Presentation by Harendra Alwis at a webinar organised by the library council of Trinity College on 25th June 2022 as part of the sesquicentennial celebrations of the school.
Rediscovering Trinity: How it all Began? Revisiting the vision of the pioneers & protagonistsWATCH: How did it all Begin? Revisiting the vision of the pioneers & protagonists
Presented by the Trinity College Library Council
The third episode of the Rediscovering Trinity webinar series discusses about several strands from history in a retelling of how Trinity began and trace the lives and work of a few of Trinity’s pioneering figures, to weave together a story about the school that may illuminate our present moment and offer hope for the future to all Sri Lankans.
Posted by Trinity College, Kandy on Sunday, 19 June 2022
Thank
you, Fr. Principal, Librarian Mrs. Illangakoon, and members of the library
council, for inviting me. The Chaplain, Parents, friends, well-wishers of
Trinity and Trinitians. I really appreciate the time you are dedicating to be
part of this webinar tonight or if you are watching a recording online. To the
majority of you who are in Sri Lanka, I hope the topic of this webinar and your
association with the Trinity story will prove meaningful especially at times
like these.
Introduction
I
am preceded in these webinar series by two illustrious old boys.
Mr.
Keshan Thalagahagoda made the point - which stood out for me - that the primary
responsibility of a Trinitian is to be a good citizen. Prof. Gishan Dissanaike
led an illuminating reflection, about the relevance and ingredients of an
all-round education… the kind that nurtures good citizens and empowers them to
think and act.
When
Rev. Alek Garden Fraser was asked to outline his vision for Trinity, more than
a century ago, in a country and a world that was very different from now, he
spoke along the same lines.
He
said:
The aim of Trinity is;
First.- To train Christians in Ceylon to present Christ through their lives; that their hearers may realise [Christ] not as a foreigner, but as the real and true fulfilment of all that is best and highest in their own aspirations and of their past.
Second - To make the pupils good citizens of their land,
(a) By carefully relating all that is taught them to the needs, problems, and language of their people,
(b) By deliberately striving to foster and encourage their sense of responsibility and readiness to act and, so working, to produce leaders.
To
be clear, he did not advocate for people to be converted to Christianity, but
instead, for all Trinitians to be “Christ like” - that also not according to
transplanted ideals about Christ, but the best and highest values in our own
culture and faith and being true to our own history and heritage.
He intended for Trinitians to be leaders who can understand their own people and their problems. But not self-ordained leaders or out of a feeling of entitlement to be leaders merely because we call ourselves Trinitians. Rather, for us to feel a genuine sense of responsibility for our fellow citizens, the ability to address their problems and a will to serve their interests.
What
Keshan and Gishan have outlined, is evidence that the vision of Alek Fraser has
not only remained relevant after a century, but perhaps more now than ever
before.
That
leaves me to share the stories that gave birth to that vision and what it took
to institutionalise them at Trinity. The stories I am going to share may not be
new, but I hope they will open new perspectives when woven into the story of
Trinity.
Preamble
If
I may borrow the words of John Berger, “never again will the story of Trinity
be told as though it were the only one.” The story of Trinity is one strand in
a rich anthology. I am not here to reaffirm that Trinity is “the best school of
all’. The story of Trinity is way more fascinating and way more important than
one about wanting to be the best. Most of all, it is a story that matters.
Especially if you are Sri Lankan. And regardless of whether you have anything
to do with Trinity.
To
someone looking from outside and able to see only what is tangible or
measurable, Trinity may seem unremarkable. There are schools that are older,
that have produced more influential people, that have better facilities… Even
as Trinitians - our own assessment of the school is often tied up with the
achievements of a few. Be that a list of notable alumni or the tally of
trophies we’ve won, or even the fact that famous people like the Queen and
Mahatma Gandhi have visited our school.
