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One Hundred Years of Education in Ceylon

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

J. C. A. Corea
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Extract

This review of one hundred years of Education in Ceylon recounts the progress of Education in the island since 1869, when the Department of Public Instruction (which later became the Department of Education) was first created 73 years after Britain's first firm entry into Ceylon.

Type
Articles
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 3 , Issue 2 , March 1969 , pp. 151 - 175
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1969

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References

1 Williams, Harry, Ceylon, Pearl of the East, London, 1950, p. 95.Google Scholar

2 Chelliah, J. V., A Century of English Education, (Batticotta Seminary), Jaffna, 1922, p. 1.Google Scholar

3 Report of the Morgan Sub-Committee of the Legislative Council, Ceylon Sessional Papers, VIII, 1897, Ceylon, 1897.Google Scholar

4 Koran schools were very inexpensive. All that was needed was floor space formats, on which children sat and chanted stanzas from the Koran, sometimes with a teacher, but most of the time without one. They also received religious instruction.

5 About the middle of the nineteenth century a reformation of the Buddhist Sangha (priesthood) was attempted, and Buddhist activity showed itself in public controversy with Christians; the controversy at Panadure in 1873 was the one which drew the greatest public interest. See Vijayavardhanna, D. C., The Revolt in the Temple, Colombo, 1953, pp. 116 ff.Google Scholar

6 In an interesting Review Article, ‘Oratorians and Predikants’ (Ceylon Journal of Historical and Social Studies, Vol. I, No. 2, 07 1958), Arasaratnam writes, ‘It must be admitted that the attempt to conquer Asia for the doctrines of Christ, in one or the other forms, has been a failure’. (p. 217).Google Scholar Speaking of the success of the Roman Catholics he writes, ‘One should bear in mind that proselytisation succeeded in the context of a vigorous suppression of the indigenous religions, Buddhism and Hinduism, by the political authority…. In an age when there was no material security, and the spiritual security provided by the traditional religions was breaking down, many people seem to have embraced Catholicism as some solace in these troublous times’. (p. 218).

7 Thambiah, S. J., ‘Ethnic Representation in Ceylon's Higher Administrative Services 1870–1946’, University of Ceylon Review, Vol. 13, Nos. 2 & 3, 1955, pp. 130–1.Google Scholar

8 Evidence before Education Committee, Ceylon Sessional Papers, XX, 1912, Ceylon, 1912.Google Scholar

9 See Wijerama, E. M., in Ceylon Medical Association Supplement of The Ceylon Daily News, 17 March 1968.Google Scholar

10 Secondary English Schools in Ceylon, Ceylon Sessional Papers, XX, Ceylon, 1912.Google Scholar

11 Cf., Ludowyk's comment:‘…the Allied Governments were pouring money into preparations for the S.E.A.C. thrust, spending in these years Rs. 400 million annually—more than the annual revenue of the island’. E. F. C. Ludowyk, The Story of Ceylon, London, 1966, p. 266.Google Scholar

12 The English edition is an abridged version of the original published in Sinhala.

13 Wriggins, N. Howard, Ceylon—Dilemmas of a New Nation, Princeton, 1960, p. 186.Google Scholar

14 For a journalist's account of the riots see Vittachi, Tarzie, Emergency '58, London, 1958. The indigenous Tamils are a culturally self contained, literate and industrious people, inhabiting the Northern and Eastern Provinces of Ceylon, in which they have electoral majorities. The more prosperous of them live in the mixed communities of Colombo and other commercially developed areas of Ceylon.Google Scholar

15 Quoted from The Buddhist Commission's Report, Ceylon, 1956, p. 86.Google Scholar

16 The omnibus transport services all over the island were nationalized, and brought under the Ceylon Transport Board; the various services in the port of Colombo which had been run by private companies were unified and placed under the control of the Port Cargo Corporation; state action was taken to nationalize the assests of oil companies operating in Ceylon; insurance business was nationalized, the British naval base at Trincomalee and the military airport at Katunayake had already been taken over by the Ceylon Government and there was a threat of nationalizing the tea industry.

17 Ludowyk, E. F. C., op. cit., p. 220.Google Scholar

18 This department of the Technical College was later absorbed in the new Faculty of Engineering of the University of Ceylon in 1950.Google Scholar

19 See Report of the Principal of the University of London 1965/63, London, 1963, pp. 146–7.Google Scholar

20 For a comprehensive account of the Development of University Education, see Jayasuriya, D. L., ‘Developments in University Education’ in University of Ceylon Review, Vol. 23, Nos. 1 and 2, 04 and 10 1965, pp. 83–153.Google Scholar

21 A Ceylon Report to the Second Commonwealth Medical Conference, 1968, Ceylon, 1968.Google Scholar

22 Report of the Ceylon University Commission, Ceylon Sessional Papers, XXIII, 1959, Ceylon, 1959.Google Scholar