Let Them Eat Rhetoric
The Private University story is actually more interesting than I thought. Here I thought it was just me trying to oppress the poor, but now the World Bank has decided to colonize us. Yes, it is rich white man against poor brown Sri Lankans. This is the best story of all, it’s what Mugabe uses. He won’t give people a bite to eat, but spits fire at the damn white people. Yes, as long as we’re being oppressed by our own people, that’s good enough for me. So, I said that Morq was demonizing his opponents, to which he responds:
No the WB is not evil. In the same way that the Colonials were not evil. They really did think they were civilizing savages. They genuinely believed that what they were doing for the colonies was good for the animal-skin clad barbarians there. This why they colonials were really surprised when all us savages asked them to bugger off. ‘Whoa, brownskinned dudes, we were trying to help you’…’Yeah? Actually? Well you’ve helped enough. Thanks a lot. Now fuck off’.
Here he’s imparting motives to the World Bank. That is hard to support with fact or even crude psychoanalysis, but it’s important to have a good villian for your story. Now, the point of the story is not to educate more people. No, the point is to educate those that deserve it. Remember, this story is not about Sri Lanka, it is about the noble struggle of the Sri Lankan poor against colonial elites.
Let us call the 15,000 who get seats group A
The 85,000 who deserve a seat but didn’t get one are group B
The other 100,000 who [just have O/Levels] don’t deserve a seat are group CSo group A gets seats in the State Universities. What Indi’s saying is that group B is going to be absorbed by the private universities. But is that true? If group B was the only people who want a university seat then it would be true. But Indi seems to forget group C completely. They too want a seat in a university even though they don’t deserve one above group B. In group C there will be people who can pay handsomely for a degree. They will have access to the seats in the private universities while a lot of the deserving students from group B do not. Why is that so difficult to understand?
Remember, this is not a fight for anything, it is a fight against something. They are fighting for the status quo, which gives uni to an intellectual elite of 15,000 a year. They are fighting to keep out those that ‘don’t deserve it’ – not to actually educate any more people. The focus isn’t on people (who are both rich and poor), but on the deserving poor. No, the fight is not for Sri Lankan people, it is against the rich.
Now let’s see what happens when someone gets in the way of the story. This is a quote from Chanuka:
Education is NOT a right. It is only a privilege. I agree everyone in the community should be provided with ONLY primary education free of charge. From there onwards that should not be free. We should not only introduce private educational establishments, but also think of making the present ‘Pin Universities’ in Sri Lanka to ones that charge for the courses they offer. Otherwise even after another 50 years Sri Lanka will be at the same level.
and Morquendi’s response:
Look, Indi, I don’t want to argue about this. If this asshole reads any one of my earlier posts he’ll find answers for this. I refuse to waste my time on this scum. I have already wasted too much time on him. Right now I’m wishing he was in front of me so I could explain to him personally.
The only explanation I can think of is that this Mo*Fo* got kicked out of school for flunking his 5th Std exams and then went to some school where his daddy could buy him a seat.
I would like to remind this scum that there are some people who enjoy a free lunch. People like him. Who do nothing for our economy and still reap the benefits. While the poor people of this country slave away in foreign households, work day and night in garment factories and work day in and day out for a mere pittance in the estate sector so that they can bring in the foreign currency that keeps assholes like Chanuka fed. Listen Mo*Fo*. You are able to say the shit you do because of the work these people do. Yet you do not lift a finger to help them. And you would even deny their children an opportunity to go to school. If they stopped working your fatcat life would be over. No more X-Box!!!!
Yes, do not get in the way of the Revolution. Or wait, I guess the Revolution already happened. Do not get in the way of the Status Quo! So remember kids – Sri Lankan Government is good, World Bank is bad, and Rich People are bad. Do not be a Reactionary Element or you shall be dubbed an ‘Asshole‘ and a ‘Brat‘ and be sent to the village for re-education. Remember research and logical argument are the tools of the white oppressor! Let them eat rhetoric!
