Found In Ceylon

Thursday was my first full day of teaching at the school. In two days at the Rohana Special School, I’ve just about learned all there is to know about English education for the deaf in Sri Lanka.

Despite my limited (but not for long!) fluency in Sinhala Sign Language, my inability to read or speak Sinhala, and my inexperience with the teaching profession in general, it’s already been clear that the students aren’t learning English now, and have not been learning English despite sitting through English classes since Grade 3.

If you look at their workbooks, they certainly look proficient in English. They’re writing complex sentences, answering fill-in-the-blank questions, and analyzing long English passages in their textbooks.

But when I reviewed vocabulary lists such as animals (dog, cat, hen, cow, snake, rabbit…) or sports (volleyball, cricket, football, carom, netball…), they had tremendous difficulty spelling out the words. One student tried to spell cricket like this: c-h-l-g-h-e-t.

Students’ levels of English skills varied wildly along the dimensions of reading, spelling, meaning, and usage. There are a few who are quite good at finger-spelling words using the British two-handed alphabet, but cannot decipher the same words when written on a blackboard. Nearly all of them show confusion within the lowercase b/d, t/l/i, e/c, and n/r/h letter groups.

One Grade 9 student insisted that I spelled “GALLE” wrong, and rewrote it as “Galle.” A few others, when fingerspelling the ABCs, could not reach the letter z without my assistance; the same was true for writing it out.

So what’s going on here? Their workbooks reveal an advanced command of English with deftly-composed paragraphs about Sri Lankan life, but classroom instruction shows their English levels to be rudimentary at best.

Sophie, the volunteer from the United Kingdom who worked at Rohana for three months (and went back to university in Scotland just three weeks before I arrived), wrote a wonderfully detailed report on Rohana’s English instruction. She wrote about this very same discrepancy between the workbook contents and the in-class exercises, and explained that the students, through “careful trickery (through looking at what words are in the same in the question as in the text), a skill in being able to copy, and a HUGE amount of guesswork,” are able to reproduce a high level of English use in their workbooks.

And the students have been doing this for years. Grade 11 is devoted mainly to preparing for the Ordinary Level (O/L) examinations, which I think are like a combination of the SATs and high school exit exams, to use American terms. To me, they look like the SAT II English Comprehension exam, covering adverbial clauses of condition, gerunditive terms, and using analytical reasoning to draw inferences from passages.

I remind you that the Grade 11 students at Rohana are still learning the alphabet.

The teachers have been powerless because the English syllabus is decided by the national education department in Colombo. No modifications have been made for instructing English to deaf students or even special-needs students, for that matter. As all teachers in Sri Lanka are government-paid employees, they are bound to the national curriculum; deviation from the norm can result in dismissal (and the salary is good enough to cause a glut of teachers in this country; one nearby school with 50 students has 25 teachers).

The last few days have been somewhat difficult as I try to absorb the magnitude of this problem concerning English education. For years and years, these students have been simply copying English passages from their textbooks into their workbooks. Imagine that…copying and guessing for seven years. Instead of teaching deaf children how to understand even the most basic English, Sri Lanka’s educational bureaucracy has turned them into glorified xerox machines. It makes me want to cry.

And now, what I’ve just said all concerns English. In America, we have enough difficulties teaching deaf students English, and it’s our primary language. In Sri Lanka, it’s a second language (or even a third; they also learn Tamil). What of their Sinhala, math, science, history, agriculture, art, and life skills proficiencies? Has the system also failed deaf students in these aspects? Should the meager resources expended on English education be allocated to other, more useful subjects instead?

Anyone who visits Rohana can see there is dire need for improvement at all levels. The first two changes would be to boost the allocation of money to deaf schools, which currently receive 50 rupees per student per month. That’s $0.50…for Rohana, which has about 100 students, it adds up to $50.00 a month (teacher salaries are paid separately by the government). The second change would be to initiate a nationwide dialogue on deaf education as it stands today and begin collecting change recommendations for educational reform.

Well, all talk for now, but we’ll see. For now, my task is to go back to the basics, build on Sophie’s past successes with the children (alphabet drills and basic vocabulary), and maybe even help them begin constructing basic English sentences.

Despite the sorry state of English education, the children are so, so delightful to be around. I’m already looking forward to Monday…it’s a sheer joy to be around them and to provide them with a radically different teaching approach. I have so much more to say about that…but later!

Did you know that yesterday was the International Day of the Deaf? I think it’s shameful that it’s such a non-holiday in America’s deaf community.

So yesterday, I was introduced to the deaf community living in Sri Lanka’s southern province (although most were from the greater Matara area). I’ve already been to the school a couple times, which have been supremely delightful experiences and will be detailed further in another blog, so yesterday isn’t the first time I’ve met a deaf Sri Lankan.

But for just about every single deaf Sri Lankan I’ve met so far, I am the first white/foreigner Deaf person they’ve ever met. As Nerissa said, I’m Justin Timberlake to them. There’s twenty of them surrounding me at any time, eagerly asking me questions like, am I married? 9/11? Did I go to university? Am I English or American? What’s that on my head? Am I really, truly deaf? Do I hate Pakistan? Do I have a girlfriend back home? What am I doing here? When do I go back? Did Iraq really go to war with Lebanon?

