Tuesday Nov 26, 2024
Tuesday Nov 26, 2024
Thursday, 21 February 2013 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}
President Mahinda Rajapaksa said that the time has come for equal development of language capabilities of the children in the country, in order to achieve the development goals and to build national and religious reconciliation among the communities.
He said that although the free education system has existed for several decades, the maximum benefit could not be achieved from it, due to the lack of a proper program for developing of language capabilities.
The President made these comments addressing a function held at Temple Trees on Tuesday, to launch the phase III of English as a life skill program.
A set of 50 English language learning DVDs, for grades 10 and 11 students and a tool box of activities for the teachers of grades 6 to 11 were given away at the occasion.
The DVDs were produced by the National Institute of Education, together with the English teachers and education directors in rural schools.
Students of nine schools, representing each Province received DVDs by the President. A television program consisting of 50 spoken English lessons for grades 10 and 11 is to be broadcasted in the future. Speaking further, the President said that it is the present Government that took steps in teaching the students English language.
He said that the English language is the attire that confines to the elite class in the society, and the knowledge of it was deprived to the students of the rural areas.
The President emphasised that all students should make use of the English language as a palanquin to win the world and rise to the higher levels in the society. He also said that it is the duty of the Government to provide the necessary tools for the students in learning the language.
Speaking further, Rajapaksa said that the Tamil and Sinhala students were not fortunate enough in learning each other’s languages, where it led towards many misunderstandings among the two communities and extremists elements made use of this shortcoming, to espouse communalism and create divisions in the country.
The President said that the country had an era in which the English speaking elites had the social upper hand and they mocked rural students who tried to speak in English.
He also said that they were ridiculed by these elites when the children of the rural masses were making pronunciation or grammatical errors.
Rajapaksa went on to explain that this was the reason why the children of the rural masses suffered with Anglophobia. They were afraid of speaking in English, and the society looked upon them with contempt.
Minister of Education Bandula Gunawrdena, Education Ministry Monitoring Minister of Parliament Mohanlal Grero, Governors of nine Provinces, Secretary to the President Lalith Weeratunga, Presidential Advisor and Coordinator of the Presidential Initiative on English as a Life Skill Sunimal Fernando and officials of the Ministry of Educations and a large number of students from all the nine Provinces were present at the occation.