They
are all important aspects of the Trinity story for sure, but it is all too easy
to focus on them to the exclusion of the vision and institutional legacy of the
school that we need to celebrate and continue to cultivate. That's the reason
why the story of how Trinity began, needs to be rediscovered. It is only when
we see the story of Trinity as a part of stories about our community, nation
and the world that gave rise to it, that we can grasp its relevance in our
present lives and appreciate the hope and promise it offers for the future.
How it all began
Carl
Sagan, in his pioneering documentary series - The Cosmos - famously pointed out
that “If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the
universe”.
What
if you wish to make Trinity from scratch? How far in history would we have to
go back?
Homo
sapiens settled our island about one hundred thousand years ago and their
course in history has been shaped by the world they came into contact with;
from those who traded along the maritime silk-road of which our island was a
notable link between east and west and renaissance of Europe almost half a
world away, followed by their subsequent conquests of the East… Perhaps Trinity
may not have been established had not the Kandyan kingdom successfully repelled
successive European invaders for over 300 years - much longer than any
comparably sized state was able to do anywhere else in the world…
But
relax… I am not going to elaborate on any of those stories. Just to draw a
mental picture, I think each of us are like droplets in the river of history; a
river that has been nourished by all those streams and many more. Trinity is
like a little lake - if not a pond - up in the mountains, where some of us have
languished for a while and acquired shared memories.
So,
this is a story about how this pond of ours came to be; and a few streams that
gifted its distinctive rich waters. This pond and the streams that flow into it
matter to the extent that they nourish the thirsty souls living around it.
CMS
On
12 April 1799 a group of men and at least one woman among them, met in a
first-floor room in the Castle and Falcon Hotel at Aldersgate Street in London.
They came from various walks of life; among them preachers, writers and two
members of the British Parliament - Henry Thornton and William Wilberforce.
They were social and religious reformists who held deep convictions about
issues of social justice, gender discrimination and poverty. They were united
in one cause above all others – and that was the abolition of slavery! It was
the time when Britain was in ascendance on the world stage - on its way to
becoming perhaps the greatest empire the world has ever seen, and much of its
wealth and power was built on the institution of slavery.
Wilberforce
was their leader and John Newton – a former slave ship captain turned preacher
- who composed the famous hymn “Amazing Grace” was one of their mentors.
That
meeting in 1799 would lead to the formation of a ‘Society for Missions to
Africa and the East’. In 1812 it was renamed The Church Missionary Society for
Africa and the East or CMS as we know it. Its goal was the emancipation of the
body, mind, and soul - through the promotion of universal education and health
in the expanding British Empire. In other words, where the justification for
slavery came from arguments about the genealogical inferiority of
non-Europeans, they aimed to educate the masses of the new colonies as a means
of emancipating them. Because a “race” that is capable of doing mathematics as
it were, could not be considered ‘inferior’ enough to be enslaved.
The
CMS is the main catchment that nourished the Trinity pond.
‘Ceylon’
featured prominently in the deliberations of the C.M.S. from its early years,
however, it was not until 1817 that they moved to establish a mission here.
Its
committee appointed four preachers as missionaries to Ceylon and they arrived
in Galle on June 29, 1818. Rev Samuel Lambrick was assigned to travel up to
Kandy to establish the mission there. In October 1821, the Rev. Thomas Browning
arrived in Kandy with his wife, to join him, but in May 1822, Rev. Lambrick was
transferred away from Kandy. In June 1822, Rev. Browning received a government
grant of land, which still forms part of the present Trinity College compound.
So, the first institution that would eventually become Trinity, was established
there exactly 200 years ago.
Plantation economy, slavery, and indentured labour
At
the time, agricultural produce accounted for the majority of international
trade and European powers were competing with each other in South Asia to
control the spice trade - which was among the most profitable. As is always the
case, plantations, to be profitable, required cheap labour which in the
Americas, came predominantly from enslaved Africans. It was William Wilberforce
the same person who founded the CMS - who successfully led the motion in the
British parliament, to abolish the slave trade there in 1807.
There
is a movie called - “Amazing Grace” Directed by Michael Apted about this very
story.
