Political Influences in Bangladesh Text Books: A Policy Analysis | Articles on Education of Bangladesh | Uncategorized

SHAMIM AHMED

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The education system in Bangladesh is characterized by the co-existence of three separate streams. The mainstream happens to be a vernacular based secular education carried over from the colonial past. There also exists a separate system of religious education. Finally, based on use of English as the medium of instruction, another stream of education, modeled after the British education system, has rapidly grown in the metropolitan cities of Bangladesh. However, the major characteristic of Bangladesh education is the existence of political influence in primary curriculum.

Political influence in primary curriculum occurs mainly by the government. Being a centralized curriculum, from the development to the evaluation and implementation of the curriculum, the whole process is under the direct supervision and intervention of the government. As a result the ruling parties of all period got the chance to influence or mould the curriculum to serve their political purpose. In 1989, President Hussein Muhammad Ershad introduced English as a compulsory subject from class-I with an executive order. Before that English was only compulsory from class-III (introduced by Ziaur Rahman in 1978). Around the same time in 1990 H. M. Ershad introduced his own portfolio in the social science textbook of class-V.

In Bangladesh political parties have always tried to influence the social science curriculum and textbook in order to prove the significance of their role in the liberation war. BNP government both in 1991 and in 1996 tried to prove their significance in the liberation movement. One popular topic of BNP led government was to establish Major Zia as the proclaimer of Bangladesh’s independence though it has clearly been stated in the proclamation of independence under the laws continuance enforcement order in the Bangladesh constituency that Sheikh Mujibur Rahman made the declaration of independent Bangladesh. In 2001, BNP government made a speedy action to revise the curriculum within six months of taking office. (The Daily Star, March 29, 2002). As a result the revised social science textbook of class-IV carried a fabricated version of the history of liberation war including an added misleading paragraph on the ‘declaration of the war’ which was absent in the history chapter of the social science textbook just a decade ago. The recent non-party caretaker government (2007) showed their interest in the curriculum too. The education adviser of the caretaker government tried to change the distorted history of liberation war in the school textbooks made by 4 party government. They adjusted some of the distortions and wrong information about the history of liberation movement among the changes made by the BNP government in the history chapter, such as: omission of the word ‘Bangabandhu’ from the name of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, controversial and distorted information about the date and declaration of liberation, discrimination in the biography of the national leaders etc.

The government is now in the verge of introducing and implementing two widely discussed academic policies – unitrack education and creative questions. These two policies may bring some qualitative changes in the overall education system in the long run. But now it is the time to remove all the limitations in the curriculum and provide a politically unbiased curriculum for the students to get the best out of it. In this regard the curriculum should be revised by the educationists and necessary reforms should be done for the successful implementation of an effective curriculum to implement quality through unitrack education and creative questions for all the children of Bangladesh.

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Writer: Development economist and a public health professional working with WaterAid Bangladesh. Email: shamim@shamimahmed.net

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