Wares Ali Khan :
Most of the first-half of 2024, regular school activities to cope up with the new national curriculum allowing the need for skills, projects and experience-based learning got disrupted due to national pollution, cold spells and repeated heatwaves.
Again, owing to Ramadan closure, Eid-ul-Adha including summer holidays at the end of April and June respectively, and recently faced natural calamities have also transfigured the education projections severely leading the education-chronicle in an unforeseen mess.
It is by no means desirable that educational sittings, which are centers of intellectual wellbeing and psyche-state development, are to be closed marking the quota reform which is termed as a non-violent movement to eliminate the discriminatory quota application in the government job seekers. Anyway, the demand to equalize and ensure the rightful portion to the meritorious section has been accepted in the court’s verdict as it has already executed its proceeding.
However, in the masking of this non-violent student movement, a vested quarter has carried out arson and vandalism to the national belongings and establishments across the country which is entirely unexpected and unsought.
According to the relevant data, there are 30.7 million students in primary and secondary level learning seats. Students of almost all levels are in trouble on account of non-attendance of the classes, unfinished assignments, projects and assessments due to such prolonged shutdown of their beloved learning domains.
The Ministry of Education, in their observation, can’t find the secured aspects of opening the schools as the aftermath of the anti-quota affiliated movement is not over yet, so they are keeping an eye on the situation for it gets better, and addressed to be a student friendly environment securing their optimal protections. So, the issue of safeguarding the students is getting preferred to bring the students back to the educational institutions.
The multi-faceted challenges and threats occurred earlier in the entire education sectors because of the pandemic-driven closure and misery have not been recovered as expected yet.
Till now, the concerned figures, educators, teachers, parents and public stakeholders have been trying to heal the wounds of the Covid-19 induced learning gaps and losses for years through the impartation of education in the field level interventions.
At present time for the spread of violence and vandalism in the guise of quota reform movement, it is quite uncertain regarding the definite date when educational institutions can be functional following the principle of favorability.
Learning fellows experiencing the new classes in the new academic session are unwilling to stay at home. No matterhow the backdrop is casting shadow on education and whatever the situation looming large, they want to meet teachers, study-mates, with friends in the school campus they belong to, and want to play there, and enjoy learning with fun and pleasure.
But this unsolicited school closure has approached a suffocated reality amidst the school-going teenagers. On the other hand, if classes are not conducted regularly, the kids will not be able to keep tempo with the newly launched national curriculum.
It is to be mentioned in the earlier curriculum where learners could at least mitigate the learning losses created because of prolonged school closure by completing the prescribed study tasks guided in the texts. But the new national curriculum is designed to accomplish a lot of group works, assignments, discussions, tasks showcasing andpresentations in the classroom based learning environment; in the absence of which the learning gaps will propel them to the outcome based learning deficit and incompleteness of the syllabus.
In fact, formal conduction of classes and institution based learning help learners to guide them in the anticipated directions they want to march onto, develop insights they need, sharpen thought processes they have, inspire their judgmental acumen. Institution centered classroom based formal education through the presence of teacher, students and fellows is verily designed, managed, executed, and controlled by the will of the state mechanism.
Hence, it is obvious that the willing mindset of the ruling party can formulate and determine the entire educational system sound, safe and functional for the sake of sustaining democratic processes as well as making the nation a self-respected, advanced and wealthy one.
It is to annex that school-goers have been traumatized and in anguished states because of this static situation. Besides, internet disruption does not allow teachers to impart educational contents online and to reach out to learners via gadgets and digital devices. Thus, no means of blended and distant-learning is functional now.
Consequently screen dependency and digital distraction have already been created among the home-staying soft-minded learners and unstable popcorn mindsets have been grown in the tenderhearted school kids. Against this backdrop the learning loss and stopgap of the classes might boost the ongoing cut deeper and navigate the education system to irreparable threats to a greater extent.
It is said that Bangladesh is moving forward by chanting slogans and we want to believe that our country is genuinely heading forward to be smarter. But the journey from ‘Digital Bangladesh’ to ‘Smart Bangladesh’ seems to be in a complex trap now.
A gigantic gap and inconsistency between this signature slogan and reality has become visible. Those gaps and inconsistencies surely can generate regrets and frustrations in many. Nonetheless, self-driven motivations are needed to move forward as self-starters in practical sense to translate the dream of smart Bangladesh, and we have to intervene successfully by steeping smarter incessantly, firmly and surely.
We, in earnest, aspire that reopening of schools along with the learning seats of tertiary level education shall be in operation in hurry to transfigure our prevailing education system smarter and faster so as to grow our learning fellows the smartest for the sake of sustaining tomorrow’s smart Bangladesh.
(The writer is a taching professional)
