Why does Sri Lanka continue to have hate-mongering school curriculum for

decades?
Please share the following with the Director General and all the Deputy Director
Generals.and all the other education officials:
1. Textbooks are used for poisoning the minds of children:
''Sri Lankas history curriculum needs serious revisiting, as it perpetuates the
othering of minority communities.'' - The Danger in Distorted Education: Sri
Lankas History Curriculum, 29 October 2016,
http://groundviews.org/2016/10/29/the-danger-in-distorted-education-sri-lankashistory-curriculum/
(Last week in one of the sessions on Day3 of the Festival of Arts on
RECONCILIATION Academic Conference at BMICH, one teacher showed the
audience such a textbook)
.. The Government dominates the educational publications sector in Sri Lanka
through its provision of free textbooks to all students from grade 1 to 11 ....
Tamils not involved in writing the textbooks - Textbooks written in Sinhala, and
then translated into Tamil .... full of spelling, grammatical and factual errors ....
distortion of history .... the history of Sri Lanka is confined to a few selected
Sinhala kings .... the textbooks do not educate the child about the various
characteristics of a multi-religious and a multi- racial society; the majority of
Sinhala medium textbooks emphasize Sinhalese Buddhist attitudes; distorted
maps under-represent North and Eastern Provinces; "geographical, social,
economical or cultural features" of Tamil communities (including the plantation
sector) are not adequately discussed or presented; in studying art, the Tamil
student only studies Sinhalese Buddhist aspects of art; the textbooks encourage
children to develop "apartheid attitudes" ..... Tamils are portrayed as
"aggressors"; forces of the Tamil kings are "mercenaries' , whereas forces of the
Sinhala kings are "soldiers" .... War is shown as patriotic while peace is portrayed
as cowardice.' - Respect for Diversity in Educational Publication - The Sri Lankan
Experience, Ariya Wickrema and Peter Colenso, 2003,
http://siteresources.worldbank.org/EDUCATION/Resources/2782001121703274255/1439264-1126807073059/Paper_Final.pdf
Millions of school children are taught, in the name of social studies, through
text-books published by the state, the myths of divergent racial origins which will
help to divide the Sinhalese and Tamils for more generations to come... What this
lesson does is to evoke the child's memories of being frightened by his parents
with threats of the mysterious and fearful `billo' to identify these bogeymen as
Tamil agents, and thus to enlist the deep-seated irrational fears of early
childhood for the purpose of creating apprehension and hatred of Tamils. Reggie Siriwardene, a well-respected Sinhalese writer, in a well-documented
analysis of the effects of school textbooks on ethnic relations in Sri Lanka(1984) quoted in Scarred Communities: Psychosocial Impact of Man-made and Natural
Disasters(2014) by Dr Daya Somasundaram(psychiatrist, Jaffna Hospital)
2.Successive governments seem to have been ignoring reports by UNICEF and
UNESCO and by academics and civil societies:
The Two Faces of Education in Ethnic Conflict: Towards a Peacebuilding Education
for Children Kenneth D Bush and Diana Saltarelli(UNICEF 2000) ''Ethnic
intolerance makes it appearance in the classroom in many ways Textbooks

have often been shown to contain negative ethnic stereotypes..... A review of

the textbooks used in the segregated schools of Sri Lanka in the 1970s and
1980s, for example, found Sinhalese textbooks scattered with images of Tamils
as the historical enemies of the Sinhalese, while celebrating ethnic heroes who
had vanquished Tamils in ethnic wars. Ignoring historical fact, these textbooks
tended to portray Sinhalese Buddhists as the only true Sri Lankans, with Tamils,
Muslims and Christians as non- indigenous and extraneous to Sri Lankan history.
This version of national history has been deeply divisive in the context of the
wider state.''
http://234next.com/csp/cms/sites/Next/Home/5680782-182/story.csp
Why education matters for global security, Irina Bokova(Director General,
UNESCO) 1 March 2011: Education must rise on the agenda of peace building.
We know the wrong type of education can fuel conflict. The use of education
systems to foster hatred has contributed to the underlying causes of conflicts,
from Rwanda to Sri Lanka, but also in Guatemala and Sudan.
3. Minister of Education misinforms UNESCO, 14 October 2016:
''At the session, Minister Kariyawasam emphasized Sri Lankas advancements in
education, culture, science, climate change and the Sustainable Development
Goals. The Director General of UNESCO, Irina Bokova, commended Sri Lanka for
its progressive development.'' - 14 October 2016,
http://www.kadirgamarinstitute.lk/dailybrief/2016/10/14/daily-brief-friday-14thoctober-2016