• Chatting with Goolbai Gunasekara

The name Goolbai Gunasekara is synonymous with education and literary wit in Sri Lanka. As a distinguished educationist and author, her career has been nothing short of legendary. 

As the Founder Principal of Asian International School (AIS), Gunasekara played a pivotal role in establishing the school as a model for progressive education, leading it for over two decades. She won the Zonta Award for ‘Woman of Excellence in Education’ and was the Gold Award Winner of ‘Inspirational Woman of the Year 2016’. 

As a writer, Gunasekara has authored several books, from more serious books like ‘World Empires and Great Movements (from 5 BC to 1871 AD)’ and ‘Chosen Ground: the Clara Motwani Saga’ to humorous books like ‘Up Sigiriya with Kitkat’ and ‘It’s the Escalator I Can’t Manage’ and most recently, ‘Life Can Be A Frolic!’. 

Her humour and insights have captivated readers for decades. Her newest book, ‘Life Can Be A Frolic!’ – a collection of humorous essays – combines Gunasekara’s educational expertise and humorous outlook on life to offer readers a look at how she views life.

With ‘Life Can Be A Frolic!’ having hit bookshelves six months ago, The Sunday Morning Brunch sat down with Gunasekara for a chat on the book and on life. 

The importance of good humour

‘Life Can Be A Frolic!’ is a compilation of a series of articles she wrote as part of a humorous column for a lifestyle magazine. This book marks her fourth published work of humour, following two others available on Kindle and one printed privately in India. 

Despite her reputation as an esteemed educator and the fact that she has published serious books before, Gunasekara shared that it was humorous works she was most known for and most comfortable with. “I’ve always written humour; it’s my genre,” she said, noting that despite her love for the genre, “humour never wins any prizes”.

But humour is essential, and Gunasekara shared that she had received very touching feedback on ‘Life Can Be A Frolic!’ with readers having reached out to her to share that the book had helped them through times of mental distress or grief, tying back to one of Gunasekara’s fundamental beliefs about life – that humour always helps.  

This recognition of the importance of good humour in any situation is also something that helped her immensely as an educator. 

“I believe that humour is absolutely vital. If you don’t have a sense of humour, you’re not going to be a good disciplinarian, principal, or teacher. You need it because you’re dealing with so many people, and people are not always courteous,” Gunasekara said. 

Good humour can also de-escalate even the most delicate of situations and was always something that helped her connect with her students and communicate sensitive messages whilst still staying approachable, especially when dealing with impressionable age groups still finding their place in the world. 

When it comes to writing, humour also allows Gunasekara to tell more impactful stories based on her real-life experiences and many of her anecdotal books take this approach, stemming from real-life experience but with a twist for dramatic licence. 

“The articles where I mention people, they’re exaggerated, always exaggerated,” she explained, adding that even ‘Life Can Be A Frolic!’ saw some playful exaggeration. It is this approach that allows her to communicate deeper lessons while still maintaining levity. “Anybody or any incident is exaggerated for the purpose of humour, but there is also always a grain of truth.”

Unpacking ‘Life Can Be A Frolic!’

Delving into Gunasekara’s unique way of encapsulating her experiences humorously while still outlining an important message, here’s an excerpt from ‘Life Can Be A Frolic!’. Titled ‘A time of teenage reading – is it gone forever?’ it covers not just the importance of reading while young but also how reading for young people has changed over the years. 

An excerpt from ‘Life Can Be A Frolic!’ is reproduced below:

“Our strict and highly sarcastic form teacher, Miss Cockburn (pronounced Co-burn), walked into class and spoke softly. We hated that soft voice. In fact, we dreaded her voice altogether but when it was soft, we knew it presaged danger. Our throats closed. Our minds went into shut down mode. She never had to say, ‘Be quiet.’ Just hearing her footsteps down the corridor was enough to silence us for the rest of the day.

Today was not going to be a day of joy.

‘Open your desktops, you egregious bunch!’ She never used a simple word when a dictionary-needing-word would do.

As if on springs, every desktop opened. Nobody moved while Miss C looked at us expressionlessly through thick bifocals. Her silence was more unnerving than the boom of cannons (a technique useful for teachers of today).

‘Do you read books, my dears?’ she enquired silkily.

‘Of course, Miss.’

‘And what did you read last?’ This to Hyacinth whose reading tastes were on ‘The Sheik’ level – a book of impossible romance set in the Arabian desert.

Hyacinth’s mind scurried around.

‘Er, ‘Jane Eyre,’’ she ventured.

‘I am not speaking of textbooks, my dear,’ Miss Cockburn’s sarcasm was starting to show. ‘Can your little minds think of the latest potboiler going the rounds?’

‘What’s that?’ Hyacinth whispered to Barbara Braddon, the class genius.

Miss Cockburn’s hearing was better than that of a sonar-tuned bat.

‘I mean the sort of literature you all find so vitally interesting in spite of all the excellent books with which Bishop’s College provides you.’ The gloves were off, and we knew what she was after.

Three prefects were summoned to search our desks. There were two copies of ‘Lady Chatterley,’ a Frank Yerby offering, two Parkinson Keyes romances, and a few minor unsuitable books. Certainly not the high key areas of literature our teachers expected, or rather hoped for!

