The Island
Features
Thursday 1st October, 2009
11
without a proper breakfast. I have
seen mothers feeding their children on pavements while waiting
for the vans that take them to
school. Set this scene against the
hypocrisy of the tall foreign-fertilised weeping willows in our society, who are pre-occupied with the
proverbial white van. They are
subject to corporal punishment
that forces them to believe that the
solution to any problem is to be
found in the use of violence. The
symbol of cancer in our society is
the girl who took her life in her
hand and transcribed her
force-fed guilt on a cell in
a phone. I can say no
more than quote a few
discontinuous extracts
from what a poet once
said.
by Eymard de Silva
Wijeyeratne
In the mellow glow of twilight
Shrouded in solitude and fear
Sight dimmed with unshed tears
Grandfather in autumn of his
life
Sees
Spring-children born to mothers
Cry hurrah for the Principal
Who carries a bag of rules
And cane for pinch-hitting
Boys, whom he treats as mules.
The boys are well-sheared and
kempt
The Principal hair-conscious but
bald
o select a day at random and
call it ‘Children’s Day’ is
mankind’s datelined
hypocrisy. Every day in man’s life
is authenticated by bubbling joy of
children and the scream of infants
in overcrowded maternity wards.
National statistics reveal the mockery of an aging population in Sri
T
Children at Kaladi
beach Batticcalo.
Pix by Sujatha Jayaratne
Lanka as retribution for the injustice meted out to children. Yet the
Book of Proverbs (17: 6) says this
about children: “Children’s children are a crown to the aged and
parents are the pride of their children”.
The plight of children in Sri
Lanka is perilous as far as education is concerned. The media carries frequent reports of the defects
and shortcomings in the system of
education: ill-conceived syllabi,
poor quality text books, substandard teachers, and muddled question papers. Add to this the agony
of the parents who wish to get
their children into a school. We
crow about right of a child to education, yet this right is subject to
their passing an admission test.
What is the fate of those innocents,
who fail the test? What of the child
whose father’s treasury cannot
afford a fat donation. This is only a
part of the story.
Children are hustled and hurried in the morning half asleep
“There was a child
went forth every day,
And the first object
he looked upon,
that object he
became,
And that
object became
part of him for
the day
Or a certain
part of the day
Or for many years
or stretching cycles of years…
His own parents, he that father’d
him and she that had
Conceived him in her womb and
birth’d him,
They gave this child more of
themselves than that,
They gave him afterward every
day, they became part of him…
The family usages, the language,
the company, the furniture,
The yearning and swelling heart,
These became part of the child
that went forth every day and
Who now goes, and will always
go forth every day”.
(There Was a Child Went Forth:
Walt Whitman)
If consultants and counsellors
say that a school is a child’s second
home, can that object become a
part of him for the day or a
stretching cycle of years as a pleasant memory?
!