REV. FR. E. CROWTHER S.J.
Elsewhere Fr. Miller has described the private years of St. Michael’s. The exciting times it went through with its hopes and fears and struggles to survive, constituted for him the finest hour of his association with it. For that hour forged into a cordial unity all the friendship of parents, pupils, teachers and friends. This was a spiritual value that was greater than any material improvement. But these last years were not without material, measurable achievements in the field of sports and studies and discipline, the yardstick by which the man in the street judges the school. Among many who were responsible for this, Fr. Peiris in the classroom and Fr. Weber in the playing field stand out. Fr. Weber is writing a history of sports at St. Michael’s. I have not seen his report, but I warn you that you will have to read between the lines to discover his own inimitable part in that history. This short article will deal only with Fr. Peiris’s connection with the college.
Fr. Paul Peiris had been a very successful Principal at St. Aloysious College, Galle for nearly twenty years and had raised it to unparalleled heights in studies and discipline and obtained the rank of ‘super – grade Principal’ by sheer merit. In 1963, his superior felt that he had done enough for St. Aloysious College which could go along without him, and that he should use his talents to serve St. Michael’s. The request was made, and carried out in true Jesiut fashion. He left an academically flourishing institution and a town where he had many friends for an academically struggling institution and came to people who were comparatively strangers. He came only to obey, as he wrote to his Superior, with a bleeding heart and with fear and anxiety for the future. Fr. Miller, the Rector of the college drove him in person from Galle and all along whispered words of encouragement in his ear. Soon his fear vanished. As he himself put it, “I came, I saw and I was conquered.” He fell in love with St. Michael’s and the people of Batticaloa, who found him free of any communal bias and sincerely interested in promoting the studies of their children.
From the word ‘go’ he jumped into his work, with both feet as Fr. Miller described it. Under his skilled hand the college began to purr like a cat that had just dined off a canary. One day I happened to come to the college. Was it a holiday? I asked. No one was seen on the corridors; gone were the unending processions for drinking water – or making it; gone were the shouts of the teachers in perpetual crescendo; gone were the private conversations of students outside the classrooms (and sometimes of teachers). Every body was in class, and every thing was in its place, down to the least scrap of paper. Everything was under control, the remote control of a Napoleon –size figure sitting in his office and occasionally popping out to teach a class. And then a special wave of silence followed him. I marveled. I wondered what secret magic magnified our Napoleon into an ubiquitous Colossus in the eyes of the students and a sophisticated staff.
I think I have found the secret. He knew clearly what he wanted, and how to get it, and set about getting it promptly and resolutely. What he wanted was what St. Michael’s needed most. First of all, a will to succeed. He found here a lack of aim and ambition. He set about persuading boys and teachers to want to succeed, and that they could succeed if they would only work hard. He wanted the older boys and teachers to come to him with their problem; he listened to them sympathetically and encouraged them. He spoke to them in assemblies; and students went around chanting ‘Pauline Thoughts’ like ‘The law of work is the law of life’ He himself was the personification of hard work and regularity. Even his Provincial had to bide his time to speak to him during class hours. And so he could exact hard work and regularity from his boys and his teachers. Late comers, fearful of his eye, made a dash for it when they passed his room. He tried to inculcate in his cynical clock – watching staff a certain pride in achievement. And when the O.L. results revealed that there were a dozen or more with five or six credits each and no fewer than fifteen distinctions in a variety of Science subjects, he succeeded in his efforts to show that hard work had immediate and tangible results. Facts were more eloquent than words, and teachers and students hardly needed any exhortations any more. They believed that Batticaloa brains were second to none, as Fr. Weber had proved for Batticaloa brawn. St. Michael’s boys resigned from the Loafers Club and St. Michael’s teachers from the Absentees’ Association.
He realized that hard work must go hand in hand with good updated teaching. So when the old guard faded out, he replaced them with graduates from the University of Ceylon who were more conversant with the requirements of the University from which they graduated, and would therefore, be more competent to obtain entrance into it. As the years went by, the University entrants classes began to grow larger as more boys qualified to enter them owing to the excellence of the O.L. results. Boys were attracted from other schools too, as more boys entered the University. Parents entrusted their girls to us because of their confidence in our discipline. Additional amenities were provided for the Ladies’ room which was reserved for their exclusive use. Thus St. Michael’s retained the name it always had for learning as well as for an almost Puritanical discipline.
