The Role of Education in Sri Lanka’s Conflict: A Language Ideologies Approach

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Friday 1:30 pm Four Seasons Ballroom 1
  In Roundtable Session: Global and Citizenship Education Through Language, Literacy, and Cultural Diversity (Table 7)

Abstract

Informed by a language ideologies (Kroskrity, 2010) approach and the intersecting roles of education in conflict, this research examines how multilingual language education policies, intended to promote social cohesion, contribute to peace in conflict-affected Sri Lanka. Drawing on interviews with teachers and students in 13 schools across four provinces in Sri Lanka, this research demonstrates the multiple and intersecting ways that language education policies contribute to unity while also amplifying existing social inequities. Findings illustrate how language ideologies rooted in ethnic, class, and caste divisions create linguistic hierarchies to perpetuate social inequity through schooling and thereby reveal education’s predominantly accomplice role in conflict. Multilingual education has not done enough to transform the lasting impacts of Sri Lanka’s historical monolingual policies.

Author

• Thursica Kovinthan Levi, Toronto Metropolitan University