The 2009 Awami
League Government of Sheikh Hasina has formed a 16-member committee on the 9th
April, not a commission though, for formulating specific recommendations for
education curricula changes for the new progeny of Bangladesh. The same party governments
of the past in independent Bangladesh did establish similar other commissions
/committees once in 1972, then in 1996 followed by another committee in 2000
and now the 2009 one. That means that the three governments did attempt to do
their bit four times. If one would go back further more, one must discover that
they had other credits for initiating similar jobs in 1950s, once before
sharing full government power and then again when they shared the government in
East Bengal with their own genre in 1954. They are as such seen to be serious
about doing something good for educational development. One must appreciate
their goodness of intention in the matter.
Education in Bangladesh is in a mess to all honest and sincere educators. The problems of mess are in everything from educational philosophy, contents of curriculum, school management, administration, evaluation and funding to quality concern at all levels. There is little disagreement on all these issues. The commissions and committees formed so far in independent Bangladesh exceeded now over half a dozen by the governments of different persuasions. The critical one among the issues that remained unsettled for irreconcilability had been the philosophical differences. Is there any scope to get it rightly set this time?
It is true that the current 16-member committee headed by Professor Kabir Chowdhury, who happened to be the Secretary of the 1972-74 Education Commission, though an old and experienced educator, had information about the 1974 commission report and its failure then and afterwards. He is very much an affable person so far as particular left persuasion is concerned but hardly anything so far as people's popular and spiritual expectations are concerned. There lied the fundamental complicacies that the 1974 Commission had had critical lapses. Neither those lapses could not have been effectively rectified by the 1996 Commission nor is any light in the direction Professor Chowdhury possibly could show of any responsiveness.
Well, Dr Chowdhury is not only a person of left Marxist belief that he is well known to be, to me, there is nothing wrong so far as his personal belief is concerned. But should he insist on the new progeny anything outside the purview of belief of the religious masses, it is certain not only to be unacceptable but also certain to be repulsive in society. That was how the 1974 Commission report had been kept in shelf under lock and key by the same charismatic person and leader who initiated that in mid 1972 in founding the Education Commission, the first of that kind in independent Bangladesh under the chairmanship of the renowned scientist Dr Qudrat E Khuda.
So far as was known, the leader had kept the report in abeyance not for fancy but for its overtly secular character so much so that it remained curiously silent about Madarasa education that the Muslims maintained and sustained for more than a millennium in this country. The Commission made development recommendations for general school-college education that the English foreign rulers introduced in this country in the early nineteenth century. In a sense that also looked like following the lines and mode the English bureaucrat T.B. Macaulay had suggested to train some, in his term, as 'interpreter' and nothing more of real creative learning or for critical use of intellect, much less anything in attitudinal value formation based on spiritual aspiration of every soul. The Muslims from the very beginning had despised the limitation of the Macaulay's curriculum so perceived and so they distanced away from that mode and stuck to their own Madarasa syllabus for learning and education for children. Bengal Muslims, in addition, in the early twentieth century struggled and framed a system called New Scheme Madarasa for it integrated secular learning with revealed knowledge as was there in the holy Quaran and the reliable sayings and deeds of the Prophet. That system started functioning in 1915 had been popular among the Muslim parents for modern education alternative for their children that produced many renowned scholars, a few of them still alive in their eighties. Unfortunately the system was abandoned in mid 1950s without any good reason.
One may mark the point that when the present government have started bashing the Madarasa education as a whole in a blanket fashion, on the one hand, they have, on the other, started to pursue reframing the secular bases of modern education based on the 1974 Commission report. Why?