I started off not really liking General Sarath Fonseka, him being part of the aggressive war effort. I didn’t support the war (largely cause I thought it would fail), and I thought Gotabhaya Rajapaksa and Fonseka were gleefully stomping everything. Fonseka even came out and said “I strongly believe that this country belongs to the Sinhalese but there are minority communities and we treat them like our people,” in 2008 (
General Sarath Fonseka was arrested on a bunch of trumped up charges, but mainly for daring to threaten Mahinda in a Presidential election. Despite his poor health, Fonseka was arrested in February 2010 and sentence to three years. Word on the street now, however, is that he’ll be released soon. Like any day now. President Mahinda Rajapaksa has told 
I’ve been testing a lot of apps. A very interesting one is iPlayboy, from Playboy magazine. It’s bad porn but a good magazine, especially since you can read issues from its cultural heyday – the Mad Men era of the 60s.
I’m going to get back to blogging. I buy a shitload of stuff on my iPad. Not that I like spending money, and the exchange rate terrifies me, but it’s just so easy, and so good. For example, I’ve been reading comics again. Spiderman, and 
This refers to the “brat” link above
Quote:”as morquendi told me, if you’re born poor in india, you’re screwed. if you’re born poor in the united states of america, you’re pretty much screwed after 5th standard. if, however, you were to be born poor in sri lanka, thanks to the free education system, you have HOPE.”
Dudes little knowledge is dangerous. In India primary, secondary and college run by government is FREE, as in gratis. University is practically free, however if you are parents are poor, not only is your education free but you also get a stipend (at the university level). Furthermore, if you happen to come from the lowest of the lowest socioeconomic strata–you belong the lowest caste or harijans, or belong to a tribal group–nearly 35% of all university and college seats are reserved for you. The standards of admission are lowered so the less privileged have a chance of breaking out of the cycle of poverty M referred to somewhere.
India has private schools–primary and secondary, just as Sri lanka has. In India this is where the accumulation of cultural capital (a la Bourdieu) is the most stark—the young kids are taught English, play with computers, can learn French if they want, go to drama classes IF they go to a private school. In a government school you don’t learn how to speak English until you are in your mid-teens. You dont get to edit school magazines and write blogs. This is the BIGGEST handicap that kids from the govt schools face when they come to college and university–they arent articulate in English, they have not accumulated sufficient cultural capital to do well at the university. However, nothing can keep down the brightest of them.
In India, the ELITE universities are all govt run, private universities dont have much of a reputation. And all these ELITE universities are designed to allow poor people through. That is if they made it through primary, secondary and college in one piece. That’s what sucks about India–the primary and secondary education run by the govt is pathetic. The universities however are a different matter, some of them are world class.
In the US, the system couldn’t be more than different than what was quoted above. There are so many examples of poor kids who have risen through school to the highest ranks in the US–that examples seem pointless. Let me give two–Bill Clinton, Colin Powell. In the US, schooling is FREE–primary and secondary. Free in the sense that part of the property taxes that you pay contributes to the school (district) you go to but you don’t pay school fees. So if you live in a mansion you contribute more towards schooling than someone who lives in a trailer park. But both your kids can go to the same school. Anyone can go to the university if you have the required GPA. Education is not free but if you are admitted to an university, practically anybody can get a student loan–even if you dont have any assets. There are all kinds of grants available for poor kids. So having private universities doesnt restrict the opportunities of poor kids to get an education in the US.
I have been living in Sri lanka for not very long, and I admire that there is such a large literate base and your HDI index is really high, not only in the region but also among leading developing countries. I have spoken to a number of very knowledgeable Sri Lankans and all of them say that other than your medical faculty, rest of higher education in Sri lanka sucks! It is of mediocre quality. Sri lanka didn’t make the mistake that India did by focussing on higher education at the expense of primary and secondary education, and we (Indians) are still suffering from that lopsided policy. However, if Sri lanka wants to participate in the global knowledge-based economy,its higher education must be restructured. If like the JVP, you would like to remain an isolated, island cut off from rest of the world, that’s another matter. And we can stop this conversation. But if you want Sri Lankans in large numbers to be bio-techs, nano-techs, code-wizards, you will have to infuse more capital into the university, increase the number of seats, pay HIGHER SALARIES to teachers. Indi showed the financial challenges involved in doing all that. Does the Sri lankan government have that much deployable capital for higher education? Rata-perata policies have essentially sucked dry whatever may have available. May be it will cost GOSL less if it allows private degree granting institutions to set up shop but at the same time makes easy-soft loans available to those who cannot afford the private education but would like to go to private univ. I would call that a decent, civilized, democratic country. A country that gives its citizens true choice about where they would like to be educated.
Ok I get back to writing the dam(n) proposal. Cheers!