TEACHING, LEARNING, THINKING AND CREATING - II
Why do people learn and why do they have to be taught? Though the other animals also learn from others, it is the humans among the animals who learn most from their adults, colleagues, and society at large. In the case of the other animals it appears that their survival does not depend very much on what they learn from the others. The animals learn what is needed for their survival by what is known as animal instinct whereas in the case of humans there is another dimension to the instinct. While the humans acquire an instinct from nature similar to that of the other animals, they also gain an instinct through the culture (nurture). It appears that the humans acquire this instinct from culture unconsciously. However, there are certain things that the humans have to be taught consciously. Though we have an in built mechanism to learn a language, we have to be taught a language by others. The words have to be taught and the method of construction of sentences has to be learnt from others. The method of construction of sentences, the structure of sentences, syntax, differ from language to language and they have to be learnt. In Sinhala one could say "Mang (ma) gedera giya" which if translated to English word by word would take the form, "I home went" or "I to home went" (in the sense mang getherata giya). Some one who is better in English would say "I went to home" getting closer to the English syntax. As his/her English improves he/she would say "I went home". These methods of constructions do not have to be taught consciously in the case of the first language or the mother tongue as a human child would acquire the methods of construction unconsciously ( A baby exposed to different languages could learn the syntaxes of those languages unconsciously). However, when the child or the adult learns a language as a second language very often he/she has to be taught these consciously.
What we are interested here is not the unconscious learning as exemplified in the case of a human baby learning from the culture into which it is born, but conscious learning and teaching. It is probable that as the amount that has to be learnt consciously increased a group called teachers came into existence in the society and in countries such as ancient Bharat, this group finally acquired a "monopoly" in what has to be taught consciously to evolve into castes such as Brahmins. As has been mentioned, the humans, unlike the other animals have to learn for their survival. In my mind the culture itself resulted from this inability to survive by instinct (animal) alone. A second instinct in the form of a nurtured instinct has to be instilled from the very beginning and this nurtured instinct becomes part of culture of a society. The consciously learnt part also belongs to the culture.
It is my view that the humans need an advanced culture for two reasons. It is said that the other animals also have a culture and learn from "observations". For example the western biologists have observed that a kitten separated from the mother cat finds it difficult to catch a rat though by animal instinct it "knows" that "rats are there to be caught". The art of catching a rat is learnt by the kitten by "observing" how the mother cat goes into business when she has to catch a rat. It is probable that the kitten learns these finer points from the "cat culture". In the case of humans the animal instinct is at a very low level. A baby has to be told that certain things should not be eaten as they are not good for survival. If not told not to swallow, or taken away from a baby, it would take even poison as it would not know the result of consuming poison. Thus humans unlike the other animals need a culture (advanced) for their survival. In my mind a second factor that makes an advanced culture a necessity for human beings is due to the amazing analytical and manipulative abilities that they posses. These abilities could unfortunately bring the downfall of the human race itself if not controlled by culture. This downfall is something that we have begun to experience as a result of the western Christian modernity that came into existence about five hundred years ago. Thus for survival of the humans they need a culture firstly due to the inadequacies of the animal instinct that they posses, secondly because of the more than adequate manipulative abilities that they posses due to the evolution of the human brain.
We could say that a human learns certain things through the culture unconsciously and some others consciously. Most of the conscious learning process has been formalised with the advent of a "group" called teachers (Brahmins, Prophets, School Teachers, University Professors, etc.) and institutions such as temples, academies, pirivenas, schools, universities etc. in the evolution of the societies. However, the informal education is still more effective with respect to most people as they now learn more through media, especially the television than from the formal schools. It has to pointed out that what is meant by informal education through media, by the educationists is not an informal education at all. It is another formal education using new technology. Power point presentations, use of multi media etc. could be used in formal education as well as in informal education. It is not the technique or the technology used that distinguishes formal education from informal education, but the way the mind learns. The so called informal education of the educationists is very often a distant formal education where the teacher does not come into "contact" with the student.
