".edu.lk" what I think...

When a child is born in Sri Lanka, the first thing parents do is start dreaming about who my child will be when he/she has grown up. Most of the time what parents think is, I hope my child would be a Doctor or an Engineer. The Sri Lankan education system is also obviously constructed by one such a person who dreamed about making kids Doctors or Engineers. Why I am saying this is because of the way that the prevailing system directs students and make them the victims of the system.

According to what I read about SL(Sri Lanka) education system, it has a history of approximately 2300 years. But the major reformation of the system came up with the establishment of Royal College, Colombo following the recommendations by the Colebrook Commission. After the establishment of Royal College-Colombo some more boy-schools were founded, St.Thomas College-Mount Lavina and Trinity College-Kandy are some of these. In 1931 Dr.C.W.W.Kannangara took initiatives for free education in SL and in 1942 the dream of free education became a reality, providing a great opportunity for everyone to receive their education without spending money.

In any country, the quality and the focus of the Education System play a major role in its development process or more generally speaking, the future. If the education system can hunt for the hidden talents of an individual and capitalize on them in order to make his career a sparkling one, then that I see is a successful education system. Nevertheless, most of the time that attribute is not seen in our (SL) prevailing system. This leads to heaps of problems such as unemployment, unbalance in wealth distribution and social status differences. Moreover, we can see the education system as a major factor which governs the mentality of the society.

First, let us take a look at the education a student gain up to ordinary level (11 years of education). From year 1 to year 5 the education system is mainly focused on teaching the basics of reading, writing and mathematics. Hence, after the first 5 years, the majority of students can read and write fluently. Therefore we can come to a conclusion that the literacy index of SL which was at 93%(highest in Asia) in 2003 is a sole outcome of a successful preliminary education(first 5 years) system. After that, the education system focuses on complex concepts and tries to go in depth in almost in all he subjects. Here, the question arises... Do all the students need to go in depth in all the subjects? Is this their will? The system always fails to answer such questions.

A student who wishes to become a painter, singer, dancer or a football player should learn about matrices, polynomials and graphs. I see no logic behind it. What I feel is that it is a waste of time. If there is an approach for them to specialize on the field they like to focus on, that would do much help to their future. In that case, it would be much useful if they can focus on simple mathematics and work more on what they like to do. Someone who is willing to become an Engineer or a Doctor can go in depth in mathematics and science. We all know that some people don't have enough intellect to solve complex mathematical problems which is not their fault but the way that their brains work. For a student who doesn’t have that intellectual capacity, teaching complex concepts is a mean of mental torture.

People might argue that this specialization program starts only after ordinary levels and that is what advance level is all about. But I disagree with that concept since, 11 years is too much time for basic education. Instead the system should focus on developing a career path to the fellow students. After 11 years of so called structured education if someone is still trying to figure out or still have no idea whatsoever on what to do for a living, that system is obviously a failure. Therefore rather than torturing students with complex mathematical or scientific concepts for a long period such as 6 years, if they've been taught on a specific career, they could have become successful individuals who can earn their living.

The mindset of students is framed insanely so that they don’t even realize the ultimate destination of the education that they have been subjected to. Nevertheless, students go to school and majority spend time there hanging around with friends without adding value to their lives. (I am not denying the fact that even hanging out with friends adds value to life; I’m primarily concerned on the ultimate goal of the prevailing education system.) Sri Lankan students never give any thought on how to earn some money or how to start a business while they are in schools. Due to this ideology SL always has a scarcity of a dynamic work force. We are wasting valuable energy of our young adults and relying more on matured personals. That I see is one of the major reasons for fewer innovations in SL.

To be continued…

Thanks for reading,
Best regards,
Pradeepa…

Should have...

Hmmmm... Another entry...
I got my new year vacation last Friday and therefore i had to spend a lot of time alone. Being alone is always annoying because it recalls past memories good and bad. Good memories are obviously alright but the bad ones are the problem. Then only I realized that how many 'Should haves' I've got in my life.

When we spend time with people, sometimes we enjoy every and single bit of it and also there are moments where we kind of neglect those who are around us. Sometimes it's not the negligence, it is simply that we don't mind them being around. We just be with others. There are moments where people around us expect more from us. If we neglect them when they want our attention, they'll get hurt and no body knows what the consequences would be. Then after a while when we realize the mistake, the set of words 'Should have' comes to our mind.

But, if we show our love and how much others mean to us, then this will not happen. Despite, it is not an easy task to show love all the time. Because nobody is perfect. So, unless you are 'nobody' you can't be perfect. Nevertheless, if we try our best to show what our real emotions towards someone are we will never have regrets in our life and we will not be mumbling those words 'Should have' later...

Thanks for reading,
Best regards,
Pradeepa...

That thing which makes you happy...

It's been a while since I posted something on my blog. I'm kinda busy and started playing games in the leisure time rather than hanging around in social networks. So, my leisure time had an exponential growth and the time for the blog had come down drastically. 

Last few weeks were eventful, had some friends hanging at my place and had some parties. Started a new degree, new class new friends and the most interesting thing for me is my new laptop. :D 
I was hoping to buy a laptop and was checking out brands and reading reviews and all, but finally it became a pain in the a**. So I just went to a shop and bought something I felt good. It is cool. A good choice I THINK.

