There is a grave need for Sri Lanka in this backdrop of strange viruses to put to use the science of the mind that Buddhism promotes, to enable contemplation and introspection –– something that our Colonial coerced education system modeled after the Western concept of knowledge gathering, only encourages at a rather superficial and materialistic level.
In contrast, wisdom, quietude of thought, humility and the accumulation of knowledge or skills for serving humanity was the basis of the knowledge structure set forth by the ancient Gurukula system of Sri Lanka and India. Few teachers today will be able to explain this holistic concept to their students.
It is high time our teacher training institutes consider this knowledge-based heritage of ours worth incorporating into the education system – whether in schools or universities - which are all suffering from an overdose of memorisation.
Apprentice-based knowledge system
The student is neither emotionally nor spiritually connected to what is being taught. There is only a commercial aspect pursued by parents who often thrust professions, such as Western medicine, engineering or law on their children perceiving these to be ‘prestigious.’
There is hardly any keenness to serve the people and the country with the perfection of knowledge, skills and talents as our ancestors did through a strong apprentice-based knowledge system.
Education, as we know it today, is devoid of meaning. The end goal is a mere ‘job.’ Years of examination taking stress, social divides, petty envy and jealousy within the education structure culminate in evils, such as ragging that is as far removed as can be in the kind of values propagated in the Lankan pre-Colonial Gurukula and Pirivena education systems that imparted ethics based on Buddhistic compassion alongside scholarly, vocational and entrepreneurial skills. It is these qualities which moulded our ancient ancestors who created the rich civilisation that has earned us so much of pride.
Hence as we prepare to celebrate yet another independence day, we have to see the need at least now to incorporate a Buddhistic wisdom and empathy-based education system based on our cultural and natural heritage.
Such a system should weave together spiritual, social and economic dimensions.
If we had done this soon after 1948, we would not have the bewildering phenomena of yearly producing exam takers pre-occupied with the idea of leaving the village to the town and the town to the city and the city to a foreign land for the ostentatious purpose of getting higher ‘education abroad.’
If they arrive back in their home country, it is often with blind appreciation of all that is ‘foreign’ and apparent timidity to confront the negative aspects in its diverse subtle and overt form we see in some of these lands.
Middle path
This should not be inferred that we should not travel to the Western world or that every person or every Western nation is naturally bad.
The middle path of Buddhistic contemplation would tell us that we should realise that there are indeed positive aspects we could learn from other cultures and nations; provided we do not do so with a sense of servility and delusion. A wisdom-based approach would help us absorb whatever that is useful, holistic and non harmful from other nations.
Where so called developed nations are concerned, they have perfected the art of doing this in relation to traditional knowledge of countries, such as ours.
Whatever traditional expertise we, in our quest for modernity, have distanced ourselves from, claiming these to be ‘primitive’ or ‘non scientific’– such as our Kem Krama, thrive under other fancy labels in many Western nations. This traditional knowledge is buried in our land, but survives in universities of some of the countries that taught us to scoff at these universal energy linked intangible cultural heritage.
Let us think of how we could as citizens, as professionals, as people who have enjoyed the privilege of free education at the expense of tax payers of the country, eradicate neo-colonisation through education for increasing the quality of life of our people.
One way could be to conceptualise and interweave the teaching of English into the vast history and intangible cultural heritage of the country.
The English language, which is a link language between Sinhalese, Tamils and Muslims of Sri Lanka, and an international communication channel bringing nations together globally, is generally interpreted in Sri Lanka with elitism - as being linked with the English culture.
Thereby what is being imparted is not accurate English that helps good communication but rather perfected English culture! This is apparent in the attitudes of young people whose non-English proficient parents often send them to international schools, often at enormous financial costs. The reason for this is because we have not created our own models of learning English – grammar and syntax - through our traditional knowledge.
If we had done this, we could have even created our own intangible cultural heritage driven brand of international schools rooted in our traditional knowledge which would have been a compliment to our tourism and international relations.
We have used English as a channel not so much to educate Lankans on the practical use of English but rather to insinuate into the sub-consciousness that ancient medical sciences such as godawedakam, athbeheth and kemkrama, that cannot be explained through the young Western science, are backward and myth based.
Post-Colonial living
In a recent conversation with Prof. Nimal de Silva, who among other positions, has served as the senior professor in the Faculty of Architecture in the University of Moratuwa, and was the Director for the Centre for Heritage and Cultural Studies as well as the National Design Centre, we discussed how our nation has passed through so many decades of post-Colonial living and still failed to strategise the saving of our heritage, in its vast spiritual, cultural and environmental domain. He quipped that foreign tourists who come to the country know our culture better than us.
A seriously taken objective of reviving, in theory and practice, our heritage knowledge and values, through education would serve not only Lankans but humanity as a whole in this mechanised world. This industrialised, mechanised worldview has led us through to a point where we have used technological advancement and Western science not to heal but to destroy the planet and plunder is resources.
Profiting from sick populace
Our modern education system is not based on need, but on greed. Even the Western medical science, as many Western scientists, doctors and medical sociologists have written about, has been long caught in the mill of over medicalisation for profiting from a sick populace.
This kind of attitude is anathema to the values enshrined in our traditional Ayurveda and Deshiya Chikitsa (Sinhala Wedakama) which is an important component of our traditional knowledge. Yet Sri Lankan children and youth grow up totally alienated from this knowledge. A teenager today would barely know the basic herbs that could easily cure a cold.
It is important at least now in this era of pandemics to re-think how we can get back to the natural world and the values of simplicity, contentment, indigenous knowledge and self-sufficiency that our ancient villages were known for. This was before our ancestors who lived in these villages were told by the colonisers that they were ‘poor.’
If we retrace our nature-mind-spirit based worldview and integrate it in our education structure as well as other sectors to innovatively and creatively use it in the modern context, we could locally and globally offer a path to health that is beyond vaccines.
We should as a nation contemplate that ‘vaccines’ for Sri Lankans should be its wisdom of living with nature and withdrawing from the pandemic of chemical agriculture; one of the root causes of immune impairment that is the actual killer of the Covid-19 virus which attacks the immune system. Possibly we have to introspect whether we in Lanka are falling to the temptation of becoming ‘copy-cats’ of pandemic fear– when it is clear that Covid-19 is becoming a dangerous health challenge mainly in the so called developed Western world.
Pragmatism
We should sooner than later begin the process of emotionalising as well as conceptualising how we can use within all strata of Lankan society our diverse intangible cultural heritage which enabled our ancestors to live wise, contented, healthy and sustainable lives.
What is needed is reconnecting our emotions; especially those of children, to the simplicity and pragmatism of our heritage values and usefulness of many heritage based skills which Colonisation, neo-liberalisation and globalisation have almost fully annihilated.
An effort to restore this knowledge should be linked locally through policy action and globalised through the routes of tourism and diplomacy.
This means that we need to commit to create Lankans truly ‘educated’ in wisdom and ethics towards man, nature and all living beings and which could culminate in sensitive and sensible heritage driven solutions for issues within the country, such as the human-elephant conflict.
We need to systematically use such a heritage driven education structure for reviving a globally competitive post Covid-19 economic resurgence innovation plan.
This will enable us not just to ape other countries and their decision making, but maybe if honesty and wisdom are our guides, even do the opposite and create a niche for ourselves in a world that is likely to be different when the pandemic finally decides to saunter off.