The formal education is a conscious process though informal education is not entirely subconscious or unconscious, and what we are concerned here is the conscious formal education given in formal institutions such as the schools and the universities. (I think in Sinhala, and if I may borrow from Mr. Tissa Jayatilaka, I am 'at home' and 'spontaneous' in Sinhala, and whenever I use the words subconscious or unconscious I use them merely as translations of the word "avinnanika" while conscious as far as I am concerned is "savinnanika". My vocabulary has nothing to do with reductionist Freudian Psychoanalysis.) Now what should be the medium of instruction of the schools and universities in Sri Lanka. It is not a difficult question to answer and the unequivocal answer is either Sinhala or Tamil. Apparently Robert Marrs, the first principal of the university college (most of the problems in our education are due to these first and other principals who came mostly from Britain to start our schools and universities), had been very concerned with the medium of instruction and he had asked the very "pertinent question" as to in which language the Sinhalas and the Tamils would communicate if English was not the medium of instruction. Well, it is not very difficult to answer that question either, and the answer is the language in which they communicated before the English came. There was no division between the Tamils and the Sinhalas on a language issue before the Dutch and the British, and this itself shows that the so called ethnic problem is a creation of the British (and the Dutch). Perhaps Robert Marrs thought that the Sinhalas had not communicated with the Tamils before English was introduced as the medium of instruction in some elite schools established by the British. What Marrs had in mind was an elite class that was trained by the British, and who were more at home and spontaneous in English, rather than in either Sinhala or Tamil. Some of them did not know any Sinhala or Tamil and if English was dropped as the medium of instruction they would have been at sea.
The prime purpose of education is the survival of the humans. However the humans are subdivided into groups mainly according to cultures and languages. To a person like Robert Marrs, by survival of the humans it would have meant the survival of the British (English). The purpose of education that was imparted to us through the university college that prepared students for the London University degrees was simply the survival of the British. They wanted, following McCaully, a group of Indians, Sri Lankans and others who were brown only in the colour of the skin but white in thinking, meaning of course that they were not thinking but merely imitating the whites (British), attitudes etc. The English schools and the University College, and then the University of Ceylon were more concerned with producing civil servants and so-called professionals such as doctors, lawyers and engineers, and not thinkers, scientists, mathematicians, philosophers, poets, writers, etc. Even today the whole of the so-called third world is advised to concentrate on applied sciences at the expense of pure sciences. Western Pure Sciences are the prerogative of the west and the knowledge in these fields are to be produced in the west. The so-called research that the third world is supposed to engage in is confined to some application of a theory that is created in the west. I do not advocate creating western sciences in the non western world, but even that is denied to the "third world" scientists.
If the main purpose of education is survival of the humans (when I use the word humans I have in mind different groups of humans and not that abstract human being or the man in the singular, that signifies in the final analysis the white Christian males in the west.) then the education given in different parts of the world should be different, and should be relevant to the cultures of the respective peoples. Before we proceed further along these lines I would like to draw the attention of the reader to the present practice of the "best" students entering the Faculties of Medicine, Engineering and Law. These days it is very rarely that a student would chose to enter the Faculty of Science. In our days a few of us did not want to become engineers or doctors and selected to enter the Faculty of Science. However, we were not sure as to what we had to do later in life except that we could either become academics or civil servants. We did not know what was meant by creating knowledge and most of the students were concerned with coming first at the examination, topping the batch, getting a first or entering the "prestigious" civil service. In short it was the class struggle and the civil war though not in a Marxian sense. It was doing well at the examination that was emphasised even then and many would boast of their sons (and daughters) becoming first in the civil list or getting so many distinctions at the SSC, or prior to that Cambridge examinations or having had the best performance in the empire, meaning of course the British empire (they were proud to be part of the empire as a result of the education they received), or the best performance east of Suez etc. If somebody says it is only now that the examinations have become prominent in the lives of the students it is far from the truth. The present generation of students when they attempt to do well at examinations and when the parents talk of the 4 A s that their offsprings have obtained they are not very different from the students of the older generation. It is true now the competition is very high as a result of the disproportionate expansions of the tertiary and secondary education sectors, but the education that the British enforced on us has been examination oriented and tailored towards selecting the best servants, civil or otherwise, that the British wanted from us. Civil service was for those who did not want to become doctors, lawyers and engineers and serve the British in those capacities for some reason or other. It is interesting to observe that the three professional colleges, the medical college, the law college and the technical college were established in Colombo in the nineteenth century, before the establishment of the university college. The four colleges were supposed to produce an elite class who could serve the British best. At present all these colleges are mingled in the Universities as Faculties of Medicine, Law and Engineering for the so-called professionals, and the Faculties of Arts and Science, the latter being merely extensions of the fourth college namely the university college. In addition now there are Faculties of commerce and business management which are nothing but extensions of the polytechnical colleges of yesteryear.
Professor Nalin de Silva
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