rajiva wijesinha_as a radical who strived to 'revolutionize' english education
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Rajiva Wijesinha: As a radical who strived to ‘revolutionize’ English education in Sri
Lanka
English, in the present global context, has descended from its colonial prestigious position to a
highly utilitarian level where it (English), according to Mr. Tony Reilly, the Country Director of
the British Council, ‘has become the passport to wealth and opportunity’. Hence the role of
English today should be understood not by means of its colonial terms but in terms of its modern
usefulness. The use of English expands from the global world of work to academic arenas, where
new knowledge is produced. Today, rather than being understood as a demarcation of
belongingness, English functions as a tool of social mobilization. In a context where English was
a class signifier and was termed ‘kaduwa’, very few people in Sri Lanka understood this
potential global metamorphosis at least two decades back. When Sri Lanka decided to broaden
its horizons to the globalized economy, there was a burning need to change the conventional
approach towards language learning policy. To materialize the country’s need to expand English
language education, certain radical approaches were a terrible requirement at the time. Rajiva
Wijesinha belonged to one of those who not only could foresee the need of English for the
country’s younger generation to move forward in the global sphere of work and education but
could also produce an implementable mechanism that would pragmatically enhance the English
language literacy of especially those who emerge from non-English speaking backgrounds.
Prof. Wijesinha identified two significant steps to radicalize English education in the country.
The first was to broaden English language learning from Colombo based elites (and some other
middle class contexts) to non-English speaking environments, where thousands of students do
not get an opportunity to learn the language. To facilitate this, the second step was to produce a
sufficient number of teachers who could work in those areas. When Prof. Wijesinha undertook to
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co-ordinate English in the Affiliated University Colleges in the early 1990s, he found good
ground to experiment his initial conceptualization. It must also be mentioned here that the
Affiliated Universities were also an experimental remedy to give skill oriented education to A/L
passed students who were not absorbed into higher education. On the other hand, even those who
entered universities could not find satisfactory jobs for the education that they received there.
There was always a mismatch in the kind of education offered in the post-colonial universities
and the requirements in the employments. Prof. Wijesinha explored this valuable opportunity as
the Co-ordinator in English in Affiliated Universities to prepare students for future demands of
employability. After two revolutions in the post independent context, the country actually felt the
need to address the controversial issue of the future place of its youth. Dr. Wijesinha as a radical
intellectual himself at that time, used to write on the subjects of politics and youth and the nature
of politics that excluded youth from mainstream politics. It is a historical demand that was
bestowed upon Prof. Wijesinha who unhesitantly took up the challenge to modernize English
language teaching in the existing university curriculum.
His approach was simple. His want was to change the prevalent literature-based curriculum in
the English departments. Literature was considered (and still is) prestigious and contemporary
English Departments did not take part in teaching general English, and it was mostly assigned to
English Language Teaching Units (ELTUs). Under this circumstance, however, ELTUs were
doing the most important job in catering to the basic English language requirement of the
undergraduates. Numerically, when English Departments absorb even less than ten students
annually, ELTUs taught an entire batch of thousands of students at a time. Prof. Wijesinha did
not separate these essential components in language learning but craftily amalgamated the two
without harming their inherent essence. Very simply, he used literature as a tool of basic
language learning, which challenged the ‘hegemonic approach’ to literature. Literature then wasnot taught for the sake of literature itself and many people who had a ‘puritan’ approach to
literature in the conventional English Departments did not tolerate this.
In the universities, literature (as well as philosophy) has always been an isolated entity of non-
reference. Everybody seemed to have an unwritten agreement about its unquestioning existence.
No one wanted to find out what was actually going on these departments and their contribution
to the country’s development. Literature gained its prestigious position after 1920 when it was
considered as a discipline of higher, literate and superior beings. It was believed to have
characteristics that could enlighten individuals and bring them to a higher level of enlightenment
and being. As a discipline which had the potential to increase individuals’ critical ability and
humanistic thoughts, it evolved into a higher academic position from an evening reader over a
cup of coffee. This thinking about literature was the exact ideological foundation for many
English Departments in post-independent Sri Lanka. Under this environment, the amalgamation
that Prof. Wijesinha brought forth challenged the very ideological foundation of English teaching
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in the Universities and the symbol of this hybridist child is the present English Language
Teaching Department (ELTD) in the Sabaragamuwa University of Sri Lanka.
