An Open Letter to the Drowning System in Bangladesh

To the Bane of My Existence,

Yes, you heard that right.

I, the wall whisperer, the unsung hero who has carried a thousand souls of academic victims through the hall of teary all-nighters and gallons of caffeine have come to speak.

Of course, there’s not much to reveal about a system that creaks when you walk on it, like it is designed to crumble under your feet as you fall down to your doom’s end. But perhaps, my many years of eternal experience has given me the right to be the voice of the silenced ones, the suffering students and the sorry state of education itself.

Let’s start with the beginning. Grammar-translation method. The method that schools in Bangladesh used to thrive on. It’s your first day in primary school. You enter the classroom with a hopeful sparkle in your eyes. Excitement grips you as you shake hands with your new classmates. This will be fun, you think. A teacher walks in with a stack of sheets clutched in his hands. He welcomes you all with a mildly enthusiastic speech, and proceeds to hand out a worksheet filled with definitions of a noun, verb and adjectives. The smile in your eyes fade away as you realize he expects you to memorize these rules and then repeat it in front of the class. Outloud. You thought that was a disappointment until you realize the rest of your academic year will be a replica of the first day. Memorize the grammar rules handed to you in English classs, swallow all the explanations provided in Science classes and vomit it out in the exam hall. Nasty business, isn’t it?

If you thought that was grim, I have an eternity’s worth of tragic incidents to dump on you. It was the night before the final exam of Mathematics, when almost every 9th grader was busy cramming through the piles of quadratic formulas and testing out vector questions. Their eyes tinged with exhaustion, adorned by a thick layer of dark circles underneath, with the invisible statement, I have to get this right.

Truth be told, many of them did get that desirable wall of consecutive A*s. Their smiling faces did grace the front page of the leading newspaper magazines. So, what exactly is so tragic about it? Well, I fear that they only gulped through learning contents to reach that pinnacle of A*s. It was to climb the peak of the mountain called ‘High-Achiever’. How much of the education that they were offered truly had substance? Ask, and you shall be denied a fruitful answer. And even when the education materials were of value, the examinees ran through it like a trackracer, hellbent on crossing the finishing line. For, many students do emerge from the schools as excellent achievers, but how many are good as learners? How many see education as a tool, and not as a chore? (Between you and me, it is my choice of entertainment as I drink my third cup of আদা চা )

A great teacher can shape a nation. Well, I am happy to inform you that the dilapidated education system has been sinking even lower because of a lack of Miss Honeys. Or to be more exact, the ocean is filled with Miss Trunchbulls, teachers with an agenda to make your life a living hell simply because you are too outspoken, too opinionated.

You see, during my long walk around the classrooms and observing my academic surroundings, I have glimpsed tears rolling down the student’s face several times. The tide of time shifts, the faces morph into another but the reasons seem to be stubbornly consistent. Bullying. Racial discrimination. Discrimination based on positions. Failures.

Now tell me, how can we save a boat from drowning when even the sailor is unsteady on his feet? When the master rebukes her apprentice for testing out the waters in her own ways, she clips her outstretched wings, right there and then.

We are nearing the end to this morbid soliloquy. But, before I leave all of you to drown once again underneath the creaks and cuts of a run-down machine, I shall talk a little about the method that has been tried and tested (to my dismay) in the setting of Bangladesh. Communicative Language Teaching. A verified approach to ensuring the highest form of class participation while boosting the learners’ efficiency level. A method that prioritizes significant communication and interactive learning.There has been an attempt to infuse this particular way of teaching in the schools in Bangladesh. Of course, I was not surprised when it did not deliver the outstanding results of great learning. While the famed National Curriculum Board Textbook Board of Bangladesh has tried to modify English books to have more interactive exercises, the way the students are assessed have not changed (Roy, 2016). The skills of English speaking, communicating smartly are shoved to the side because the syllabus for the exam prioritises grammar and writing. It seems that a watered down version of CLT is being put into action, where the curriculum and the assessment are caught in a toxic relationship, each neglecting the other.

I grow weary speaking of all the troubles that have plagued the miserable condition of education. My frown grows deeper as I see a seventh grader leave school at 2p.m, only to jump straight into a coaching centre and attend classes there till 8 p.m. at night. My eyes distastefully look inside a classroom as the teacher allows her class to run completely wild while dozing off at her seat. I let out a deep sigh.

Despite my mournings, I dream of a system that will swim with all its might, one with internally motivated teachers and schools which actually function as academic institutions. One where the government’s funds are poured into the right sectors of education, like training the Trunchbulls and allowing the young minds to be uniquely and utterly in love with learning.

Yours sincerely,
The Academic Reaper

Reference:
Roy, S. (2016). Challenges to implementing CLT in Bangladesh. Language in India.Vol. 16 Issue 3, p218-235.