At the very outset I would like to state that the purpose of the article is not to insult or hurt the poets mentioned or their loved ones.
When I was a lowly first year undergrad at the University of
Peradeniya we had a visiting English instructor from Kenyon College, Gambier,
Ohio to teach us what is popularly known as diaspora literature.
The instructor gave us an elaborate name for what she was going to teach which,
I must confess, I have long since forgotten. To get back to the story, this
Lady Lecturer appeared out of nowhere in our regular lecturers’ absence and
took over 102 English by a storm. One of the first things she had asked us was
whether we knew how to use a computer; this was while my friend, a part time
high-end model who would look good even in a sack, was staring avidly at the
lecturer’s profusion of underarm body hair with utter horror. Ms. Fernando
changed the course content and introduced her own texts. One of her many
interests being “the ways in which discourses of gender, race, caste and class
intersect to produce often contradictory and complex narratives in the
post-colonial context,” we were directed to read works such as Clear Light of Day, Home and the World, the Dragon Can’t
Dance, God of Small things, The Farming of Bones, The Swinging Bridge and The Funny Boy, the last being the pièce de résistance of the entire course. By the time we were coming to
the end of The Funny Boy, the vast majority of those who read the course were
denouncing the perpetrators of violence – which in their take constituted all
members of the majority ethnicity – in the book and some were expressing their
deep shame at being forced to share an ethnic identity with the rioters. Almost
all those who were there became firm believers of the collective guilt of the
Majority of countless acts of discrimination and genocide they had committed
against the minorities. They could not have denounced the “culprits” loud
enough and embraced the “victims” close enough in order to distance themselves
from the “Majority”. The lecturer and I had frequent heated exchanges of views
on the issue and towards the end she pretended that I did not exist in the
lecture hall. In the end, I became branded as an “ultra Sinhala racist”.
Under these circumstances, I managed
to scrape together a mere second upper with great difficulty and rejoined my
post as a teacher of English Language in the real world only to be unpleasantly
jolted by two rather interesting facts: some of the course contents of the
Literature syllabi of the GCE O/L and A/L exams and the selections for English
recitation and prepared speech competitions competitors are expected to by
heart.
We teach “Big
Match, 1983” by Yasmine Gooneratne under the theme “society” and
“Animal Crackers” by Richard de Zoysa and “Explosion” by Vivimarie Vanderpooten
for GCE O/L and A/L English Literature papers. “Big Match, 1983” is the only
poem in the O/L Literature syllabus composed by a Sri Lankan writer and
the only other Sri Lankan poem in the A/L syllabus is “The Fisherman Mourned by
His Wife” by Patrick Fernando. Before I go further, I must make it clear that I
have nothing but the highest regard for the craftsmanship of the three poets
and I do not presume to instruct them or criticize them on the issue of their
individual sociopolitical affiliations. I am a firm advocate of the right of
the individual to have his own opinions as long as they do not malign or
threaten the rights of others to the same privilege. Anyone can write/air
his/her points of view regarding whatever that is dear to his/her heart for the
edification of others who choose to be edified. It is a privilege loaded with
social responsibility that no one should tamper with as long as it does not
call for death of and destruction to others. As a matter of fact, under
different circumstances I have read the poems mentioned above with great
interest and have experienced the beauty of their delivery in my limited
capacity with keenness. Therefore, I would like to re-stress that my quarrel is
only with the selection/placement of the three poems and the way
they are being taught to students and not with the individual poems or poets.
Almost as a rule, in local-syllabus
schools, those who select English Literature for the O/L Examination and
English for the A/L Examination are the above par students. Most of them do
well and pursue higher education. In effect, they constitute a sizable section
of the future academia and the intelligentsia of the nation. When one
selects material for the edification of the future generation, especially the
afore-mentioned group, one is entrusted with a sacred duty for one mishap may
result in the misdirection of the course of a nation. Recently, I was engaged
in a discussion with a student I tutor on “The Big Match, 1983”. When I asked
him what the years 1956 and 1958 meant to him, his immediate answers were that
1956 stood for “the Sinhala Only Act” and 1958 was the year a lot of Tamils
were killed by the Sinhalese. And when I asked him where he had read that, his
immediate response was that his teacher had told him that. The thought that
immediately flashed across my mind was whether that could possibly be the
learning outcome expected by introducing this poem to the syllabus. Thinking
about the issue, little snippets of the answers from the discussions held and
answers corrected that resonated similar points of view on the issues of racial
relations and violence in Sri Lanka along the years surfaced in my mind with an
alarming rapidity. Along with that, the selection of the inauguration speeches
of the likes of Ronald Reagan and John F Kennedy that glorified the USA and its
role as THE world leader and poetry that glorified England for annual English
Language competitions (these have been the content of the competitions for a
very long time) create an alarming picture of negligence on the part of those
who select such content and those bodies that should be in charge of monitoring
such selections.
Selection of a particular piece of
writing to be taught as a part of the national curriculum indirectly
legitimizes the content of the poem and the point of view of the writer, at
least at the primary and secondary levels of education. So,
1.
when
students are exposed to content that is problematic even to the most mature of
readers
2.
and
when such content is taught by instructors
a. who
are almost as unenlightened as the students themselves on the issues concerned
b.
or
who are hesitant to contradict the status quo for the fear
i.
of
their views being debunked
ii.
or
being detrimental to their students grade-wise,
we have a situation that needs
immediate attention of the policy makers. I would like to propose that the
content of the Literature syllabi and the content of the English Language
Competitions should be reviewed to see how they contributed to the national
aims of education as soon as possible before more damage could be caused to the
impressionable minds of the students who are exposed to them.
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