His Affiliated University experiment was able to produce a considerable number of Diploma
holders in English and later graduates who mostly received teaching opportunities in the school
system island-wide. Their service is of tremendous significance to poor school children who
struggle with lack of qualified teachers in the government schools in distant areas. Some of them
are senior teachers with more than ten years of service. Similarly, some those contemporary
students were absorbed into university teaching, while there are also few leading journalists
working in popular newspapers. These products exemplify the legacy that Prof. Wijesinha carries
along with his university academic career.
Though originally from Colombo, Prof. Wijesinha never hesitated to come and join
Sabaragamuwa University which was located 160 kilometers away from the capital city. As the
Co-ordinator for English during the Affiliated days, he went to all the Affiliated UniversityColleges around the country and sometimes undertook teaching other than co-ordinating and
supervising. Rather than simply lecturing, he always insisted on careful reading for the accurate
comprehension of a literary text. In the meanwhile, he used to teach grammar lessons which he
thought useful within a literary text. He, for the first time, introduced the ‘spot text method’ of
evaluation to the classroom, where students had to write a brief account on something within a
limited time. For this kind of test, note reading or by-hearting never helped and everything
depended on how you handle the task effectively and creatively with least amount of mistakes.
This method was challenging to those who re-produced their own undergraduate notes to
students. Though it was initially difficult for us, this helped immensely to improve our
comprehension and self-study. In this regard, for us, he was novel and challenging in testing andevaluation too. One important thing to mention here is that he never took more than one week to
mark an assignment however big the number was. While travelling too, as another example of
his dedication as a teacher, I have experienced that he used to mark assignment scripts when he
used to run the undergraduate course for the officer cadets in the Military Academy-
Diyathalawa. This was exactly the same when he was the English Co-ordinator for the South
Eastern University of Sri Lanka, Oluvil. Since I here mentioned the South Eastern University,
one must remember that during the heydays of ethnic tension in the Eastern Sri Lanka, Prof.
Wijesinha used to visit both Addalachchena and Oluvil complexes of the South Eastern
University located nearly 400 kilometers away from Colombo to assist the teaching and
evaluation process there, where I started my university career.
I have never come across an academic who could travel like Prof. Wijesinha for academic
purposes. For example, he starts his journey from Colombo with his beloved driver Kithsiri and
would come direct to Sabaragamuwa University at Belihuloya, then moving to Diyathalawa and
then to Oluvil in the same week catering to approximately both thousand literature and general
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English students island wide. To facilitate this massive venture, he printed few grammar and
reading texts, which simplified the task of teaching English grammar for beginners, while it
contributed massively to the development of the ‘Sri Lankan Writing in English’ genre.
Another wonderful life lesson that we learnt from him was simplicity (which many of us have
forgotten in the fetish commodity market) as a university academics. Born to a wealthy middle
class family in Colombo and having obtained a doctorate from Oxford, he never wanted a
luxurious life. I could still remember the old yellow colored Fiat he used nearly ten years to go
around the country during his university teaching career. He scarified the most energetic days of
his life for students who came from rural backgrounds but never dreamt to catch the stars in the
bourgeois world. All the time, he worked according to what he believed right and true to his
conscience, and to me, ninety percent out of hundred they were accurate.
He is still governed by the universal signifiers of values inculcated in him during the best days of
Oxford education. Though many people do not like him for not following in the cattle mentalityof present politics, he still believes in principles and what is right. Universal values demarcate
his political acts and many recent events bear witness to that. The word ‘radical’ is often
associated with revolutionary politics in a Marxist context, but looking retrospectively at what
we experienced from 1990s up to date in relation to English education, we can, without much
argument, call Prof. Wijesinha a true rebel and a radical, who brought about significant changes
to modern English education after 1978. These steps actually made free education much more
meaningful for the under-privileged segments in Sri Lanka in translating their upward social
mobility into a reality.
Mahesh Hapugoda