My only concern is that, between the school and yesterday’s IDD event, I’ve talked almost exclusively with men and boys. If conversation length could be measured in dollars, and with the way things have been going, women’d be earning $0.02 to every $1 that men earn. I mean, it’s a cultural thing, that’s for sure, but I don’t want to appear like I’m ignoring all the women here.

Back to IDD. The local deaf association, RSCD (I have the full name somewhere in my photos; will edit this later), put on a three-hour performance at the community center (where all this took place). It involved about ten separate Sri Lankan dances, two magic shows, a couple speeches, two skits, and a candle-lighting ceremony involving local important people like the police chief, the president of the CFD (Central Federation of the Deaf), the principal of Rohana, and a couple others. Of course, it was all interpreted in Sinhala Sign Language, so much of it went over my head.

It was delightful to watch the show, and afterwards, everyone wanted to know my opinion right away. I told them I loved it as I’ve never seen Sri Lankan cultural dance before, and that, considering their resources, they put on a better show with a greater audience turnout than many American deaf state associations could accomplish, and that they should be proud.

But honestly, it was clear that they didn’t need my validation. They already knew they pulled off a great IDD.

I have pictures and so many more words to say, but I have a meeting soon with the principal of the school, Mr. N. Abeygunawardana. I’m on a dial-up connection (230 kbps) but, again, once I move into a guesthouse, I’ll start using one of Matara’s internet cafes which have faster connection speeds (supposedly).

Well, duh. Ayubowan doesn’t just mean good-bye. It also means hello, blessings, and all sorts of nice pleasantries. You say it while bowing a little and putting your hands together as in prayer.

But don’t get the idea that people are ayubowaning each other all throughout Sri Lanka. No one has greeted me in this way in the last five days, nor have I see anyone say this to anyone else. So much for that.

During the chaotic five-hour ride from Colombo to Matara, three words popped up everywhere and eventually turned into a mantra: Lanka Ashok Leyland. It’s on the front and rear of 75% of the buses and about 60% of the trucks here. A quick Google search a few minutes ago reveals that it’s the local car chassis corporation here.

Anyway, so I have been in Sri Lanka for about five days now (although it is a little difficult to keep track of time here, like on any other big trip). I’ve been staying at “Pointe Sud,” Nerissa and David’s home in Kamburugamuwa. It’s a gorgeous Indo-British colonial home perched atop a large hill overlooking the Indian Ocean. While the immediate surroundings are green lawns with coconut trees and banana plants, we are unmistakably in the middle of the tropical jungle. No big animals prowling around, though.

Nerissa, David, and their son, Sammi, are U.K. ex-pats who have been living here in Sri Lanka for about five years. Included among the many community projects they manage is the Rohana Special School, the place where I’ll be volunteering, probably officially starting tomorrow (I have a meeting with the principal today).

Living on an estate with eight house staff serving you three meals, afternoon tea, and lime drinks is not the typical way a volunteer begins his shift in a Third-World country, and I remind myself of that fact every day. Still, the ocean views are unbeatable, the sunsets mind-blowing, and there’s never been so many stars twinkling above the hundred-odd fishing boats whose searchlights mark the night horizon.

When I get more settled in — that means moving out into a guesthouse in Polhena in the next couple days, and starting at Rohana — I’ll definitely be able to blog more. There’s so much to say, really!

(Again, writing from the iConnect lounge in Singapore Changi Airport)

I gotta make this one quick, because I’ve got a 8:15 shoulder massage and shower appointment. Trust me, I need it. I know I’m staying at the Hilton tonight (for just one night, people!), but still, I want it now and not seven hours and an half-ocean later.

Singapore, wow. I blazed my way through Arab Street, Little India, Chinatown, Clarke Quay, Parliament Hall/City Hall, and the monstrous megamalls (Suntec City, CityLink, and whatever else’s in between those two).

Seriously, I didn’t plan on going into malls, but that was the only way I could get to the world’s largest fountain, the Fountain of Wealth. And I got to make a wish there!

Anyway, I went into a mosque, a Hindi temple, and a Buddhist temple which contains one of the last three remaining teeth of the great Buddha himself. No, I didn’t see the tooth. I asked to see it, but I didn’t really understand the answer the monk gave me, but ok.

The blogger I mentioned earlier couldn’t make it, so I went at it solo all day.

While in Arab Street, I passed lots of street cafes, so I was starting to get hungry. But then I came down with a serious case of food phobia. I couldn’t figure out what the hell I was looking at in any of those cafes (other than the rice). I saw yellowed fish, red stews with floating blobs of something-but-I-didn’t-want-to-know, and ripped, semi-dried pieces of meat.

Me, Adam, scared of food? I paced around the blocks for about ten minutes trying to figure out what to do. Finally, I just picked a place–Qayyum’s Kitchen–and the woman behind the counter asked what I wanted. I shrugged my shoulders and said, “I have no idea.”

She suggested a beef laska. Now, that I know. I bought it for $2 and by jove, it was absolutely delicious. Whew. Got over that.

Later on in Chinatown, I got a Thai coconut–the guy hacked off one end of it and put a straw in it for me to sip. I hated it and threw it away.

Anyway, Singapore, lotsa fun, wore myself out, that, now gotta run to the massage lounge. Next time you hear from me, I’ll be in teh Sir Lank!