Education Policy | Articles on Education of Bangladesh | Articles on Education of Bangladesh

The Bengali poet Golam Mostofa writes, “ Future fathers lie sleeping in every child.” Children can be powerful agents of social and economic change if they are trained and brought up infusing them with social and economic values in their school life. Social thinkers and educators have been exploring newer ideas and thoughts to enrich our children in school with social values and teachings. A new concept known as ‘ Aflatoun’ has emerged in the literature of education  to make the school children responsible, proactive and socially conscious citizens who can contribute  to breaking the poverty cycle and to improve their own quality of life. The word ‘ Aflatoun’ is of Arabic origin  and to refers to ‘ the explorer, a person who thinks, explores, investigates and acts. It also refers to Plato, known for his ideas and ethics, citizenship, social justice, respect, conservation, friendship and love for fellowmen. ( source: www.natcco.coop/index.php)

Evil politics of the country has left no place untouched. It has stretched its ugly claws to non-government educational institutions gathering a dark cloud in the sky of education. During the reign of political government the non-government educational institutions go under the full command of political leaders. When caretaker government occupies the state power the authority of non-government institutions go to the bureaucrats. After nineties this trend has continued. Pupils, guardians, educationists, teachers and all concerned don’t appreciate this trend at all. The public representatives, bureaucrats and local elites should direct and look after these institutions. 98 percent of educational institutions of the country are run by communities with government salary support. Only two percent schools are run by fully by the government. The number of non-government educational institutions such as schools, colleges and madrasas register more than thirty thousands in the country.

The present government declared in their election manifesto that they would free the educational institutions from all political influence but things go quite opposite now. Teachers are the largest professional group or cadre in the country. But they remain inactive or powerless as they cannot exercise their honest desire and sincere efforts to run the centre of real learning and to prepare the future leaders because of evil political influence and pressure. Almost all the non-government educational institutions face these evils. Across the country the political leaders occupy the positions  of managing committees and remain busy with  teacher recruitment, sacking the teachers and staff from  job, construction work, student admission, income and expenditure of the institutions  and other  business activities  ( some schools have shop, extra land property). Local public leaders travel in all these areas of the schools except the area of enhancing the quality of education.  The local leaders who poke their nose in the school and college affairs had never been regular, sincere and good students and many could not collect a certificate even. We fail to understand why a democratic government  which should be in strong favour of  providing  good and quality education to the future citizens  and future leaders of the country resort to allowing the local leaders and  party-men  to vitiate  the secret  institutions. May be the government have some immediate gains but the ultimate effect for the nation  is bleak and somber.

Our education Minister said, “There is no denying the fact that politics has engulfed our educational institutions. Children and kids of all sorts of people irrespective of their race, colour, caste, creed and party study in the educational institutions.   They are the future of the country. So we all should be careful about penetrating politics into schools and colleges.” (Prothom Alo July 16, 2011)We know our education minister has every intention to give good education to the students of our country. He really wants to bring some positive changes in the educational institutions but he has to face some constraints and swallow many humiliations also. Our Prime minister is not unaware of these things. So, she should give her democratic, non-partisan and neutral eyes as education represents a very good image of the present government which should be retained at any cost. Educationalist Sayed Monjurul Islam said, “ The parliamentarians or the  lawmakers whose own education is rather poor and those who are engaged in killing, looting , plundering and other criminal activities  and when they are engaged in leading educational institutions by virtue of their position, we cannot expect anything good from it.” ( Prothom Alo July 16, 2011)The educationists and other professionals and patriotic people must endorse the views of Sayed Monjurul Islam. Our democratic government must give the national interest first. Party interest should follow the national interest. When a particular party is elected to run a country, that party must see the interest of the whole nation if it is really democratic. But our luck is not broad enough to experience it during any political government. When party musclemen occupy the leadership of educational institutions what’s the harm or wrong to be controlled them by bureaucrats who are at least educated people? It happened during the caretaker government and the institutions saw the lowest amount of corruption.

MD. MASUM BILLAH

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To keep pace with the fast growing demand of English knowing people establishing English version school along with English medium has gained momentum in the country. So far about fifty two English version schools have been established in Dhaka, several towns and five outside the country which are run by Bangladeshi missions. How the students of this version doing, what is the overall performance of the teachers, is there any arrangement for training of the teachers teaching in this version, how are their management call for serious scrutiny.

As guardians have been inclined to giving their children better knowledge in English, People working with education sector have started opening English version schools in the city and even in some district towns. But it does not  have specially developed books and curriculum. Just the translated books of Bengali medium have been used which are full of mistakes and translation is also not up to the mark in some cases. Necessary base of this version stands on a weak footing and it lacks a well thought out plan. Still it draws huge number of students but qualified teachers are not available.  Some institutions of the city are fully English version based whereas some are running both English version and Bengali medium.  Teachers teaching in this version don’t have English background; neither are they from English medium which contributes to poor performance in the class disseminations and making strong base of English of the students. These teachers are not experienced as well to make quality question papers and deal with the whole affair very efficiently. As they are the productions of Bengali medium, they conduct classes in Bengali. Many guardians say that their kids have been sent to English version schools to develop strong footing of English of their children but the teachers  are not qualified enough. Teachers of this version are very much traditional. They give very little importance to class rather they give a huge amount of home work to the students which seem to be an extra burden to most of the English version students who expressed their dissatisfaction of some schools in the city of Dhaka. Several girl students commented thus” The students of Bengali medium can enjoy a lot, they have fun and jokes but we don’t have, we are not enjoying our classes.” Many students said that their teachers just give them ‘work sheet‘ and teachers ask them to memorize them to pass the examination without making the class interesting, interactive and fruitful. As a result students are losing their interest to learn anything studying the books of English version. Teachers don’t have any training and there is no such arrangement to give them training how to deal with new books and making them interesting and interactive. These anomalies make  guardians frustrated.