The fame of St. Michael’s and Fr. Peiris was not confined to the Eastern Province. He soon became famous as one of the most knowledgeable educationists in the Island. His prize day speeches which were enthusiastically endorsed by the Chief guests hit the headlines in the Press and were even the subjects of editorials. Here is a sample: ’Very many of us mistake feeling for real thinking. We shrink from the first appearance of difficulty instead of facing it manfully. We rush into grandiose schemes without first without first calculating the cost. We love to have a good time which often amounts to living beyond our means. We are becoming notorious for our extravagance and intolerance. Our nationalism is frequently enough tribalism or even down right communalism. Our economy has been far too often only a riot of squander mania and our economic goal socialism towards pauperism with little concern for the economic development of our natural resources and less concern for capital formation for such a development. Our democracy resolves itself into an unending campaign of mutual vilification and an unholy scramble for power and position. Our personal ambition is too frequently to secure a comfortable (=lazy) white collar job in the government service. Our panacea for our national ills is nationalization. We shut our eyes to the economic miracles taking place in free and progressive countries like France, the Federal Republic of Germany, Japan, the U.S.A., Singapore and Hongkong, where nationalization has been rejected outright, as being outmoded and outdated. . We little realize that nationalization is the fore-runner of the slave state (how prophetic it sounds today) and complete nationalization is the end of the road for us all as free citizens and will end in the complete enslavement of the human spirit.’
To come down to a few dry statistics: in the seven years that Fr. Peiris was Principal. The enrolment nearly doubled itself and was in the region of 900 in June 1970. The staff contained 15 graduates and was becoming the envy of the other schools in the districts. The classrooms were multiplying rapidly and the laboratories were expanding. New furniture and equipment were procured to furnish at least two new classes every year; the old was replaced with new. The Sinhala stream which had been reduced to a trickle after 1956 became once more a sizeable stream with classes up to the G. C. E. O.L. and a separate block was found for it by reconditioning buildings formerly used by the religious community or boarders. Fr. Peiris’s care for the minority was rewarded and reflected by a boy standing first in the Sinhala O.L. in the Province with passes or credits in English and science subjects which included Chemistry, Physics and double Maths. Sinhala as an optional third language was provided for all non-Sinhalese students. Our boys came off with flying colours in Buddhism and Hindusim as examination subjects. Thus St. Michael’s was able to hold its own in every department in the midst of the fine array of Government and Director-managed schools that surrounded it; in numbers, equipment, staff and examination successes.
And then, at the height of its academic glory, a blow fell. It had to cease to be what it had been for 75 years – a Jesuit schools. One can only imagine what it meant for Fr. Peiris who had identified himself with St. Michael’s for seven years. But it has to be, and there are indications that Fr. Peiris had foreseen such an eventuality, albeit dimly, and had made provisions for it. Like sound educationist that he was, during the last years of his Principal ship he had thrown himself heart and soul, as his manner always was, without any letting up of his zeal for St. Michael’s, into the work of the organization of the Eastern Technical Institute. He saw that academic education to which he devoted himself all his life, could no more be the goal of the vast majority. Education had to be technological rather than academic. Was St. Michael’s then to become a Technical College? Certainly not. The new wine of technology could not be poured into the old wine skins of academic education. There had to be a new creation, and that creation was the Eastern Technical Institute, fathered by Fr.Peiris., not as Principal of St. Michael’s college, but by Fr. Peiris , the great educationist whose vision stretched beyond the walls of St. Michael’s college, to the world beyond. After all it was that world which he ultimately wanted to serve. His past achievements were as real as you can make them; but the situation had changed. To pursue the same goal would be to chase a mirage. The hour when he recognized this and went all out to help found the Eastern Technical Institute was perhaps the finest hour for him, tough perhaps his tears at parting from St. Michael’s as a Jesuit school – almost as his school;- blurred his vision. To others who saw and reflected on what they saw, it was his finest hour, the hour when he overcame inevitable defeat.
And now, what of the future of St. Michael’s? Has it none? Throughout its hundred years of history it has under gone many changes. But in one respect it has never changed. It – and I mean here the Management – always strove to serve the people and the government; to serve the people by providing the best educational facilities needed for the time, and the Gvernment by faithfully carrying out its policy. In doing this it strove to be the equal of any other school of its type in the Eastern Province, if not in the whole of Sri Lanka. During the last few years it did this with remarkable success inspite of, or perhaps because of, the greater obstacles it overcame. Under the new management it still lives by the spirit which animated it during the first hundred years, the spirit of indomitable perseverance in serving the people and the Government. To continue to serve, it will have to meet greater obstacles and undergo sweeping changes. But it has never been afraid of obstacles or shrunk from changes. That it will go from success to success, inspite of opposition or rather because of it, will be the most eloquent tribute to the undying spirit breathed into it, by its first founders, and its and their greater glory.