Bangladesh observed the golden jubilee of its independence very recently. After 50 years of our sovereignty, no matter how agnostic one may sometimes feel about the actual development of all the people, one can no way deny the fact that the country has come a long way in many aspects of life.
Apart from the visible progress such as the development of infrastructure, availability of electricity even in the most remote places, access to the internet etc, there has been discernible evolution in common people’s mindsets regarding different issues.
One of the finest examples here can be the change in our perception of the people from the third gender community. In the larger context of history, 50 years is not enough to go through any radical change in the thought process of the mass people.
No matter how slow it is, change is taking place.
However, looking forward to the future, if we set our eyes on 2041 to be the year for becoming a developed country, there is a lot that needs to be done in many aspects.
Today’s children are tomorrow’s leaders
In my judgement, proper education of our children should top the list among all, for Bangladesh in the 2040s will be run by the children of today.
From my personal experience, I honestly cannot come up with any other particular event which has made me more hopeful about our future than the Student’s Movement of 2018 and the support it got from people. It assured me about the fact that our children are well aware of the difference between right and wrong, good and evil.
Now moulding their tender minds with proper guidance and education is our task, otherwise, the responsibility for any unfortunate outcome will be solely for us to shoulder.
Unfortunately, it is no secret that all our achievements get eclipsed by the deeply ingrained problems of omnipresent corruption, and the glaring lack of ethics throughout. One who thought education could perhaps bring some changes hopelessly discovers that even the most highly educated ones are found to be corrupt and dishonest every now and then.
So, why isn’t our education having any impact on us ethically? The definition of the term “education” needs to be reexamined.
What is education for?
In my belief, true education makes one learn how to think independently of any preconceived prejudice, it makes one analyze, question every piece of information with proper reasoning, and it compels the individual to be self-critical of each and every action committed by him or her and bear the responsibility.
Most importantly, education is expected to make one humble because he or she realizes the more one learns, the less it feels.
There remains a stark difference between an education system that yields only professionals with specific skills and the one that produces actual enlightened human beings; it's simply not possible to equate the former with the latter. It occurs to me as if ours has more in common with the former.
An enlightened person always puts collective good before everything else, for he or she knows well that individual success is incomplete if the community is in bad shape. For instance, in comparison to professionals with degrees but devoid of ethics, it is impossible for a person truly enlightened to swindle public property for personal gain.
Punishments alone cannot fix problems like corruption and moral bankruptcy as reforming the adult mind is far more difficult than the young. It is often impossible. The focus must be on our children.
Going forward, we have to ensure that we are raising and nurturing them in a way which will ensure that the Bangladesh of the future won’t be in the news for corruption. We need one generation of school children to go through real learning of knowledge. Then they themselves can bring about a drastic change in the national mindset.
While talking about education, my concern is not essentially the curriculum, textbooks, exams etc. Rather, I want to put emphasis on the mindset or attitude children should have when it comes to learning at the first pace.
Competition for what?
In my opinion, in most cases, our children in schools approach education with a mentality of competition with other children; it’s all about how one can beat others, get more scores, and a higher ranking. Eventually, it is about having a sense of superiority over fellow mates. Obviously, they inherit this mindset from their parents and the immediate environment, but this line of inheritance needs to be stopped.
Furthermore, while in constant competition with each other, children fall into an endless rat race toward supremacy over one another. As an outcome, instead of becoming humble and generous, the so-called educated person suffers from a superiority complex, and education ceases to exist as a matter of importance, and becomes more a matter of prestige.
In my conviction, something is very wrong with this way of perceiving education.
I should say some words here to explain why I think it’s wrong. A child growing up knowing that whatever he or she is learning from textbooks is a mere means to higher numerical values in his or her scorecard will never realize the value of knowledge or the pleasure of learning.
As learning ends up being just a means to some exam scores instead of a better understanding of life and the world, whatever he or she learns hardly plays any role in shaping his or her character.
Once in their professional life, they will automatically run after higher numbers, this time on a bank balance sheet, or the number of cars or houses they own; instead of a scorecard for all their formative years they were imbued with the notion of searching for success and happiness in numbers.
Consequently, the idea of real education gets totally lost, and an unstoppable urge of winning by whatever means -- be it unethical -- takes shape. The highly educated but extremely corrupt, dishonest people that I mentioned earlier never really learned anything sincerely which could have had any impact on their judgement.
Keeping in mind the larger context of life and the world, it can’t be any more pathetic to see the reduction of something as valuable as education to mere numerics and rankings.
Therefore, I want to see our children perceive education as an opportunity of gaining as much knowledge as possible and have faith in the fact
that in the end, it is one’s knowledge and work that marks them in history, everything else eventually fades out.
I wish to envision our schools becoming places of genuine learning and working together instead of contesting among students.
I expect that our schools and all educational institutions will break free from that notion of success where the community is left behind and the individual is celebrated disproportionately.
Rather, they will enshrine the principles of collective development and mutual respect.
Someone inculcated with such values will find it extremely hard to even contemplate being part of any corrupt activity -- their conscience will never allow so.
I set my heart on the aspiration to see a truly educated nation where the meaning of the term education will vastly differ from what we are used to now. We will detect the educated ones among us not just by their professional skills but mostly by their enlightened spirits, high ethics, responsible actions, and principled characters.
I hope that conformity to outdated socio-political customs will become an act unknown to us. We will put everything under the microscope of our sophisticated analytical ability to decide their usability or redundancy.
Refusal to play along with outworn traditions which are detrimental to the nation’s growth without rigorous questioning will become a norm. Science and reason will be seen as the primary guiding principles.
Ratnadeep Toorja is a Software Programmer, Musician, and Writer.