There has been a troubling unprofessionalism in the Dept. of Education these last few decades and it is pleasing to see that the advent of AI has forced an alteration, even a revamping, of syllabuses. The Budget was a heartening one education-wise and I look forward to a sensible, forward-thinking change.

This has got me thinking about the totally unorthodox education the three well-known foreign educationists  (Clara Motwani, Doreen Wickremesinghe and Hilda Kularatne ) gave their 3 daughters….Suriya, Maya and me!  Among themselves, the three Principals headed a plethora of schools. Mahamaya College, Visakha, Hindu Ladies College Jaffna, Sri Sumangala, Musaeus College, Ananda Ballika Colombo, Buddhist Ladies College, Sujatha Vidyalaya, Nugegoda and a few others. The three ladies all had Asian husbands and were totally Sri Lankan culture-oriented. My mom was also a Theosophist and an American. The other two were English. All three had superb educational qualifications and all three were literally bursting with ideas. Some of which were downright weird.

It was to be expected, I suppose, that their first three daughters would become their favourite guinea pigs and be sent down some strange educational avenues indeed.

One would think I would set a record having been to EIGHT schools (nine, if one counts a pre-school nursery). Surprisingly not!  My record was beaten by Suriya who attended THIRTEEN. But while she had a genius IQ, I clearly did not. However, all of us eventually got to University where things normalised in the sense that our mothers took their pretty paws off us and thankfully (I am sure) surrendered our mental development to Professors.

The varied schools we attended were in different countries. Mine were in India, the USA and Sri Lanka. Suriya’s in Sri Lanka and the British Isles. I can truthfully say I was happy in all of mine even though my attendance may have been for just a year as it was at the Dalton School, New York. My mother was on a contract studying the ‘Dalton Plan’ which gave me free attendance at a school my parents could never have afforded otherwise. Anderson Cooper, the Vanderbilt heir, was an academically outstanding alumnus (at a much later date of course.)

Another experimental School in Bandarawela was the’ Froebel’. After the usual confab, the two Principals sent Suriya and me up there. It consisted mostly of foreigners except for the two of us,  R.L. Spittels granddaughter, Anne, and Rohan de Saram the cellist. The school closed after the War. It was a ‘Learn through Play’ system which had Suriya and me hiking on steep hills, taking trips to Ella to see Ravana’s territory first-hand, decorating our classroom walls with friezes of Sri Lankan fish etc. We certainly learnt some odd, but useful facts.  

The two of us also attended small schools. Suriya’s was Seevali Vidyalaya in Bandarawela and mine was a tiny school in Kotagiri near Ooty and consisted of 22 children. I attended for 6 months while my Dad was finishing one of his books. It seemed that the War years gave our mothers undreamed of opportunities for experimentation. I picked up a smattering of Latin here!

Suriya then went off to the UK where she attended schools like St Christopher’s in Letchworth and  King Alfred School in London. She was also sent to a school in the Isle of Man. Knowing her mother’s ideas, all three schools probably had off-beat syllabuses but of course, her genius IQ  swept her through comfortably.

The Ooty Convent was next for me. Again foreign students were in the majority as the British were still around. Angela Kadirgamar (former wife of our Foreign Minister, Lakshman Kadirgamar) had been there the year before I joined and left an awesome reputation for beauty. Christianity was on my syllabus which I liked so much that I managed the Catechism Prize.

The War ended and Mother was asked to organize a school in Jaffna. For some reason, she took me along. (Neither Doreen nor Mother liked having us in schools they headed ) but then, an all-Tamil school experience was an excellent test for me in their opinion. It worked. So attuned did I become to the psyche of Hindu Ladies' College that my mother almost left me there, but the lack of a teacher in Sinhala (that compulsory 2nd language) forced my return.  Of course, her iconoclastic methods flowed on without missing a beat.

In the meantime Maya, (a little older than us) was having a great time studying the usual syllabuses of Sri Lanka but under her parents' eagle eyes. This may not sound too thrilling but unorthodoxy came in here.  Two of her schools were BOYS' schools. Co-education was NOT in style. But SHE went to schools where her parents were Principals. She was at Mahamaya briefly but thereafter she had EIGHT years of schooling in BOYS' schools namely Dharmaraja College, Kandy after which she cheerfully followed her Dad, Dr P.D.S. Kularatne, to Ananda College in Colombo. Those were the War years and girls were accepted if their parents were Principals or teachers. Maya in the midst of all this male company was also an accomplished equestrian among other exciting doings and led the sort of life that had me gasping with envy.

Meanwhile, our mothers converged regularly to discuss how their daughters were doing in this eccentric milieu they were creating for us. We were expected to whiz through 2 or 3 books a week wherever we were studying. (They checked). But one of their main concerns was how we were coping socially with the diverse nationalities we were meeting. Obviously, we did. I am a gregarious person and can get on with the  Devil himself  (as my father acidly remarked). Maya was the pin-up girl of Ananda College. (She was also beautiful.)   Suriya was far more studious and serious and after trotting her around the British Isles our mothers went into their usual huddle and decided to try ‘Stability’ whereupon  Suriya went into Ladies and  I went to Bishop’s, where I comfortably remained for three happy years.

And how did all this shuttling around affect our education? I have no idea. Maths was never mastered by me. The different methods unsettled me permanently. Not blessed with Suriya’s  IQ  that subject had me floundering.  What conclusions did our erudite mothers reach? Did they feel their experiments had been a success? Were they pleased with the final products? Had we been unhappy being catapulted hither and thither to these unusual settings they would have taken us out of them of course. But rebellion was not part of our natures.

When we later questioned this unorthodoxy they never really  explained their thought processes except to say “We gave you the ability to live anywhere in a changing world .”

So despite the educational customs our mothers flouted,  Suriya, Maya and I have lived very happily in Sri Lanka having made conventional marriages. We had productive careers. Suriya is world famous as Vice President of Amnesty International and also for receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in Sweden with our President in 1970. As the wife of the IGP, Maya founded the Police Wives Association and ran the highly popular “The Village Experience” for tourists, while I followed my mother (to her unflattering surprise) in the field of education.

Here I have to mention the chequered schooling experienced by Radhika Coomaswamy (again genius level)  given by her non-foreign parents.  She was at Ladies when her father, Roving Diplomat Raju Coomaswamy, was posted abroad. Radhika was sent to the United Nations School in the USA. But here is where wise parenting raised its head. Every summer vacation she was brought back to Sri Lanka and put into Ladies for that 3 month period. In short, she never had a holiday! The reason?  It maintained strong ties with her homeland. After gaining her many Degrees at Colombia and Harvard her life thereafter has been unique and obviously a ‘no-holiday schooling’ only enhanced an outstanding mind.

Radhika has had too many postings to mention but here are a few. She held UN and Sri Lankan appointments concurrently. She was a special UN rapporteur on Violence against Women while concurrently heading the International Centre of Ethnic Studies here. She joined the UN full-time in 2006 as Under Sec General of HRC.  She has taught at New York University, was a visiting Professor at Oxford and will be lecturing at Yale this autumn. Writing of her the words  ‘Scintillating and  Masterly” spring to mind do they not?

Let me end with Mother’s often quoted saying when asked if she had confidence in all this experimentation. She would say  “Civilisation is a state of society in which only fortune tellers can speak of with any confidence. Our methods never hurt you.” Looking back on my long life I can sincerely say that they did not. 

By Goolbai Gunasekara