Sri Lanka—Education System
Education in the sense of a state's obligation to provide for a tax-financed general system of primary, secondary and "high"-schools did not exist in Sri Lanka's Buddhist medieval society. Buddhist monasteries imparted sacred knowledge, the basic tenets of the Buddhist faith, and the techniques for the monks' salvation. When in Sinhalese villages there existed a local school, set up by a resident monk—which was not generally the case— then access to this school was restricted to the main cultivating caste, the Goyigamas. It was only under colonial rule—first by the Portuguese in the seventeenth century, later by the Dutch and the British—that a much more broadly based system of education was established.
The religious orders, especially the Jesuits, set up a network of missionary schools in the Sinhalese-dominated southwest and on the Jaffna peninsula in the north, settled by Tamils. These mission schools left a lasting imprint. On the Jaffna peninsula the main cultivating caste, the Vellalas, now embraced at least in outward appearance the Christian faith, monopolized access to these schools, and used this access as a means for social and economic advancement. A comparable development could be observed in the Sinhalese lowland, where besides Goyigama-caste elites, lower but ambitious elites among the fisher and cinnamon-peeler castes now increasingly embraced the Catholic faith to gain access to modern education. Under Dutch colonial rule these elites, by now embracing the Dutch Reformed faith, continued to visit and patronize the Dutch missionary schools, for which the notoriously parsimonious Dutch East India Company provided meager funds.
Further Reading
Manor, James. (1989) The Expedient Utopian: Bandaranaike and Ceylon. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.
Obeyesekere, Gananath. (1974) "Some Comments on the Social Backgrounds of the April 1971 Insurgency in Sri Lanka (Ceylon)." The Journal of Asian Studies 33, 3: 367–384.
Sumathipala, K. H. M. (1968) History of Education in Ceylon, 1796–1965. Colombo, Sri Lanka: Tisara Prakasakayo.
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