Britain
would abolish slavery altogether in 1833. But once the slave trade had been
abolished in Britain, a large number of ships that were used for the
transportation of slaves across the Atlantic had no use. Many of them lay
anchored in ports from New Orleans to Baltimore.
Back
in Ceylon, the Uva-Wellassa rebellion of 1817 to 1819 shook the British East
India Company and they were spending more to suppress the population in the
provinces than what they earned from trading there. So, there was a push in the
1820s to introduce industrial scale agriculture in Ceylon. For that, the
government opened up land for European planters, but they needed a steady
source of cheap and compliant labour. In a cruel twist of irony, many of the
old slave ships were cheaply repurposed by the British in the 1820s and 1830s -
for among other things - transportation of indentured people mainly out of
India as cheap plantation labour throughout the colonies from the West Indies
to South Africa and Mauritius, as well as Ceylon and the Malaysian peninsular.
These ships were used also to transport the produce of those plantations and
more notoriously Opium that was grown in India to be sold in China - leading
ultimately to the opium wars.
The
British administration in India was responsible for causing a number of
famines. The poorest in South India, who perhaps suffered the most from those
famines, were promised a better life in Ceylon and brought here as labourers to
work in the plantations from the 1820s and this continued till the 1920s. They
were ‘offloaded’ in Mannar and marched treacherously on foot to Anuradhapura
and then to Matale - along what became known as “Skeleton Road”. Many died
along the way and a British planter described that “one could fill two carts
with the skulls of those [migrants] who have been abandoned, unburied.” The
survivors would be quarantined in Matale for two weeks and screened for
diseases, then brought to Kandy to be sent off to plantations all over the country.
Agriculture
has always been the bedrock of Sri Lanka’s economy, and it was colonised by
successive European nations that wanted to control the spice trade. But it was
the British who set up industrial scale plantations. Kandy - given the
location, became one of the main trading hubs - where the produce of the hill
country plantations was brought to be sent to Colombo.
People,
brought from South India, have to this day, sustained the plantations and
thereby the rolling fortunes of the Kandyan economy during the British period -
and for decades afterwards. Their staging post in Kandy was in Mahaiyawa, where
some of their descendants live to this day. Those men and women and their
descendants who have lived in Mahaiyawa since the 1820s, became one of the
streams that enriched the Trinity pond.
The
Colebrooke-Cameron Reforms of 1833 opened up the Ceylon Civil Service to locals
for the first time and standardised the education system - making English the
sole medium of instruction. An English education became a gateway to power and
wealth for aspiring Ceylonese, and Christian Missionary schools were especially
favoured by the government which gave them an advantage over non-Christian
schools.
As
a trading hub, Kandy attracted both the rural elite - who were essentially
plantation owners and administrators as well as the urban elite - the new
professionals who ran the trade exchanges and machinery of government. They all
needed a school that would provide an English education for their sons. The CMS
mission in Kandy had both the means and favour of the government to fill the
need better than any others. And so, it did.
When
the hill country coffee plantations prospered in their march across the hills,
they drew in professionals from all over the country and people seeking riches
from other parts of the empire, and the school thrived. But whenever the coffee
plants withered - the school too lost the population that sustained it.
Fortunes of the CMS schools in Kandy were tied to the plantation economy.
Cultural and religious revival in Ceylon
Meanwhile,
the world and our own history kept opening up. As a natural reaction to British
government policies including those which unfairly advantaged Christian
missionary schools, and also boosted by the archaeological discoveries in
Anuradhapura and Polonnaruwa including the ‘discovery’ of the Mahavamsa by
George Turnour - the 1840s paved way for a Buddhist revival in Ceylon. The
growing opposition to Christian Missionary work came from scholarly monks like
Hikkaduwe Sri Sumangala thero. They were not narrow-minded religious
conservatives but men who had broad breadth of vision and by all accounts, were
very liberal minded. Further afield, Charles Darwin published “On the origin of
species” in 1859 which undermined the authority of the Biblical creation
narrative on objective and rational terms. So, despite favourable government
policies, the latter half of the 19th century was a very tough time to be a
Christian missionary, especially in Ceylon.
