15. What do you consider to be the
major issues and challenges facing public
education? What are the issues and
challenges that are emerging?
The attitudes of the academic staff, students,
and the non-academic staff. All of these three
groups think equally that the University
system is theirs to relish and that it is their
prerogative. They seem to believe that the
rest of the poor people of this country should
be extremely grateful for them to being in
the University system, and not the other
way around. Nobody asks how they can give
back to the society for what the society has
given to them by sustaining the university.
We all are answerable to the question Dr.
Harsha Subasinghe asked. “What have you
done for the economy of this country?” As
long as these self-serving attitudes prevail,
we will be destroying public education. We
don't feel indebted or answerable towards
the public. That, in my opinion, is the biggest
threat to the public education.
16. How would you compare the
education system in Sri Lanka with
overseas?
It is at an extremely low level. One indicator
is mathematics aptitude. According to the
Chairman of Math Olympiad, our students
are ranked at 77 out of about 120 countries
in mathematic aptitude. His argument is,
that mathematics develops creativity and
provides a method to describe how nature
works in a concrete setting. By doing so we
increase the ability of our innovativeness.
Our innovation capability is about 92 out
of about 120 countries. That itself gives
an indication about our education system
including university education. We have a
labor-intensive industry that operates at a
very low technological level. For more than
half a century, engineering faculties have
attracted the highest z scores among a given
age group, yet our technical capability is
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University of Peradeniya GAUGE Magazine