How Sunil Handunnetti could become a guiding light in promoting English language education

Key issues raised by Handunnetti include: The youth of the country fleeing for greener pastures and the influx of narcotics to Sri Lanka

Potential solutions, which could be adopted by the new government include: E- learning, AI-assisted teaching and obtaining inspiration from success stories of many successful education apps in the marketplace

English not being widespread is because of deliberate government policy throughout the past to limit English Education in Government School curricula, often backed by classist ideologies or those fearing competition

Last week, Minister of Industries and Enterprise Development Sunil Handunnetti participated in the World Economic Forum in Tianjin and spoke in a panel discussion. His performance is a target of ridicule on social media nowadays. Minister Handunnetti claims his political opponents have ‘distorted and misrepresented’ his speech. 

“I saw on social media that the speech I delivered at the World Economic Forum is being twisted to serve certain agendas… Our country’s intelligent youth are migrating abroad. It is a serious issue that those who receive free education are leaving the country. This has become a broader crisis affecting the entire Asian region.”

“Narcotic drugs are being brought into our countries from Europe. While we welcome the tourism industry, we do not support the influx of drugs. We must take steps to protect our society,” he said in Parliament.

However, the controversy or ridicule, whatever it may be, wasn’t about what Minister Handunnetti said. Sometimes, even the most outrageous ideas expressed coherently with appropriate language could convince at least some people. (Recently, a law student, self-identified neo-Nazi at the prestigious Law School of University of Florida won the class prize for his thesis which argued that the constitutional rights in America be reserved only for white people, and the non-whites be disenfranchised and be given ten years to leave the country to avert a demographic demise of White race. The university strongly defended giving him the award on ‘intellectual merit’).

The lacuna of Handunnetti’s presentation was not in its substance. However, the highlights of his speech, as he mentioned in Parliament, are not exactly the things you tell an audience of prospective investors, to promote the country as an investment destination. 

Handunnetti’s primary problem was the proficiency or the lack of it in the language. That is not something to be ashamed of. Mao Zedong never spoke English in public, nor does Putin. Handunnetti could have spoken in vernacular or sent the BOI chairman or the governor of the Central Bank in his place.

This commentary should not be misconstrued as a personal attack. Nor should Handunnetti be faulted for the overall English deficiency of our generation. That is the legacy of deliberate policies introduced by so-called forefathers of this country, who so callously robbed the generations of youth of the most formidable driver of upward mobility, and by extension, the future of the nation.

If anyone deserves the greater share of blame, it is S.W.R.D. Bandaranayake, who opportunistically dethroned English. However, S.W.R.D. inherited a poisoned chalice. When C.W.W. Kannangara introduced the Free Education Act, while the country was still a British colony, he also made it mandatory for students to have their primary education in their mother tongue; however, J.R. Jayawardene made an opportunistic intervention, expanding the compulsory swabasha education to the secondary level. Thus, when S.W.R.D Bandaranayake came to power, mandatory vernacular medium education had reached the secondary level. Bandaranayake, who contested for the Oxford Union, came in a distant fourth, and returned home with a chip on the shoulder, could still have set things right. But, he was such an insular charlatan, who, having received the best of British education, opted to deprive the children of this country even the right to dream of it. In the meantime, his offspring went to LSE and the Sorbonne. 

The disastrous quasi-socialist economic policies that progressively destroyed the economy for the ensuing decades could not have been possible without the masses of this country being disarmed of their English and their window to the world being shut.

J.R. Jayawardene could have addressed this historical injustice, in which he himself played a major role. Still, his remedies were piecemeal, and the man who rewrote the constitution to suit his whims simply gave up on the reforms envisaged under the education white paper when a few thousand students protested against reforms. 

The rot continued until Chandrika Bandaranayake, within her means, introduced English medium education in government schools. Until then, the failure of the successive governments was not a matter of sheer incompetence, but there were crass classist calculations. 

True to this unspoken sinisterism, Mahinda Rajapaksa, who succeeded Chandrika, did everything he could to dismantle English medium education in government schools. 

Two types of political leaders indulged in equally callous neglect towards English language education of the children of the masses, though the roots of their aversion differed. One group included those born with English, like S.W.R.D, J.R. and Ranil, who believed the kids of the average masses do not need English, and did their utmost to deprive them of that opportunity. 

Then there were nobodies who became somebodies, like the Rajapaksas, who genuinely feared the children of the common people acquiring a skill that they themselves had trouble mastering. Both groups schemed to deprive the children of this country of a decent English language education. 

Now, Handunnetti and the new government of NPP have a historic opportunity to save the children of this country from this perpetual bane and build a system that lives up to the true spirit of free education. The secondary education in public schools should emphasise STEM plus English and not what the Mahanayakas deem useful for otherworldly salvation. 

English alone is not a panacea, but we are neither Nigeria nor Ghana. Sri Lanka already has a tremendously successful, equitable and accessible public education system. All that is needed is its fine-tuning. The shortage of teachers in some core disciplines is a problem. Still, it is not something insurmountable in a country with well-spread-out teachers’ training colleges and a large cohort of students passing out from English medium public and international schools. E- learning and AI-assisted teaching also offer a solution, and there are plenty of apps that the educators could find inspiration or outrightly clone. Sri Lanka does not need to reinvent the wheel. Successful states such as Singapore or Shanghai, China, where children are the best performers in the International Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), can offer a successful model for Sri Lanka to emulate.

Sri Lanka should cultivate human capital that helps the country leapfrog from low-end manufacturing to high-tech. With its past ageing and below-replacement population growth, Sri Lanka has no future in the low-end manufacturing ladder. However, the country might fail to lure in high-value investment without dismantling suffocating barriers to trade and investment. If it comes to that, the children groomed to win the world could at least go somewhere and make a living, but not as housemaids and drivers. 

All that Sri Lanka needs now is a government with singular conviction. Minister Handunnetti could hopefully be a guiding light.