The Kingswood Reader: A refined and sophisticated opus:

When I received the invitation to speak at this most august occasion, I must confess, I had to check Vihanga Perera’s invitation twice.

- By AVISHKA Mario SENEWIRATNE

Avishka delivering the keynote address

(Keynote Speech at the launch of the Kingswood Reader.)

You see, I’m not from Kingswood. I’m a Josephian—and in schoolboy terms, that makes me something like the distant cousin you see only at weddings, funerals, and maybe, at cricket or rugger matches.

But let me tell you sincerely why I stand here. Because beyond the colours of our alma maters, beyond the chants of “Go Kingswood!” or “Forward Joes!”, there is something more lasting, more sacred, more binding. It is the soul of our schools. It is memory. It is story. It is the written word that we pass down like a torch, from one generation to the next.

Traditions, whatever one may say of them, are, by and large, the essential forces that keep any institution true to its original purpose, and steady on its journey toward excellence. Traditions are, without doubt, the governing forces that have enabled Kingswood—or any school of its calibre—to stand the test of time, enduring wars, colonial rule, racial strife, and the challenges of each age. Times have changed. But must traditions change?

Secondary schools in Sri Lanka — they bear a history I can only describe as chequered. They were born of many impulses. Some were founded to appease a community, others to fortify a caste, to affirm a class, or to safeguard a religion. And then there were those — rarer, but nobler — born from the vision of a singular individual, who saw in the discipline of pedagogy the means to achieve a far greater end. Your school as you know more than I was established for that rare reason.

These institutions, forged in the crucible of the colonial era and tempered by the trials of time, carry with them stories worth telling. Some of these chronicles have been recorded for posterity; others, regrettably, remain unwritten.