In an address given at a Workshop held in Jaipur, the text of which was carried in The Island of 23/11/09, Prof. Rajiva Wijesinha (RW) has tried to make out that we "straitjacketed all our children in a restrictive monolingualism" over sixty years back. In doing so, he had referred to the motion that J.R.Jayewardene moved in the State Council to make Sinhala the medium of instruction which he later amended to read as Sinhala or Tamil.

RW has apparently overlooked the fact that even at that time the preponderant majority of children in this country were entirely monolingual, (straitjacketed in a restrictive monolingualism, as he would like to say). In 1940, there were 650,910 children receiving their education in Sinhala or Tamil and therefore monolingual, as against 92,049 receiving theirs in English, as seen from the figures given in the Kannangara (Special Committee) Report of 1943. There were, of course, a negligible number in what were known as Anglo-Vernacular or bilingual schools. Thus we see that monolingualism has been with us not only after but even before the changes introduced in the 1940s.