Secularization of education or complete isolation of secular learning from religious and spiritual learning has nowhere been possible except in regimented one party state of the communist mode. In western modern democracies they say that they have isolated religion from the state and education. That is only a theoretical construct, not in actual practice. In Britain, for example, religious learning is compulsory in schools, but there is also provision for opting out of children in religious instruction by parents' choice of particular religious studies. In the USA, religious learning in schools is not compulsory as in the UK, but children are socialized in Christian values through community churches almost without exception. At the third or university levels there are studies in divinity for higher degrees. These graduates fill up positions in the church hierarchies in the West. There are few atheists in the West as we have few in Bangladesh. On the contrary, almost all people are believers in Lone Absolute God as was found in a recent survey in the USA, 95% of people believers in that God (See, Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope, 2006, p.198).
The Muslims consider themselves very fortunate that they are the only believing religious group among the human race having had the divine revelation in the original pure form that the Prophet had set example as an all time living model for both spiritual and temporal matters. And so the Muslims on top of everything consider life as a whole of secular aspect and spiritual elements integrated into every soul of man and woman that education curriculum in schools must provide for. That is why the Muslims throughout the period of one and a half millennium pursued the process of the Madarasa system, and distanced away from anything and everything that appeared to them purely secular or divorced from elements of essential spiritual knowledge.
We hear about single-track system of school curriculum. This is not a bad proposition provided it could be done keeping up with the aspirations of the people, majority in particular, keeping at the same time scope and freedom to chose and opt in or out for religious instructions by parents of children of all religions. If the committee recommends otherwise, that would have the fate of the Macaulay system as we experienced among the Muslims for centuries that possibly will further make proliferation of Madarasa as a much bigger independent system of education in the immediate future. It will not thus be a unified single system but a disintegrated one, secular one turning out one set of citizens and the Madarasa system training on something else irreconcilable between the two and yet citizens of the same country. The historic experience shows that though the Alia Madarasas yielded to control by the government for two centuries now, the Qaomi Madarasa did not yield to any outside government control but maintained everything from within themselves and by the communities concerned.
Government no doubt, controls education in all modern countries, but parental choice for education of children is also a matter of fundamental right in plural democracy. Bangladesh is neither a lone party regimented society nor a country run by dictator of the atheist variety. From the people's side, there is no mandate whatsoever for secularization of education of the Muslim children as it goes against their belief in absolute monotheism meaning physical aspects and spiritual issues integrated into every single human Muslim personality. Should the committee pursue redesigning school curriculum, as it appears, divorced from the Islamic spiritualism, they will do more harm than good. In such a case, the government that appointed the committee would also be considered unfair in the matter for breaching the trust of the believing people.
Education in Bangladesh is in a mess to all honest and sincere educators. The problems of mess are in everything from educational philosophy, contents of curriculum, school management, administration, evaluation and funding to quality concern at all levels. There is little disagreement on all these issues. The commissions and committees formed so far in independent Bangladesh exceeded now over half a dozen by the governments of different persuasions. The critical one among the issues that remained unsettled for irreconcilability had been the philosophical differences. Is there any scope to get it rightly set this time?
It is true that the current 16-member committee headed by Professor Kabir Chowdhury, who happened to be the Secretary of the 1972-74 Education Commission, though an old and experienced educator, had information about the 1974 commission report and its failure then and afterwards. He is very much an affable person so far as particular left persuasion is concerned but hardly anything so far as people's popular and spiritual expectations are concerned. There lied the fundamental complicacies that the 1974 Commission had had critical lapses. Neither those lapses could not have been effectively rectified by the 1996 Commission nor is any light in the direction Professor Chowdhury possibly could show of any responsiveness.
Well, Dr Chowdhury is not only a person of left Marxist belief that he is well known to be, to me, there is nothing wrong so far as his personal belief is concerned. But should he insist on the new progeny anything outside the purview of belief of the religious masses, it is certain not only to be unacceptable but also certain to be repulsive in society. That was how the 1974 Commission report had been kept in shelf under lock and key by the same charismatic person and leader who initiated that in mid 1972 in founding the Education Commission, the first of that kind in independent Bangladesh under the chairmanship of the renowned scientist Dr Qudrat E Khuda.
