Let’s Make Our Education ‘More Open Than Usual’ 

By Liyanage Amarakeerthi –DECEMBER 16, 2020

Prof. Liyanage Amarakeerthi

(A shorter version of this speech delivered was via Zoom at the Convocation of the Open University, Sri Lanka, on 15th of December, 2020)  

Chancellor, Vice Chancellor, Deputy Vice Chancellor, Registrars,  Deans, Directors, librarian, professors, lecturers, other dignitaries , graduating students, ladies and gentlemen,  

It is with a sense of pride and gratitude that I deliver the convocation address of this year at the open university.  We are in the middle of a pandemic. In addition to taking and harming many lives all over, the pandemic has robbed me of the opportunity of standing in front of you in a grand convocation hall looking at lighted with happiness. Yet, I am speaking to you standing in front of a computer, and you are participating in one of the most important events in your lives. Let us collectively show that human spirit can cope with and survive any pandemic.  

Because of the current Covid 19 epidemic, some scholars argue, access to education will fall back to the level of access existed in 1980s, and, in some countries, 9 out of 10 children will fall out of schools. In our country too, the long –term impact of the epidemic on education, is likely to be much worse than we think. Perhaps, the need for the kind of education provided by the Open University will be greater in a post-Covid Sri Lanka.  

The Open University has a special place in my heart for several reasons. For one, I have some of my closest friends at the Open University, and they are among the most renowned literary writers, scholars and intellectuals in the country. Secondly, perhaps more importantly, the concept of education at the Open University is also dear to my heart. Teaching at a conventional university, I have the luxury of meeting and teaching a considerable segment of the brightest young men and women in the country. But all of them come into the university through a single, narrow path called GCE (A/L). I wish I had students entering my own university through other legitimate doors making our student population more diverse in gender, age, region, ethnicity, religion and so on. Extremely competitive GCE advanced level is practically useful in selecting the best students for limited space at universities. But I am particularly in favor of leaving doors open for adult students to enter higher education, whenever they feel ready. 

At crucial points of our lives, we all sit down and reflect on the way things have been, and at those times we often look for the help of new sources of wisdom to reorganize ourselves. At such moments, if someone wants to say to herself ‘I should return to formal education. But I don’t want to do A/Levels again’ that person should be able to find a way to do so. The Open University has been a haven for those who rethink, reconsider, reevaluate, and reorganize their lives. I intentionally used the prefix ‘re’ several times. Return, rethink, reconsider, reevaluate, reorganize, renew and the list can go on for several minutes. A society is truly free, truly just, truly democratic, when people have a second chance – another opportunity of taking a shot at a better life, a qualitatively different life.  The Open University has provided many of you that chance. In a country that has witnessed epic scale bloodshed due to the lack of a second chance, you belong to an exclusive group of privileged people. A great Sinhala poet, Ariyawansha Ranavira said in a short poem,

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