The
decline of coffee plantations and the introduction of tea in the 1870s finally
helped stabilise the Kandyan economy. In retrospect, if not for the stability
and prosperity brought about by the tea plant, the CMS missionary school in
Kandy would have also continued to blossom and wither with the economic cycles.
So, during the course of the nineteenth century, the CMS mission that was founded half a century earlier… and a colony of South Indian labourers brought in by the most powerful empire the world has ever seen… and a resurgent Sri Lankan consciousness would all converge on either side of what is now DS Senanayake Veediya and Katugastota road in Kandy. It is a valley that stretches like a hammock towards the Mahaweli river, from the Kandy lake - strung from two mountains - Hantana on one end and Hunnasgiriya at the other. This is where Trinity College Kandy began, in 1872.
The
founders of Trinity College in 1872, were separated by more than three
generations from the founding of the CMS. Slavery was a thing of the past in
Britain and more recently in America with the end of the American Civil War in
1865. Perhaps feeling absolved of past sins, they saw England and the West as
the wellspring of all that was civilised and civilising. Britain already
controlled India and had decisively won the Opium wars, bringing the mighty
Chinese empire to its knees. So, it was perhaps natural for them to see it as
their great mission to make the rest of the world more like them - to
evangelise and Westernise the East. Even if early CMS missionaries at Trinity
were not blind to the cruelties of empire, they did not publicly question the
notion of the British empire as an institution ordained by God to gather all
the nations under her flag. The curriculum at Trinity (and content of the
library) at the time, reflected this adulation of western civilization to the
exclusion of much else. It was not only far removed from the students and the
community it wanted to serve, but ignored the archaeological facts being
unearthed before their very noses - that the Ceylonese they were ‘educating’ in
European classics were themselves heirs to a grand civilisation much older and
at least as rich as theirs.
Vision of the pioneers
It
is unlikely that Alek Garden Fraser was the first Principal of Trinity to have
a great vision for the school, but his was more aligned with the trajectory of
history and the genuine needs of the community. Perhaps even more importantly,
he had an ability to bring together a team of similarly inspired men and women
to realise his vision. There is nothing worthwhile that an individual - alone -
can do. Executing a vision requires a team of capable individuals and space for
them to also enrich it with ideas and energy of their own. Part of Fraser's
team were handpicked from the far corners of the Empire stretching from England
to Australia, but the majority of them were drawn from local stock. And it is
mostly the lives and work of those men and women that breathed life to the
great pioneer’s vision.
I
quoted Fraser’s own statement of vision earlier, but how did he and his staff
achieve it? Well, they have left many vital clues in their own accounts, and
also in the Trinity they built.
The
College Chapel invariably occupies a special place in our memories of Trinity.
To me, that is because it captures for the ages, the spirit of Trinity and her
pioneer’s vision in its true sublimity. However, by the time Rev Gaster drafted
its plans, Trinity was already the leading national school in the island. The
vision depicted in the chapel was more a reality than a dream.
The
idea about what Trinity could become was conceived during the construction of a
very different monument a decade earlier, half a kilometre away: at Asgiriya.
It may be tempting to imagine - that by merely reflecting on the murals in the chapel - that we could understand and emulate their message in our lives. But as Jacob Bronowski - author of “The ascent of man” wrote; “The world can only be grasped by action, not by contemplation. The hand is the cutting edge of the mind.” Fraser had the wisdom to realise that building an institution based on rich values required more than a visual meditation, but active participation. He shared that vision with Mr. Don James Abeywardene Jasinghe - his master builder and they decided that the ground will be built by the students and staff themselves. As a project, they recognised it’s potential to fulfil a much larger purpose than the building of a Cricket field, but of the construction of a collective identity and a shared sense of responsibility.
