Educating or Parenting?
By Md Amer Akhtab Muizz
My father used to run a small business in Dhaka. But every weekend he went back to his village. Through a lot of hardships he managed to establish a college. He taught us the importance of education and how it will help the lives of the people of our village. Through our discussions, I came to learn many aspects of village psychology.
After establishing the college, he came to realise that higher education is useless without proper education in the primary level. So, he built a school mainly focussing on the development of young children; to provide an ideal environment, which the village children greatly needed. I helped him prepare all the syllabuses and curriculums for the school as I was a student back then. There was big response from the people. The school was up and running after a years hard work.
The next year, a new school came up in a neighbouring village. It was a sign that people were leaning more towards education. They wanted a better future for their children. As it turned out, the school was up for a business. They stacked as many students as they could get. Furthermore, they started after-school coaching classes. The people of the village are easily influenced. They began to enroll their children in the better school, which provides after-school classes.
Our school maintained its standard and tried to go along with its motto. It was not much affected by the neighbouring schools success. In the next few years, there were new schools set up every year and with that, came more coaching classes. My father was actually happy to see all the enthusiasm among the parents and the students.
Everything was going well. But then came the school certificate exams, PSC and JSC. I, myself, was quite happy with this new decision of the government. But little did I know about its consequences. It did more harm to the students in our village, rather than help them. Like city students, education became more competitive in our village. More accurately, the parents became more competitive.
The other school I was talking about came with another groundbreaking idea _ hostel for the children. Anybody from class 1 upwards could enroll. They would nurture the children to get good results. The idea became immensely popular in the village. The best school in the village provides the best facilities so the villagers said. The other schools in the area also adopted the same policy.
People living in cities think that they are losing their playgrounds. Children are missing out on physical and mental development activities. On the other hand, the village parents are restricting their children. Some are happy keeping their children at school till the evening, and some are happy with them actually living in their schools. But is it really beneficial for them?
I was surprised when my father first told me about the situation. The day-coaching were already harming, and now the night-coaching. How did they accept it so graciously? How can parents let their children stay away from home at such young age? How can they expect them to be filial later in life? The facilities at the hostel arent even adequate for them. They just line up all the students at night and make them memorise what they studied during the day.
It would have been better if this was the whole scenario. With the new exams, GPA 5 became the new benchmark. Achieving it by any means necessary seems to be the right thing. Previously, it was common among some children to cheat during their exams. But now, both parents and teachers are their accomplices. Some teachers provide any leaked contents they can get before the exams, while others, shamelessly, help the students during their exams. Nobody cares. May be a GPA 5 on the certificate is all that matters these days? But nobody seems to pay heed to what the children are learning. They are learning to cheat! How are they going to be motivated to study at all? How will they learn any difference between right and wrong?
My brother and I got more involved with the school after our father passed away. What we learned was that it is most difficult when you are standing opposite to the flow. You either go with the trend, or get a bad reputation for not providing the so-called better facilities. In our society, we often say that coaching centres are like cancer cells in our education system. But you can hardly cure cancer. It is not just the fault of the coaching businesses, but the parents who are over-caring towards their children. There wouldnt be any of it if there were no demand.
To deal with all this, we should go back to educating the parents first, before trying with their children. Otherwise, certificates wont do much good. Proper education is what we need to become better human beings. I once read in a book, Good parenting is one of the toughest jobs in the world. Its a good thing that the parents in our rural areas are becoming more and more aware of their childrens education. But, if not paved in the right direction, the outcome may not be what we expect.
