By Dividing Classrooms, Are We Dividing Our Nation?

Sri Lanka's geo-strategic location in the Indian Ocean has over the centuries given it a diverse ethnic makeup. Today, we fancy ourselves to be a multicultural utopia, and refer proudly to our multicultural heritage where Buddhists, Hindus, Christians, and Muslims live side by side. We have temples, churches, kovils, and mosques all along the same street, festivals every second month, and a flag that tries its best to encompass us all! And yet, ask a school child what they know about another religion (or their own, for that matter!), and you end up with a blank face, a “no clue” shrug of the shoulders, a memorised textbook answer, or worse still, a stereotype.

- By Shaleeka Jayalath

The uncomfortable truth is that we are not raising our kids to be curious about differences; instead, we are raising them to avoid it. Whether we like to hear it or not, our society is deeply divided, and these divisions begin not in parliament or in politics, but in our schools.

Where it all starts.