IDP refugee education lacking in Sri Lanka

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IDP refugee education lacking in Sri Lanka

This piece represents the opinion of the author:

Caitlin Hurwit

Columnist

January 21, 2011

An island amid a sea of globalization: Puttalam, Sri Lanka is the largest center for IDPs (Internally Displaced Persons) of Muslim background in Sri Lanka. During the initial years of the civil war, in 1990, Muslims living in the Northern province of Sri Lanka—considered by Tamil nationalists to be their cultural homeland—were evicted by Liberation Tamil Tigers of Eelam soldiers in an attempt at ethnic purification and unification. These refugees were resettled in the Puttalam area, which had traditionally been a Muslim cultural center on the island.

According to the United Nations High Commission on Refugees, as of 2007, there were 650,000 Sri Lankans displaced from the Northern and Eastern Provinces living in various areas of the island.

At the end of the Sri Lankan Civil War, after a peace was brokered in late spring of 2009, the IDP populations on the island found themselves in a peculiar situation: the areas of their origination, in the Northern and Eastern provinces, were no longer the bloody battlefields they had been for two decades, although the presence of landmines was and is a very real concern of all parties involved. As a result, in the process of rebuilding the country and the morale of the citizenry, the reopening of the North and the East to these disenfranchised populations might be seen as a gesture of goodwill, as a measure of progress toward lasting peace.

I studied abroad in the central highlands of Sri Lanka last semester. My four-month stay in the country culminated with an independent study period in Puttalam, where I worked in a school for IDPs. There, I taught English to the best of my limited knowledge of educational practices.

As it turns out, the students found themselves in a transient social state that was difficult for the government and the host community to understand and grapple with. As displacement began in 1990, the identifiable IDP students currently attending primary and secondary schools were all born and raised in Puttalam, as opposed to the Northern and Eastern provinces of their parents' births.

As a result of the massive destruction from the hostilities of war, neither of these war-torn provinces nor the resource-exhausted communities of their resettlement possess adequate means to properly educate students from displaced families. This problem raises another equally pressing concern in considering the government tactics used in its attempt to resettle 100 percent of the internal refugees. What educational and economic options do the children and adolescents in question have in the midst of this crisis?

This issue itself has been studied in depth by the Brookings-Bern Project on Internal Displacement. According to the authors of a study entitled "Education for IDPs," there are several impediments to providing universal access to quality education for IDP communities. The complexity and time frame of the displacement affecting the Puttalam IDP communities makes some of these obstacles more relevant to this specific situation, especially lack of infrastructure, discrimination, material requirements and economic responsibilities.

The economic burden of displacement and resettlement cannot be overstated. Displacement leads to a loss of livelihood, making it particularly difficult for those families whose subsistence depends upon unskilled labor. Host communities are ill-equipped to deal with a sudden influx of people, especially in the employment and educational sectors. As a result, many IDP children find themselves without the necessary school supplies. Additionally, after the age of 14, when compulsory education in Sri Lanka ends, IDP students frequently drop out of school so as to help alleviate the economic burden facing their parents and families. Higher studies require a great deal of commitment, and success is often dependent upon the ability to afford private tuition classes.

English education in Sri Lanka is in worse shape than any other subject. Teachers are frequently inadequately trained and non-conversant in the language, which only exacerbates the effects of the rote memorization that characterizes English language education on the island.

In a great illustrative example of catch-22, private classes are the only way for the majority of students in poor, underfunded areas to circumnavigate the inadequate English education opportunities offered in their schools. On the other hand, they live in poor, underfunded areas, making tuition fees an unattainable luxury for the vast majority of these families. So: government-funded options are ineffective, and private classes are inaccessible, yet a grasp of English is a requirement for nearly all salaried jobs in Sri Lanka, a symptom of its tentative role in an increasingly globalized society.

It is certainly a well-rehearsed cliché that quality education increases the number and quality of opportunities available to its recipients, but that doesn't make it any less true. A similar situation presents itself in the education of students in inner-city school systems in America, particularly as English education in such areas must now take into account whether or not Ebonics is a distinctly separate language, as some sociologists now argue. Language, regardless of the country or circumstance, should not be used as a tool for "subjugation, humiliation, and oppression," as Sri Lankan sociolinguist Thiru Kandia argues it has been in a multitude of cultural contexts.

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