G. Usvatte-aratchi
Let me dispel a common myth long prevalent and oft repeated even by people who should know better. Peradeniya was not, repeat not, built on the model of Oxbridge. If anything, it was built on the model of a college of the University of London e.g.King’s College, LSE or SOAS and of provincial universities in Britain eg. Keele, Liverpool or Manchester. The one feature of Oxbridge that was present in Peradeniya at the beginning was that it was residential, this for sound reasons. Jennings well foresaw that with the expansion of opportunities for education to more people than the most affluent in our society (another sense in which it became ‘more open than usual’!), there would be students in Peradeniya who had to be accommodated in decent housing, if they were to have any kind of education.
In any case neither Peradeniya nor Mahanuvara provided adequate private boarding houses [so-called digs] for some 5,000 students and staff. He must also have been aware, from several reports, of the sordid facilities in which university students in Calcutta and Bombay lived. He obviously had tasted the rich flavour of college life in Cambridge. The dire consequences of not providing adequate residential facilities for staff and students in Belihuloya, Mihintale and now even in Peradeniya are all too clear to bear repetition.
Residence in campus also removed the student to a culturally rich environment, complaints of some university dons at that time notwithstanding, and that provided fertile soil for good education. Many of the poorer students who latterly came to Peradeniya from Central Schools and Maha Vidyalayaya came from families whose parents were illiterate and desperately poor. As one student of the time remarked, the only books in their homes were rice ration coupon books! Yet in other respects, Jennings was short sighted, in the manner he designed Peradeniya.
In all other respects than residential, Peradeniya departed from the Oxbridge model. Halls of Residence were not Colleges. There was no teaching at all in Halls of Residence. To both teachers and students, Halls were little more than hostels, which Jennings had wisely feared.
As to methods of teaching, the tutorial system in Oxbridge was never part of Peradeniya. In both Oxford and Cambridge students are taught both in their Department of Study and the College to which they belonged. Students, singly or in twos, meet a Fellow of the College (often) every week or so to read a paper written on a subject set by the Fellow, who may or may not be a member of the university teaching staff. [Many tutors left a strong lasting impact on the education of their students, as evident from reports written later by those students. For a recent account see the Preface by the late Lord Thomas Bingham in The Rule of Law (2010)].
Latterly, as student numbers grew, competent research students (graduate students in America) under the supervision of a Fellow of a College, were enlisted to teach undergraduates in College. A good part of the teaching takes place in these weekly meetings. The practice of college teaching dominated till late in the nineteenth century until the science and social science departments became a part of Oxford and Cambridge.
Students studied these new subjects departing from the classics, mathematics and history. Physical and biological sciences and technology had to be taught in laboratories and it was prohibitively expensive to duplicate them in Colleges. These disciplines and social sciences required specialist teachers whom again it would have been far too expensive to duplicate. For that reason, it is not uncommon for Fellows of Colleges in such disciplines to be shared among Colleges.
The practice of college teaching was entirely absent from Peradeniya, where students met in groups of 15 or 20 a member of the university teaching staff in respective departments in the university in the premises of the academic departments and not in Halls of Residence. The practice was absent from Peradeniya for the very good reason that it would have been prohibitively expensive. Further, I do not know of any university teacher resident in Halls of Residence (many were) who ever thought that it might be interesting and useful to collect a group of students in their Hall to talk about whatever subject gripped his mind at that time. Even the younger teachers kept to themselves.
The scheme of study in Cambridge commonly provided for a three year course of study leading to the award of a bachelor’s degree. A student read for a degree in history, economics or mathematics. Exceptionally bright students sometimes followed a combined degree course. Yet, they did not read for a degree, for example, in history, economics and mathematics.
In Peradeniya, it was the norm that students read for a degree in three subjects[Section A] and only an exceptional few read for a degree in one subject [Section B] beginning in their second year in the university. These specialist students in some departments studied a second related subject at a lower level of achievement than the main subject. All students except for a very small number read three subjects in the first year, anyway, which was a highly salutary step, learnt perhaps from places like Keele and Liverpool, which had seen the virtues of a Foundation Year.
The better colleges such as Columbia, Harvard, Chicago and Stanford in US also had foundation courses first introduced in Columbia sometime in the 1920s. The General Degree and Special Degree scheme were imported to Peradeniya from London lock, stock and barrel. As a student in Oxbridge read only one subject it was possible for a College Tutor to take charge of his academic progress by himself. This would have been impossible in Peradeniya.
There were no teachers, each equally competent in History, Economics and Mathematics. The General Degree made a lot of sense in our country, besides. The large mass of students took to careers in teaching and a graduate in three related subjects was far more valuable to a principal of a school than someone who could teach only one subject.
There is now a new and urgent need for a foundation year in our universities. First it arises from the varying levels of educational achievements of students who come from places as far different in facilities as Royal College in Colombo and Mahanama Maha Vidyalayaya in Moneragala. Second, all students can learn computer skills during that year. Third, all students can learn English in that first year.
Anyone who can satisfy the university that they reach, at entrance level, competence expected of a good student on completion of foundation year courses, can proceed to the second year without waiting one year in the Foundation Course. All courses of study will be of four years duration, giving a student three years to learn whatever he/she wants to learn.
The scheme of study at Peradeniya was inherited by the University of Ceylon from the University College, Colombo which it succeeded. The University College was affiliated to the University of London, which awarded degrees to those students. Now the University of Ceylon did not wisely follow the original scheme of the University of London, which unfortunately was copied in India beginning in the 1850s and with which it is saddled, still. It is baggage to be avoided even at some substantial cost.
University of Delhi, for example, is a federation of more than two hundred colleges and one of the major responsibilities of the university is to conduct examinations for students of these affiliated colleges. Standards of education vary from the heights of St. Stephens College to the very depths. Like the provincial universities in Britain (also called Redbrick sometimes), Peradeniya was a unitary university with no affiliated colleges. As we noted earlier, Halls of Residence were not Colleges of Oxbridge. Patterns similar to that in Sri Lanka had been copied at Ibadan in Nigeria. Makerere in Uganda and the University of Malaya.
Then, Peradeniya was a wise mixture of features of Oxbridge, London and civic universities, all from Britain. It is disappointing that Ivor Jennings has not been given recognition for this massive achievement of his. The US was yet to put on the academic weight that it did after 1960. Universities in newly freed British colonies in Africa mostly followed the US model. German universities which were outstanding before Hitler’s war were on a model that did not quite respond to the needs of the simple economy that Ceylon was at that time.
Recently, our universities have picked up features of American colleges in organizing their teaching and evaluating students. The confusion that all this fusing without much understanding has caused a mish-mash that is far from satisfactory. The confusion in the minds of university men and women is evident every time they speak about this subject.
At a time when university reform in earnest seems to be on the agenda under a new minister, it is necessary to discard these old myths which occupied the former Minister for Higher Education and think of universities, recalling their fundamental mission and nature imaginatively. That is not a job for semi-literate bureaucrats.
[Some of these ideas I had discussed with my friend Mr. Eric de Silva. He, however, had no hand in writing this note. This essay was written a few years back but held back for unknown reasons!
Courtesy - The Island