One of the most moving accounts of the construction of Asgiriya comes from Miss. Valesca Reimann’s history of Trinity, where she describes this rather poetically:
“The making of the new cricket-pitch began to assume gigantic proportions. It was found that after moonlight nights there was a miraculous advance on the following morning, as though gnomes or pixies had been at work in the silence of the moon. And so, it was. But the gnomes were college boys in their clothes and pyjamas working swiftly and singing lustily to the accompaniment of Mr C.B. Weerasinghe’s violin. Almost like Nero fiddling at night to the destruction of Rome. But this destruction of a hill was the construction of a field”.
As a project, he used it to establish a school without racial, religious or class barriers within, as well as in its interactions with the world around. As they toiled hard to build their ground, Trinitians would have learned that they could not do it alone - they depended on the help and generosity of others. Fraser also got help from neighbouring villagers to do specialist tasks. The association of the ground with workers from the neighbourhood in Mahaiyawa has been a lasting one - from construction to its maintenance up to now. The ground itself, and the fields of sport that it represents would be at the heart of a Trinity education.
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Visiting
teams that commented on the ‘beauty’ of this Cricket field were merely
captivated by the vistas from the pitch. But the true splendour of Asgiriya lay
beneath its surface. How could the boys not aspire to win every game they
played, on a surface that they had literally planted themselves?! I am not
saying that the Trinity identity was chiselled out of a hill at Asgiriya, but
it would have been unimaginable without it.
Before
construction commenced at Asgiriya, Trinity was still a provincial school among
many like it. By the end of construction in 1915 - Trinity had completed her
magical transformation. In that year, Amicus - an illustrated weekly magazine
at the time reported;
‘Trinity was first in the Intermediate Examination, first in the Arts Scholarship Examination, first in cricket, first in physical drill, first in military drill, first in shooting, first in boxing – for the Shield remains with them – without equal in rugger, and in running equal second.’ and by means of this ‘astonishing record, this provincial institution has forced its way into the very front rank of our great public schools and means to stay thus’.
Dare
I say, in that moment in history, Trinity had even become “The best school of
all”!
Being
the best and knowing it, even for a mere decade in the 1920s, can breed an
unhealthy ego. Merely being Trinitians is often sufficient to infuse even into
us - a century later - an air of superiority. When we talk about the “Trinity
Spirit” or sing about the best school of all, or even win the Bradby like we
used to from time to time, we often do so out of a sense of exceptionalism -
the unfounded assumption that we are better than the rest. But the reputation
of Trinity and of her legendary Principal, was built fighting against such a
sense of exceptionalism.
The
’Communicant’s Union’ of Trinity College was founded by Rev. W.S. Senior in
1909 - around the same time the land in Asgiriya was being secured. Members of
the union dedicated themselves to preaching the bible in neighbouring villages.
One cold evening in 1913, some members of the Communicant’s Union were
preaching in a village where they shared stories about Jesus, as a man who
served the poor and healed the sick. An old villager interrupted them, and
said, “Yes. We know the man you are talking about. He lives at Trinity College
and in fact he was here a little while ago and gave me this coat because he saw
I was cold.”
The
man was speaking about Norman Phillips Campbell, whom Fraser had recruited as
Professor of Chemistry and Scout Master at Trinity. He was a brilliant
scientist - tipped to be the next Lord Kelvin - when he left Oxford and
followed Fraser to Trinity.
He
founded the Social Service Union in 1910.
The
idea that a spirit of social service should be integral to a sound education
was argued by another great educator and contemporary of Fraser in India -
Tyndale-Biscoe - in his book “A mission school and social service”. It inspired
Rev. Fraser to do something about people living in the slums of Mahaiyawa,
where he noted ‘'the conditions were intolerable”. It was Norman Campbell who
formulated the programme through the Social Service Union.
Among
the projects of the SSU, they consulted local doctors to supervise the boys as
they visited the poor and sick in and around Kandy town as well as at the
hospital. A group of students built a shelter for rickshaw pullers while
another group ran a school for their children while younger members of the
Union organised Christmas treats for them. The union ran a program to help
opium addicts and beggars by investigating their circumstances, fulfilling
their basic needs, and helping them get access to rehabilitation. The Union
also organised lectures at the college on contemporary social issues. Rev.
