No Future Without a Past: Oppose the NPP’s Education Reform”
id the people of this country vote for the NPP to erase our children’s connection to the past?
Under the newly proposed education reforms, the subject of History—until now a compulsory part of the school curriculum—is to be made optional. Let that sink in. Our children will no longer be required to learn about their roots, their heritage, their cultural identity, or the struggles and sacrifices that shaped this land.
Who is driving this agenda? Who stands to gain from a generation that grows up ignorant of its past? Certainly not the people. Certainly not the country.
History is not just another subject—it is the foundation of national consciousness. It teaches our children who they are, where they come from, and the values that bind us together as a society. To remove it from the core curriculum is to disarm an entire generation, leaving them vulnerable to manipulation, division, and cultural amnesia.
As the renowned historian Eric Hobsbawm once warned:
“The destruction of the past… is one of the most characteristic and eerie phenomena of the late twentieth century.”
If this is the direction Sri Lanka takes, we will have chosen amnesia over memory, rootlessness over rootedness.
Ten years from now, when our youth know more about foreign celebrities than their own national heroes, when they no longer remember Anagarika Dharmapala or the significance of 1815 or 1948—will we finally wake up? Or will it be too late?
This is not a reform. This is a deliberate act of erasure—and we must not stay silent.
Educationist Dr. Maria Montessori once said:
“To teach a child history is to give them the compass of identity.”
Stripping history from young minds is to rob them of that compass, and thus their direction.
We call on all concerned citizens, educators, historians, parents, and patriots to rise in protest against this dangerous and shortsighted move. We must force the government to reconsider and restore History as a compulsory subject, for the sake of our children and the future of this nation.
Let us not betray those who came before us. Let us not fail those who come after.
Dr. K. L. Fernando
Past president of College of Surgeons. Diploma in Archaeology. Red
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