‘Lady Chatterley’ was confiscated and parents of the readers informed. The Frank Yerby and Parkinson novels were sent to the school’s garbage bins and the lesser ‘unsuitable’ books confiscated anyway.

‘That copy of Yerby is not mine, Miss,’ said Hyacinth desperately in whose desk the Yerby ‘Foxes of Harrow’ had been found. ‘I have to give it back to the owner.’

Miss Cockburn raised her eyebrows while her grip on the novel tightened.

‘What a risk you take with books not your own,’ was all she said.

The irreverent talk among the class was that these books were all read in the staff room before being dispersed elsewhere, but who knew that. Certainly, our parents could not be appealed to as they had no idea of our reading tastes whatsoever. They assumed, with no basis at all, that our minds were always on the up and up.

We shut our desks and the lesson proceeded. It had taken Miss Cockburn all of seven minutes to conduct the search, confiscate the books and teach us a lesson we never forgot. We never brought ‘unsuitable’ novels to school again.

Let us switch to modern times. Who would have thought that teachers saying ‘Don’t read such literature’ would be replaced by parents angrily yelling ‘For heaven’s sake read.’ ‘Lady Chatterley’ is now a virtual classic while the other authors are no longer on the reading circuit of youth. What a pity that authors like Somerset Maugham, Anya Seton et al. are difficult to find at a bookstore. A library may have their books but even that is rare.

‘So, what is the last novel you read?’ I asked my O/L kids the other day.

‘Huh?’

‘You know – story books?’

‘Harry Potter’.’

‘‘Game of Thrones,’’ said a more erudite youngster who actually reads the books of George R.R. Martin.

‘Comics,’ said a third.

‘Miss is your favourite Superman or Spiderman?’

I had to confess I did not know – nor did I read comics. In the eyes of my pupils, I was ill-informed indeed.

‘Oh Miss, what a pity,’ said the class nerd. ‘You really should read more.’

Give me an answer for that, anyone!”

Wisdom from a storied educator

Brunch also picked Gunasekara’s brain for stories from her decades-long career in setting standards in education. Her approach to teaching and school leadership was shaped not only by her own experiences but also by the wisdom passed down from her mother, Clara Motwani, who was also an educator. 

“My mother gave me a list of 40 dos and don’ts for a teacher, and many of them were quite witty,” she shared, noting that as times and context changed (for instance, not all her mother’s rules could be applied in the context of an international school), she had made this list of dos and don’ts her own. 

Some rules handed down to Gunasekara by her mother are age-old. One key piece of advice she received and has always followed is to do with discipline in teaching. 

“My mother told me, when you start a class, start it standing. Don’t sit at the desk,” she recalled, explaining that this was based both on the teacher being more engaged at the start of the class and setting the tone for the lesson, as well as being in a position where they could better command respect and enforce discipline should they need to. 

Another cardinal rule that has remained timeless is: “Never simply read from the textbook. You must know what is in the textbook, of course, but you must never read from the textbook to your students, and you should not allow the child to read from the textbook in class either.” 

Gunasekara’s guiding principle, however, has always been fairness. One example of such was how she approached the dress code in an international school attended largely by children of affluent backgrounds. 

“In an international school setting especially, there will always be a competition about clothes and shoes. We used to ban it by setting clear guidelines,” she explained. “We eliminated competition as much as possible.”

Fairness doesn’t always mean treating everybody through a blanket one-size-fits-all approach. 

“I was very particular about punctuality when I was Principal. I used to make teachers sign the attendance register in my office so I could monitor their punctuality. 

“One teacher told me finally that, for various reasons, they couldn’t get to school until the first period of the day was over. I allowed that as an exception, but I also assigned them extra work to maintain fairness and avoid favouritism. 

“Fairness is essential, but you must always be available to reason and open to being kind.”

Education in an ever-changing world

Discussing changes in education over the years and particularly since her retirement in 2014, Gunasekara expressed some concern about the direction in which the education system was heading, especially when it came to local schools and syllabi, particularly in the rural setting. She further noted that while international schools had a leg up because they followed international syllabi, when it came to local schools, Government involvement had failed.  

“The whole system is open to corruption because there’s no oversight,” she warned. “Every day in the papers, principals are accused of abusing students and taking bribes.” 

She also expressed concern about the quality of training for teachers, citing an example where she had interviewed a university graduate to teach geography, but after looking at the international O/Level syllabus, the candidate had admitted that the content of the O/Level syllabus was what was being taught at the university level. 

Gunasekara also shared that the advent of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its potential impact on education gave her more cause for concern when it came to the local school system because AI was going to significantly change the education landscape and the local education system was likely to be left behind. 

When asked what advice she would give to new educators at an individual level, Gunasekara kept it candid, stating that passion, while an incredible thing to possess, was not essential when it came to being an effective educator. 

“For teachers, you don’t need to love your pupils unconditionally or even the subject. But when you teach, you must know your subject thoroughly and be totally fair in dealing with every child,” she advised. “If you’re fair, you automatically become a good educator. Always attempt to do the right thing.”