Two languages, one classroom
Open Sinhala–Tamil textbooks in post-war Sri Lanka
This event is part of a demonstration of what Lera offers for running knowledge events. Its content is written with care and draws on real sources, but the conference has not taken place, and apart from the convener its participants are fictional.
Sri Lanka's Official Language Act of 1956, known as "Sinhala Only", pushed Tamil speakers out of the administration and the university and became one of the roots of a war that lasted until 2009. The Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution made Tamil an official language as well in 1987, yet schools remain split, almost entirely, into two systems: Sinhala-speaking and Tamil-speaking children study the history of their country separately, in separate classrooms, from separate books.
This project produces open, bilingual textbooks in history and civics for grades six to nine. Each chapter has two authors, a teacher from each community, and the text is written in both languages rather than translated from one into the other. Wherever the accounts of an event disagree, the book sets both accounts side by side and asks students to weigh them. All the books are published under an open licence so that any school can print and adapt them.
UNESCO's policy paper of 2016 reminded us that close to forty per cent of the world's people are not taught in a language they understand. Our experience shows that teaching in the mother tongue is only half the task. The other half is for the child to hear the neighbour's language too, and to know that the knowledge of their country is written in two languages.
Findings
- Teachers who co-wrote chapters worked together, and stayed in touch, more than through any reconciliation workshop.
- Placing conflicting accounts side by side, rather than removing them, made classroom discussion calmer, not more heated.
- The greatest obstacle to spreading the books was neither budget nor technology but the lack of any place in the official curriculum for a second language.
References
UNESCO Global Education Monitoring Report. 2016. If you don't understand, how can you learn? Policy Paper 24. Paris: UNESCO.
Davies, Lynn. 2004. Education and Conflict: Complexity and Chaos. London: RoutledgeFalmer.
Official Language Act, No. 33 of 1956 (Sri Lanka); Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, 1987.