Fraser said of Norman Campbell, that 'he saved men who were confirmed
opium-eaters or drunkards, using his own bedroom to lodge them in....’
Norman
Campbell is one of my favourite heroes in the story of Trinity. Not to be
confused with Rev. John McLeod Campbell who became principal of Trinity
following Fraser. Norman was a brilliant scientist who also practised
Christ-like service. It was he who designed the science laboratory building at
Trinity memorialising the great scientists including Darwin. In a world freshly
divided between science and God, he held deep convictions about both without
any conflict. His undivided devotion to science and the person of Christ would
become imprinted on the identity of Trinity College Kandy and remain one of the
profound and unique gifts I am personally grateful for receiving from the
school.
His
spirit of service would become the spirit of the school - as Mr Hilary
Abeyratne so movingly described to me at his residence in the Mornington
Peninsula one evening in 2011. Perhaps, it is not too far-fetched to imagine
that David Paynter himself may have been an active member of the Social Service
Union, or that he may have heard the story about how Norman Campbell and his
students had once gotten into faeces ridden drains in the Mahaiyawa slums to
unclog them, while leading a landmark survey there. The survey that they
conducted, triggered a debate about it in the Legislative Council - the
parliament at the time - and led to the passage of legislation which improved
the lives of those people.
It
is worth noting that some of the descendants of labourers brought from South
India were not afforded citizenship in Sri Lanka until as recently as 2003,
while many were sent back to India by subsequent Sri Lankan governments after
independence in order to maintain a favourable balance for their respective
parties in the ethnically divided electorates.
Even
though the school’s level of active involvement in the community has declined
over the years, the idea that Trinity should be deeply involved in the life,
education and improvement of the community was a deeply held conviction of her
pioneers. Fraser used to say, “If I go into a village and see the place full of
flies and mosquitoes, the poultry scrawny, the streets untidy and the houses
dilapidated, I know at once that the school - if there is one - is not doing
its job.”
Time
does not afford me the luxury to elaborate on the love of the land and people
of Sri Lanka that W.S. Senior’s poetry inspires or reflect on the influence of
K.J. Saunders’ - another hand-picked by Fraser - as a man who had a deep
respect for eastern philosophy and Buddhism in particular. If we were forced to
identify one man for creating a culture of deep mutual respect and unity of
race, religion, and class at Trinity, it would be the work of Saunders along
with Fraser that should be credited. There are Trinitians alive today, who are
more qualified than I am to speak of how Miss. Valesca Reimann’s love of music,
of history and humour have touched their lives. The architecture, murals, and
sense of worship the Chapel inspires, speak to us of all those things. Each of
its fifty-four pillars are unique, and yet uniform in design and equally
responsible for the load they bear. Each of them speaks with gratitude - of
those foreign and local donors - whose generosity made them possible. Each of
them also confidently bears an identity that is both cosmopolitan as it is
ancient, but always firmly rooted in local soil. It is a place that inspires
love and unity among all nationalities and religions of the land.
More
than four generations later, we are beneficiaries of the vision of our founders
only because they were successful in institutionalising it at Trinity. I recall
Dr. Jayantha Dhanapala’s Prize Day speech in 2004, where he pointed out:
“...that institutions, as the aggregator of individual achievements over the years, are ultimately what endure the test of time. Nothing is possible without men; but nothing is lasting without institutions.”
Traditions
and culture are major components of the institution that is Trinity, but the
role of leaders cannot be overstated. The School Officer's Guild, the Staff
Guild, Principal and Board of Governors as its custodians and stewards share a
great responsibility for advancing that vision.
The
visions of missionary educators are not without detractors, both in their time
and since. One of the criticisms is that their mission to educate was in many
ways a gateway for evangelisation - the conversion to Christianity of people
from other faiths. The second is that they both failed to criticise the evils
of empire and at times strengthened imperial ideology. Any response to these
criticisms requires both an impartial and case-by-case analysis.
