![]() The results have been startling and stark we are currently witnessing a sustained brain drain of those same professionals who owe their lives, and education, to this country.Īdded to these are problems of proper remuneration, job security, and stability. The end result, I think, is an agglomeration of professional ‘White Collarites’, at the cost of the workers and labourers on whom the future of any industry really depends. An offshoot of this was the divorce of practicality and scholasticism of another sort one which led many to perpetuate prejudices against manual labour to such an extent that manual labour was seen as something to evade. The arts, obviously, were out, and subjects and fields which promoted the white collar over the blue collar (in a rather crude sense) were up: the professional fields. Divorced from their surroundings, those who had studied and remained unemployed took to the streets, protested, and in the end, attempted to topple an entire Government (the historical progression from the one to the other has been charted by so many, including Gamini Samaranayake, who contended at the 1971 insurrection showed, for the first time, that the government was fragile).įrom the ivory tower liberalism of the early days, we came to a consumerist society, which privileged practicality over scholasticism and which came to privilege subjects that reflected this new way of thinking. That is how the arts, more particularly the liberal humanities, were seen as ivory tower subjects, epitomised in novel after novel (Akkara Paha) and film after film (Walmath Uwo) which depicted this conflict as subsisting between the old and the young. In other words, the social impact of what one learned was divorced from what one actually was taught. Right after independence, our education system, which incidentally had not yet bifurcated between the elite schools and the non-elite schools the way it has today, and which included in particular our Universities, continued to privilege a rift between education and its applicability. If one peruses the history of our education system, one notices a radical shift from the immediately post-colonial period to the present. The ball, as always, has got to start rolling from one place. It’s class consciousness at one level, a gross misconception at another. The Electricity Board needs its share of engineers just as much as it needs a share of workers and support staff, drivers and repairers, and the Water Board needs it share of assessors and experts just as much as it needs its share of meter readers.įrom the ivory tower liberalism of the early days, we came to a consumerist society, which privileged practicality over scholasticism and which came to privilege subjects that reflected this new way of thinkingįorget the fact that the latter in both cases are paid lowly, and sometimes abnormally so, and remember the painful fact that even if they are paid handsomely, their jobs are looked down upon. This isn’t a convenient truth, it’s the only truth, and insofar as the problems of labour shortages in this country are concerned, it’s the truth that matters the most. No industry can thrive for long without a healthy balance between white collar professionals and blue collar labourers. Addressing that predicament is no longer an option. Those once held notions of honour and dignity in labour have all but completely gone, and what is left behind is a predicament. We are expected to become doctors, engineers, lawyers, accountants, and consultants. ![]() ![]() In the end, we have to import labour, and in the end, if we don’t address that issue, we’ll have to keep looking outside.” Aptly put, considering that what is true for construction and engineering in this respect is true of every other field: no one wants his or her child to get down and get dirty in manual labour. Jayasiri Samaratunga, who has been involved in both the private and the public sector in the construction industry and thus is acutely aware of the problems afflicting both, once told me in straightforward terms, “No one wants his or her daughter to marry a mason baas, and that is why this industry lacks adequate blue collar workers. No industry can thrive for long without a healthy balance between white collar professionals and blue collar labourers
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |