Salvaging Our Schools

Draft education policy
Barely puts guidebook in legacy.
Another bout of Corona virus
Risks prolonging closure and syllabus.

One of the sectors that are badly affected by Corona virus is the education sector. It has been a year all the educational institutions shut their doors amid spread of this deadly virus that is still wreaking its havoc.

Ministry of Education announced that universities would resume activity from May 24 after clashes with university students and residents in two districts had made news item. Stranded residential students had long been staying in surrounding areas of universities in several districts, hoping to continue their part time jobs or tuition and to prepare for future job exams or other academic exams as resources are not available in remote villages. But Corona virus cramped their opportunities, making it difficult to pay their rents of the houses they coshared in the surrounding areas. In addition, the neighboring residential areas are source of extortion for politically backed student leaders. Often clashes of interest among different branches of political parties disturb normal activity in a neighborhood. Clash between student and transport workers in Borishal ended up students vacating their apartments in the adjacent residential areas. Clash between villagers and students over a cricket match led the students stormed into their dormitories amid pandemic closure. In this backdrop, government decided to announce the date of reopening.

But it made it clear that all residential students and teachers have to get vaccinated first.

The schools, however, remain closed. Government has not decided yet anything. In a letter to British Council, government urged to cancel all the exams for 'O'-level and 'A'-level, following the actions of other countries.

As the number of Corona virus victims is on the rise, there is little signs of reopening of schools. There are countries, however, which imposed partial or no closure on schools. Belarus did not shut down its schools during the pandemic, according to UNESCO estimates. Iceland, Switzerland and France followed partial closures of 6.1 weeks, 6.4 weeks and 23.6 weeks respectively. Amid the UK variant, which is more contagious among young and under-19 population, French health experts, however, call into question government's decision to keep the schools open (Source: https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20210317-a-french-exception-pride-and-regret-over-france-s-open-schools-amid-pandemic ).

Long before the pandemic, our school system has become subject of debate surrounding on extra-hours of industrial scale learning activities outside school and flooding of unchecked solution or guidebooks.

In 2011, government started preparing an education act to address these issues in a bid to improve school learning and to give relief to families from incurring huge costs. Government finalized it, awaiting cabinet's approval. But it surfaced fresh criticism as it may incorporate provision of guidebook and industrial-scale private lesson provider, expurgated in previous draft. In addition, the draft act may stipulate that daily newspapers will be barred from publishing educational materials prepared by seasoned teachers (Source: Daily Prothom Alo, March 19,2021). These educational contents on the dailies helped a lot students in comprehending difficult topics. In Bangladesh, number of libraries is dwindling away. Tribal nature of Bangladesh politics hinders growth of libraries. So newspapers educational contents to some extent fill the absence of supplementary learning materials.

I have not seen the draft myself so I refrain from commenting on the act. what constitutes supplementary reading is not explained at great length. It is construed across media as guidebooks, aka " noteboi" , written by some teachers or graduates and published by some publishers in a bid to let the students quickly grasp the subject matter. But it ended up flooding the market with low quality guidebooks and not letting students read the main textbooks.

If government really wants to augment in-school learning activities , then it should equip the schools with libraries stacked with books published at home and abroad. At the same time, it should allocate fund at community and neighborhood level to set up libraries aiming school goers. To help supplementary reading, government should encourage publishers to publish books that are easy to understand. If a typical student has troubles to decipher the meaning of textbook content, then he or she will switch to guidebook or go to coaching center. A well written and well researched learning book helps a student grasping the matter easily. Writing textbook or learning book is a different vocation. Government can bring educational content writer, editor and publishers from abroad to train local content writer, editor and publishers to give the industry a firm footing. It , in the end, will steer towards publishing of quality content.

I am for private lesson provider, but against industrial-scale private lesson provider at school level. There may be mock up exam centers that adapt and train students to go through the mechanical process of exams, but there should not be coaching centers with various branches at school level. Individual graduate or school teachers may provide lesson to few students. I do not see any wrong in it.

We need to review our school syllabus too. Giving in to the demand of a dogmatic group, government took off contents written by authors of different faith groups from school textbooks. Even pythons are disappeared from Bengali alphabet book (" Shore-O", first Bengali alphabet, for "Ajagor" or python is no no longer there on the new alphabet book). Our education policy makers need to understand that a Bengali kid's understanding of good and evil and right and wrong takes shape through reading fairy tales, legends and folklore stories. Most of them are written by writers of different faith groups.

In European schools, students learn Greek and Latin as European languages have roots in Greek and Latin. So Europeans are good at acquiring other European languages besides their own mother tongue. By the same token, many languages in Indian subcontinent have roots in Sanskrit. Bengali alphabets are based on Brahmi script whereas Hindi languages are based on Devnagari script. Inculcating students elementary Sanskrit at schools may adept our students in Bengali. It will later improve their comprehension in Bengali. Buddhist literature also helped a lot in molding today's Bengali language. Unfortunately, Pali and Sanskrit are confined into august companies of other subjects in few universities. I think government should take initiative to publish books like "Sanskrit for Kids" or "Elementary Sanskrit" at school level. It will help Bangladeshis later to acquire other Indian languages like Hindi, Odiya, Asamese and Nepali.

Bengali identity is not confined into religious aspect. Attempt to find out religious aspect in it only undermines our nation's identity. And people aware of their roots never engage in shameful conducts as we are witnessing now in university adjacent areas and at the campus.

I think without much ado school should be reopened. Small batches, several sessions and temporary teachers are means to resume school activities. Government earlier had plan,later scuttled,to take classes for class IX and class X. It could revive that plan. Developed nations could afford full closures of schools. Poor nations like us hardly tread along that path. If that is not possible, then we should go for partial closure amid another bout of this deadly virus.