Sri Lanka’s Education at a Crossroads: Combating Neoliberal Commodification and Colonial Dogmas

Education is a cornerstone of national development, shaping the cognitive, social, and economic futures of a country's citizens. In Sri Lanka, however, the national education policy faces a critical crisis characterised by the unreflective adoption of foreign curricula, politicisation, and commodification of learning. Despite the country's rich cultural heritage and diverse socio-ecological realities, education remains trapped within outdated colonial frameworks and market-driven agendas.

- By Manoj Jinadasa

This article critically examines the prevailing dogmas in Sri Lanka’s education system, arguing that these inherited models fail to address local needs and aspirations. By drawing on interdisciplinary theoretical perspectives, the article advocates for a fundamental reimagining of national education policy—one that privileges cultural relevance, ecological responsiveness, and emancipatory pedagogy to empower Sri Lankan youth and support sustainable national development.

Theoretical Framework

This article's critique is grounded in an interdisciplinary framework combining postcolonial theory, critical pedagogy, educational ecology, and recent advances in decolonial education and ecopedagogy.

Foundational postcolonial theorists like Edward Said (1978) and Homi Bhabha (1994) highlight how colonial legacies persist in education through the uncritical adoption of Western curricula, a phenomenon Bhabha terms colonial mimicry—“almost the same, but not quite” (p. 86). Contemporary scholars such as Boaventura de Sousa Santos (2018) extend this by advocating for epistemic justice and valuing epistemologies of the South, calling for education that respects diverse, local knowledges rather than reproducing Western dominance.

Paulo Freire’s (1970) critical pedagogy critiques the “banking model” of education and promotes a problem-posing approach that fosters dialogue, critical consciousness, and learner agency. This aligns with modern calls for culturally sustaining pedagogies that affirm students’ cultural identities and promote meaningful engagement (Paris & Alim, 2017).

Urie Bronfenbrenner’s (1979) ecological systems theory emphasises the importance of situating education within the nested social and cultural environments of learners. Recent work in ecopedagogy (Mellor, 2021) builds on this, linking education to social and environmental justice by recognising learners’ interconnectedness with their communities and nature.