South China Morning Post
Saturday, July 5, 2003
I have mixed memories of my schooldays in Sri Lanka where I grew ip
following World War II.
It was an exciting time because the island had only just gained
independence from Britain. It was as if the country had been a given
blank sheet of paper to start afresh.
My primary years were spent at Palliyawatte School, part of the local
village church, in the district of Wattala outside the capital, Colombo.
There was a perception that these village or "vernacular" schools were
not as good as "colleges " which were frequently run by Christian
missionary orders in more populous areas and regarded as being more
sophisticated. Actually, I don't think that was the case.
Much of what I learned and still draw on today was gained from those
primary schooldays because you were part of village life.
You lived by the sea and saw the fishermen go out to fish and then
bring back their catches. You appreciated their life and learned that
to understand people you have to understand their environment. I feel
strongly that many of Sri Lanka's problems are rooted in people not
relating to one another's lives.
Because we attended school in a church we were exposed to funerals and
therefore death at a young age. Life expectancy of course in those days
was not as high. While I was at primary school my sister died from
pneumonia. She was my best friend and it left a very deep impression on
me. Later I wrote and published a poem about her called Evelyn, my
first friend. The awful part of it was that within a few years
pneumonia was easily curable, but she was born just a few years too
early.
The funerals were terrifying because there would be all these people
who were wailing and dressed in blank. Sometimes the wealthy would even
hire people to wail for them as a symbol of their position and power
within society.
While at primary school I also first became aware of the caste system
which had been passed on to Sri Lanka from India. I came from the
washermen's caste and we mixed with just our own kind. Of course one's
caste was never spoken about as a child but I knew it was always there
and that it was cruel. It was one of the reasons why I do the work I do
now.
The subject at school I liked most was literature because we had very
animated teaching.
In Sri Lanka there is a very strong tradition of poetry and the end of
the colonial era spurred a renaissance in new writers. How you were
judged at school tended to be based on how good you were at writing
essays and debating.
Secondary school was St Anthony's College at Wattala and it had some of
the biggest grounds for miles. It was a college built by the La Salle
Christian brothers and had facilities like a laboratory and library.
I can remember being amazed by the lab with all its bottles of
chemicals but it was the speaking side of things that I was good at.
Now I suppose we'd call it elocution. We'd have to give a speech and
very often I would come first. I then went on to St Benedict's College
in Colombo because I had this idea of becoming a religious brother.
Here we also trained for education. After doing the equivalent of
O-levels I went to a centre for religious training in Penang, Malaysia
for two years.
There I was exposed to a lot of good writers and introduced to an
intellectual way of life.
I returned to Sri Lanka to study law at Aquinas University College in
Colombo. I found in the second year that I began to argue with the
lecturers and realised there was no liberal education, They read out
their notes and if you reproduced them that's all that mattered. I
found that very frustrating.
I realised I was being educated in a system that was very seriously
flawed. It was the 1970s and people were being tortured in Sri Lanka
and it became more and more obvious to me that there was a big gap
between what I learned about the law and the possibility for its
realisation. It's one of the reasons for why I became interested and
involved in human rights.
I'm glad my teachers taught me to be proactive and that being critical
was one quality of a good student.
Basil Fernando is the executive
director of the Asian Legal Resource Centre and the Asian Human Rights
Commission in Hong Kong. He was talking to David Phair.
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