The racist in Bangladeshi education system: Education or a beauty contest?

Why am I being naïve to paint out whole education sector of a country with a single brush? Well, stigmatizing isn’t my kind of thing but I think “elephant in the room” needs to be handled with before it gets further. Let me shed some light in the widening participation and social mobility before I single out the racist. Widening participation and social mobility are firmly connected to each other, it would be completely arrogant and ignorant to think of social mobility without widening participation. So, what is widening participation? Widening participation means the initiative through which participation of students from underprivileged background in the education institutions are managed. Widening participation aims to address the divergences in the take-up of higher education institutions between different social groups. To ensure students from under-privileged background take-up higher education and institutions should raise aspiration, encourage applications and ensure progression, retention and success of the students from under-privileged background. Now, the definition of the social mobility according to dictionary is, “the promotion of a social class to upper hierarchy through social economic development and education”. From the definition, it is fairly clear that social mobility and education are very closely related. More people from underprivileged background can access higher education, more probability for them to get a better job and thus they can upgrade into upper social class. I am sure many critics will disagree with me that for a developing country like Bangladesh “social mobility” is too ambitious concept. Well, I take completely opposite stand on that. I think widening participation is much more important for Bangladesh in order to be a middle income country and to achieve sustainable development goal within the time frame.

I consider myself one of those very lucky and privileged who had best sort of education so far. I went to Cadet College, which I still consider life shifting and then I came to London for my bachelor and masters when I was only 19. Being a student at a British university is very fascinating as you can experience the best education, curriculum, diversity, friendship and social life. But whenever I get time I look back in to few of the fundamental staggering learningand one of them was uniformity. You will be treated equally irrespective of your family background, father’s income, your social status, that’s the best think I learned from Cadet College. But sadly uniformity is missing from Bangladeshi education system. Here, I am stressing on the whole education sector, not just one institution. The market model western education system has ruined Bangladeshi education system. If you walk along Gulshan, Banani, Dhanmondi, Uttara or any classy part of Dhaka&Chittagong, you will find out local layout of British, American, Australian education or so called Turkish hope school. I am not against adopting culture, education system if this is for a gallant purpose, in fact I myself is a British alumni and I am very lenient towards British education system but what I am against is the social inequality those education institutions are creating and how wrongly the ethos of western education has been misinterpreted by the bourgeois of Bangladesh. In fact, is it not true that now a days social class of parents is being unhurried by the type of school they send their kids to? Is it not true that the aristocrats of Bangladesh feel so proud of the enormous money they spend instead of the quality of the education? I don’t aim to call a revolution against those rich-class but I firmly criticize their lack of understanding about social mobility and how they are being swindled by those institutions. Of course, the purpose of education is to edify us, is to stretch intellectual horizon but it also plays most significant role in spanning the gap between different strata of the society but in case of Bangladesh this practice of having several education systems and curriculum is creating more gaps between who can afford it and who can’t. It’s just simply racist, discriminatory and making the rich kids more snobbish.
The government & civil society needs to step up and play better role in terms of transparency, fee, curriculum and extracurricular activities of these institution. Parents and community should have a major palisade in the governance of these institutions. Elephant in the room needs to be dealt with before it gets messier.