I was quite intrigued to read about the "English as a life Skill" programme apparently sponsored by the Presidential Secretariat. While we must applaud any attempt to teach English to our people, there are reasons to believe that this particular effort is mere eyewash.

Consider these factors:

1) Why should the President’s Office run a national programme like this, when the Ministry of Education with all its resources can do it much better? What we need is not more tuition classes (with teachers from India) but a proper action programme led by the Ministry of Education. I believe the President’s Office is not equipped to run such programmes at all. Is somebody trying to create a small sphere of influence for himself by creating an ad hoc system of teaching English using that office?

2) Who designed and planned this programme? Who were the educationists and specialist teachers of English behind this programme? From the newspapers we gather that a gentleman by the name Dr. Sunimal Fernando is behind the programme. But according to Dr. Fernando himself, he is a sociologist, not an English specialist.

3) Dr. Fernando has said we should learn what he terms "South Asian English" as opposed to English the rest of the world speaks. Dr. Fernando says for "South Asian English", grammar and pronunciation are unimportant. He recommends a kind of sign language in which we just try to crudely and weakly express ourselves and calls it English. Would Dr. Fernando recommend this kind of English to his own children?

4) Can we properly learn a language when we are encouraged to learn bad English at the outset? Will qualified educationists endorse this method of learning a language?

5) Can anyone learn our own language Sinhala for instance, if he or she is told that rules of grammar and pronunciation do not matter at all? Maybe, Dr Fernando’s long association with politicians has made him lose any sense of grammar and pronunciation.

6) We must be the only nation in the world to attempt to learn English from Indians, for whom it is a second language. When the governments of the UK, the US, Australia and even Canada were more than pleased to teach English here, why did Dr Fernando decide on India as his resource base? According to Dr Fernando it is because they do not follow rules and pronunciation of mainstream English.

Does this make sense as a national policy?

It is time the Ministry of Education stated its policy with regard to various programmes run by people of all shades and shapes in the name of teaching English.