Free education and the counter-discourse of human capital in Sri Lanka

• In Event: 21st Century Socialism & Education Panel #6: Capitalism, Neoliberalism and the rise of entrepreneurship discourses in Africa and Asia: A South-South Exchange

Proposal

The neoliberalization of education globally has undermined the provision of education as a free public good. In a few places like Sri Lanka, free education has remained intact. A non-fee levying education system from kindergarten to university levels was introduced by the Free Education Act of 1943, when Sri Lanka was still under British rule. Free education further expanded under the import substitution regimes in the decades after gaining independence. Although Sri Lanka was the first country in South Asia back in 1977 to embrace neoliberalism, successive regimes have avoided dismantling free education, despite aiding the corporatization of educational institutions. In this context, with the idea of ‘free education’ firmly embedded in people’s imagination, struggles to safeguard public education have found popular public support.


The paper discusses how the discourses of human capital, employability and entrepreneurship are set against the values and system of free education in Sri Lanka. The paper analyzes the reports and policies on educational development by donor agencies and the government in Sri Lanka. Furthermore, it draws from recent debates and struggles by the movements for free education towards a critique of the corporatization of education. Through mapping a genealogy of the ideas of free education and human capital, the paper explores the possible shift in the education system in the current conjuncture of tremendous economic and social crisis.


Jayaweera, S. (1998). Education in Sri Lanka-Fifty Years Since Independence. Fifty Years of
Sri Lanka’s Independence, A Socio-Economic Review. Colombo: Sri Lanka Institute of Social and Economic Studies.


Kumar, R. (2012). (Ed.). Education and the Reproduction of Capital: Neoliberal Knowledge
and Counterstrategies, New York: Palgrave Macmillan (edited, 2012)
State Council of Ceylon. (1943). ‘Report of the Special Committee on Education, Ceylon.’ Sessional Paper, 24. Colombo.


Kadirgamar, N. & Thiruvarangan, M. (2020, June 20). Shaping our collective destinies
through education, using lessons from the past. Daily FT.

Author

• Niyanthini Grace Kadirgamar, University of Massachusetts Amherst