Also,
the criticisms as well as any response to them need to consider their
historical context - which E.F.C. Ludowyk outlines in his well-considered
evaluation of the role of Christian missionaries in Ceylon, where he says:
“Most valuable in what came through the missionary to his pupils was in effect neither indoctrination nor familiarity with the Christian story; it was schooling coloured by certain values derived from the teacher’s own education in his homeland. What these men and women believed of course influenced their personality as teachers, but it was their character as men and women rather than their beliefs (in so far as they could be separated) which left its mark on those they taught. For all its inadequacies and misdemeanours this kind of education had most effect through the contact of the pupil with persons whose qualities of mind and character had much to give them. One can only regret that contacts such as these were available only to so few.”
Conclusion
In
the final analysis, the vision of the pioneers was to institutionalise an ethos
of unity and a spirit of service at Trinity College Kandy. To that end, they
initiated traditions to habitualise, monuments to memorialise and a holistic
education to empower the men, and women, who would pass through this
institution. Here, I echo what Mr. Thalagahagoda and Prof. Dissanaike has
already spoken of so eloquently - that the vision of the pioneers of Trinity
was to educate and equip Trinitians to be good citizens.
But
why good citizens? Why not aspire to produce powerful but benevolent leaders?
That question would have baffled us at any time in the past, but the answer is
clearer today than ever before. There are leaders who rule and leaders who
serve. Each must be moulded and raised very differently. The pioneers of
Trinity envisioned that Trinitians would be able to understand the masses,
empathise with them and serve their community, the country, and the world
competently - out of a sense of responsibility.
That
is why, as I promised this would be, the story of Trinity College is both
fascinating and relevant to all Sri Lankans, especially at the present juncture
in our history. The wisdom behind their focus on moulding good citizens is
dawning on us now. At this very moment, on our streets, we as a nation are
beginning to realise that our hopes of the future depend on the wholesomeness
of our citizens, rather than the benevolence of a few powerful rulers.
Finally,
even though we have much to treasure in the vision of our pioneers, as times
change, we as its stewards have the right and responsibility to revise and
update it. Does it need revision? Probably not. Does it need to be updated? Of
course, it does. For one, our avenues for social mobility are not limited to
the colonial civil service anymore; to every Trinitian leaving school today,
the whole world is open for play. It is vital, but not enough that we
understand our own people and our own history; we need to encourage students to
learn world languages, world history and geopolitics. The world today is
connected in very different ways than it was in Fraser’s time, and on wholly
different terms. Technology like quantum computing and fusion energy, perhaps
even more than imperial powers, may govern the dynamics of the world order in
years to come. All these, and existing issues like climate change, will present
new problems and opportunities that are unprecedented in human history.
There
is a need for law and legal reasoning to be introduced as a serious subject or
practically as a model court system at secondary school level. While our
responsibility to be good citizens cannot be overstated, perhaps we have even
greater obligations to fulfil as parents, partners, siblings and towards our
parents, and need an education that sufficiently emphasises those and equips us
to meet them. More broadly, education policy has to keep up with the social,
political, technological, economic, and ecological change around us, and
Trinity, like she has done in the past, has a lot to contribute to meaningful
and visionary reforms.
There
is an even more enduring lesson in the 200-year history of the CMS missionary
school in Kandy. That is; Trinity is not an island oasis. The fortunes of our
school will remain inseparable from the fortunes of our community - in Kandy,
in Sri Lanka and the world. It is not by any measure of how much we are better
than others that will determine the prosperity or greatness of our school - but
by how ably we serve and how ‘Christ-like’ we mold each subsequent generation
to be.
I
thank God for the wisdom and faith of the pioneers and the resilience of the
community that has sustained our school, and pray that her leaders, teachers, students,
and alumni will strive, despite our limitations, to be a blessing to our
neighbours.
Thank
you all very much!
