Critical Discourses on Globalisation, Knowledge Economy and Public Education: The Case of Sri Lanka

This paper focuses on the learning processes by the youth within the formal public education system in Sri Lanka. Learning processes and outcomes by children who go through the public education system in Sri Lanka have been the subject of critical comment and public policy over the decades. For any serious consideration of the learning processes of the young people, we have to examine the socialcontextual factors and public discourses on education. In the paper, I explore the contextual, epistemological, ideological and pedagogical constraints for effective learning and different paradigmssuch as the modernist, postmodernist and critical theory-based frames of thought. I further examine the role of public schools and the teachers in educating the young in Sri Lanka to be critical thinkers, and proposes a democratic schooling framework based on the postmodernist/poststructuralist and critical education literature.