So far as was known, the leader had kept the report in abeyance not for fancy but for its overtly secular character so much so that it remained curiously silent about Madarasa education that the Muslims maintained and sustained for more than a millennium in this country. The Commission made development recommendations for general school-college education that the English foreign rulers introduced in this country in the early nineteenth century. In a sense that also looked like following the lines and mode the English bureaucrat T.B. Macaulay had suggested to train some, in his term, as 'interpreter' and nothing more of real creative learning or for critical use of intellect, much less anything in attitudinal value formation based on spiritual aspiration of every soul. The Muslims from the very beginning had despised the limitation of the Macaulay's curriculum so perceived and so they distanced away from that mode and stuck to their own Madarasa syllabus for learning and education for children. Bengal Muslims, in addition, in the early twentieth century struggled and framed a system called New Scheme Madarasa for it integrated secular learning with revealed knowledge as was there in the holy Quaran and the reliable sayings and deeds of the Prophet. That system started functioning in 1915 had been popular among the Muslim parents for modern education alternative for their children that produced many renowned scholars, a few of them still alive in their eighties. Unfortunately the system was abandoned in mid 1950s without any good reason.
One may mark the point that when the present government have started bashing the Madarasa education as a whole in a blanket fashion, on the one hand, they have, on the other, started to pursue reframing the secular bases of modern education based on the 1974 Commission report. Why?
Secularization of education or complete isolation of secular learning from religious and spiritual learning has nowhere been possible except in regimented one party state of the communist mode. In western modern democracies they say that they have isolated religion from the state and education. That is only a theoretical construct, not in actual practice. In Britain, for example, religious learning is compulsory in schools, but there is also provision for opting out of children in religious instruction by parents' choice of particular religious studies. In the USA, religious learning in schools is not compulsory as in the UK, but children are socialized in Christian values through community churches almost without exception. At the third or university levels there are studies in divinity for higher degrees. These graduates fill up positions in the church hierarchies in the West. There are few atheists in the West as we have few in Bangladesh. On the contrary, almost all people are believers in Lone Absolute God as was found in a recent survey in the USA, 95% of people believers in that God (See, Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope, 2006, p.198).
The Muslims consider themselves very fortunate that they are the only believing religious group among the human race having had the divine revelation in the original pure form that the Prophet had set example as an all time living model for both spiritual and temporal matters. And so the Muslims on top of everything consider life as a whole of secular aspect and spiritual elements integrated into every soul of man and woman that education curriculum in schools must provide for. That is why the Muslims throughout the period of one and a half millennium pursued the process of the Madarasa system, and distanced away from anything and everything that appeared to them purely secular or divorced from elements of essential spiritual knowledge.
We hear about single-track system of school curriculum. This is not a bad proposition provided it could be done keeping up with the aspirations of the people, majority in particular, keeping at the same time scope and freedom to chose and opt in or out for religious instructions by parents of children of all religions. If the committee recommends otherwise, that would have the fate of the Macaulay system as we experienced among the Muslims for centuries that possibly will further make proliferation of Madarasa as a much bigger independent system of education in the immediate future. It will not thus be a unified single system but a disintegrated one, secular one turning out one set of citizens and the Madarasa system training on something else irreconcilable between the two and yet citizens of the same country. The historic experience shows that though the Alia Madarasas yielded to control by the government for two centuries now, the Qaomi Madarasa did not yield to any outside government control but maintained everything from within themselves and by the communities concerned.
Government no doubt, controls education in all modern countries, but parental choice for education of children is also a matter of fundamental right in plural democracy. Bangladesh is neither a lone party regimented society nor a country run by dictator of the atheist variety. From the people's side, there is no mandate whatsoever for secularization of education of the Muslim children as it goes against their belief in absolute monotheism meaning physical aspects and spiritual issues integrated into every single human Muslim personality. Should the committee pursue redesigning school curriculum, as it appears, divorced from the Islamic spiritualism, they will do more harm than good. In such a case, the government that appointed the committee would also be considered unfair in the matter for breaching the trust of the believing people.
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