Anyhow, this simple incident changed me a lot. Now I'm so happy with this piece of machine coz I can play games in it. lol. I was being all moody for a long time and this simply changed me, it's like unleashing the player within. :D  I've learned something coz of this machine,that is, to live happily in life we don't need many stuff, but we need that simple thing which can make us busy all the time. If we have that, we are happy and if we don't have that we are simply looking for it.

But it can change time to time. That's what happened to me. And I like it.... I like the change... :)

Thanks for reading this rubbish,
Best regards,
Pradeepa.

Virtual Discussions

As Social Networking become a common aspect in our lives, virtual discussions sometimes play a crucial role in our day to day activities. We all chat with our friends, partners and also with our enemies. Not only in chat rooms; we have threads, like discussion forums and groups where many people can express their thoughts. But does this convey the feelings we have towards some fact in the exact way that they are supposed to.

Sometimes they do... yes.. but most of the time it's pretty hard to convey the emotion to the receiving party. People talking face to face can always see others expressions and those who talk over the telephones can hear the change in the voice of the other party which will give them an inkling about the emotion.

Lots of misunderstandings can be caused by this type of communication. So why do we still do this? That is because sometimes some people need more time to process their thoughts and covert them into words I guess. Those people can't discuss facts quickly. Nevertheless, we have more time to think when we write something which let us express our thoughts very freely and very clearly.


When it comes to very sensitive cases Virtual Discussions are almost useless. Despite, we have to participate in many face to face sensitive discussions in our lives. So we can't always rely on Virtual world. We have to step out and enhance our communication capabilities in real world. We should always try to discuss matters in person and try to grasp the exact view of the other party.

This will shape up our lives and there will fade out many misunderstandings.

Based on personal experience...

Thanks for reading.
Best regards.
Pradeepa...

"Spineless Shameless 'something"

I've heard some people abuse others saying you "Spineless Shameless 'something'". I was wandering about this contradiction for quite a long time now. So just thought of writing about it.

How can one become Shameless and Spineless at the same time?
Let's break this up and analyze.

What is being Shameless? According to what I believe, 'Shameless' is the word which describes someone who does stuff which conflicts with the common beliefs and standards of the society. I don't think I should give examples, coz they are all around you. You might also be 'Shameless' in some aspects. But it is always relative. Living with many groups of people who grew  up in different societies, we often experience different thresholds of 'Shameless'ness. When someone is said to be 'Shameless'  that means he/she has done something which exceeds the threshold.

What is being 'Spineless'? I think this means that a person has no inherent power to act bravely. That means he/she always move in the safe zone. He/She never leaves the safe zone and try something different. So obviously he/she will never try to do something which exceeds the threshold of 'Spineless'ness.

So if someone is Spineless, that someone is not Shameless and vice versa...

lol...

Thanks for reading,
Best regards.
Pradeepa...

Define Love...

Defining the word 'Love' would be a very hard thing to do. It's like teaching 'how sweet the sweet is'. Once you in it you'll understand it. But to be in it, all should answer the hardest question they'll ever come across in life. "Do you love me?"...
When one asks about undefined human feeling, you become so confused and sometimes you take wrong decisions. That is simply because you don't have any clue what love is.

Some say I've been in love once. But was that actually love? If that's actual love, then how come it become history? Some say the other party didn't respond, or the other party didn't love in return. Take a break, do you need two parties to love? To me loving and flying are different verbs. To fly you need two wings, to love you don't need wings at all. If you love someone, does he/she should always love in return? Love is not always a mutual feeling. So it can be one sided. Love can never be history. If you ever loved someone, when you see him/her ever again in your life, you will always feel something which you cannot explain. You might not be his/her partner, But he/she will always be your lover, coz love is eternal.

Moreover, can't people love more than one person at the same time. If that's the case, a person who lost loved ones will never be able to love again. Is that fair?

You can see a person having sex with a group sometimes and might scream that's BAD.  You find it either in pornography or in prostitution. But why should one compare love with pornography or prostitution. Is it the same? NO WAY!!! If you are committed to someone, it's your duty to be faithful. But being faithful doesn't mean that you should only love one person. To me, one can love many people, but that is as long as you don't capitalize on your feelings other than to your partner. If you do so, that's being unfaithful. If your unfaithful, you hurt feelings of your partner, so that means you don't love him/her.

I don't know what love is. But this is what I felt. More to write, will write later, coz I got lectures to attend.

Thanks for reading.
Best Regards.
Pradeepa.

The first drop...

Many of my friends have 'so called' blogs. Most of the time to me it was just, I don't know, some thing which has no meaning. Some of my friends type pages and pages about stuff they think that are creative and controversial. Some turned out to be heated conversations while others left unspoken. I don't have any clue what I'm gonna write in this blog. But most of the time I'm good at expressing thoughts in written medium. So, I also decided to start a blog. This blog may contain useful info, and 'crap' at the same time. So we'll see... where this gonna take me... Let the Glacier melts...

Thanks for reading.
Best Regards.
Pradeepa...