Sinhala, and thentranslated into Tamil ....full of spelling, grammatical and factual errors ....distortion of history ....the history of Sri Lanka is confined to a few selected Sinhala kings ....the textbooks do not educate the child about the various characteristics of a multi-religious and a multi- racial society;the majority of Sinhala medium textbooks emphasize Sinhalese Buddhist attitudes;distorted maps under-represent North and Eastern Provinces;"geographical, social, economical or cultural features" of Tamil communities (includingthe plantation sector) are not adequately discussed or presented;in studying art, the Tamil student only studies Sinhalese Buddhist aspects of art;

the textbooks encourage children to develop "apartheid attitudes" .....War is shown as patriotic while peace is portrayed as cowardice’’

6 .http://www.unicef-irc.org/publications/pdf/insight4.pdf The Two Faces of Education in Ethnic Conflict: Towards a Peacebuilding Education forChildren, Kenneth D. Bush and Diana Saltarelli(2000):

‘’ The Two Faces of Education in Ethnic Conflict challenges a widely-held assumption -that education is inevitably a force for good. While stressing the many stabilizing aspectsof good quality education, editors Kenneth Bush and Diana Saltarelli show how educationcan be manipulated to drive a wedge between people, rather than drawing them closer

together. After analyzing the increasing importance of ethnicity in contemporaryconflicts, this Innocenti Insight outlines the negative and positive faces of education insituations of tension or violence, including the denial of education as a weapon of war(negative) and the cultivation of inclusive citizenship (positive). It emphasizes the needfor peacebuilding education that goes further than the 'add good education and stir'approach, aiming to transform the very foundations of intolerance.….Ethnic intolerance makes it appearance in the classroom in many ways…… Textbookshave often been shown to contain negative ethnic stereotypes..... A review of thetextbooks used in the segregated schools of Sri Lanka in the 1970s and 1980s, forexample, found Sinhalese textbooks scattered with images of Tamils as the historicalenemies of the Sinhalese, while celebrating ethnic heroes who had vanquished Tamils inethnic wars. Ignoring historical fact, these textbooks tended to portray Sinhalese

Buddhists as the only true Sri Lankans, with Tamils, Muslims and Christians as non-indigenous and extraneous to Sri Lankan history. This version of national historyaccording to one commentator, has been deeply divisive in the context of the widerstate.’’

7. Reggie Siriwardene, a well-respected Sinhalese writer, in a well-documented analysisof the effects of school textbooks on ethnic relations in Sri Lanka(1984):

“Millions of school children are taught, in the name of social studies, through text -bookspublished by the state, the myths of divergent racial origins which will help to divide theSinhalese and Tamils for more generations to come... What this lesson does is to evokethe child's memories of being frightened by his parents with threats of the mysteriousand fearful `billo' to identify these bogeymen as Tamil agents, and thus to enlist thedeep-seated irrational fears of early childhood for the purpose of creating apprehensionand hatred of Tamils.”

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