I welcome the new developments in Sri Lanka (roads, ports, airports, buildings, malls). Dev isn’t a zero sum game and that’s part of it. It’s important, however, to invest as heavily (or more) in education and health, which is what sustained the country even through war. Many of the things we’re building are for a middle class that doesn’t exist yet. Without education and health, there won’t be enough people for the shops or cars for the roads.

The Department Of Examinations has fumbled and now completely dropped the ball on A/Level results. First the results were late, then finally released on Christmas, and now they’re saying that the results of some students could be wrong, effectively meaning that none of the results are reliable. Kids study for these exams for years and try to get stuff right, but the Exams Department can’t even add up the scores. I give them a Fail.

Kumar Sangakkara is trying to raise around Rs. 3 million to buy bicycles for kids in the North. You can make a simple donation or donation per run he hits in the Pakistan tour (which I think is over now). He recently became the fastest to reach 9000 test runs so perhaps the simple donation is the best bet.

School time, na na na school time. Horror. One wishes more Sri Lankans would be accepted to Hogwarts. Instead, many Colombo district kids travel great distances to get to school, giving the city a second rush hour we call ‘school time’. Herein I’ve attached graphs showing how far kids live from their school, how long it takes them to get there, and how they travel. The average Sri Lankan kid lives within walking distance of school, but not necessarily a good one.

Sri Lanka is relatively functional today because earlier governments invested in health and education. Both matter because they create functional citizens. Education is especially important because female education is highly correlated with lower birth rates. Compare Sri Lanka to India or Bangladesh and you can see how poverty breeds poverty, and the cost that can have 50 years down the line.

I was looking thru the latest statistics, and Sri Lanka has about 1 million more women than men. Women are the head of 23% of households, meaning there’s a lot of single or working mums. Made this infographic with available data. It’s more of an info layout really, but you get the point. Sri Lanka’s sex ratio is about 0.9, meaning that there are around 897 men for every 1,000 women.

I recently read two education stories. One was about a 13 year old student beaten in front of the whole class. The other was about a scholarship student who refused to bow to the Education Minister (literally). The last story is much more heartening.

According to the Indian government, ragging cases are down this year. “We have seen a decrease of about 17.4 per cent in the incidents of ragging in comparison to 2010,” said an HRD ministry official (India Today).Ragging, or hazing, ranges from teasing to torture to rape, assault and murder of students. It seems to be a big problem in Indian universities.

Amantha Perera has a great report from Vavuniya, in the north. “After two-and-a-half decades of bloodshed that tore Sri Lanka apart, children like Tendulkar who dream of becoming teachers, or whatever else they want to be, can now chase those dreams without fear of death” (IPS).

I read a few CVs and cover letters a week. The cover letters are just a test, it doesn’t really matter what people say. We’re reading them to check grammar and spelling. You’d be surprised. I see maybe one coherent cover letter per month. It’s so simple, so important, yet so many people fail. I don’t get it. I have errors on the blog, but anytime I’m asking someone for something I try to get things absolutely right. Some of these kids are dropping ‘i’s like it’s a Google Chat. Should I mail and tell these kids that ‘loose’ is not ‘lose’ and that capitalization is not a matter of whim? If I see a good cover letter I immediately walk over to HR to recommend that person, simply because they can read and write.