The hidden costs of politicised curriculum

Masum Billah :

In the name of new curriculum particularly its assessment system has already made a mockery in the field of education of Bangladesh keeping all the students away from the books, study, classroom and developing students’ averse to learning.

Some utopian ideas seized the members of some policy makers and a group of cronies of NCTB who turned absolutely a deaf ear to all who cried for introducing a reasonable assessment system brining some changes in the so-called curriculum.

They were adamant to introduce it in the face of all stakeholders ‘denial.

They were on their toes to implement it at any cost to satisfy the then education minister that seriously harmed our entire education and teaching learning community.

We had cried for long but who bothers? It was absolutely an autocratic curriculum! Curriculum is for the students, for the teachers and for our future generation. Ignoring all these stakeholders several officials of NCTB and definitely with the consent of the ministrypeople played the entire game that actually planned to cripple the whole generation in the days to come.

A vested interest group just for their hidden benefit seriously and quite illogically pressed all the teachers, students, guardians and education officials in the field to introduce the so-called curriculum they titled ‘competency-based’ curriculum at any cost. Their undue pressure reveals their nefarious design.

All the stakeholders were threatened to implement it. We were also threatened not to write anything against it. In the face of these facts, question arises for who the curriculum is and why so undue pressures to implement it? These people must be brought to justice as they committed corruption spending a huge amount of public money as well as wanted to cripple the future generation probably at the behest of some unknown groups’ prescription. The nation cannot afford to forgive their double crime!

We noticed that these people trumpeted that new curriculum had come with the promise to remove the examination fear of the students, they would learn through fun and cooperation and without memorizing any questions. They wanted to gain a cheap popularity showing some issues that were the talked about topics among educationists and guardians who really wanted to remove note and guidebooks that flooded the market and also wanted to develop a culture of creativity among the students.

Actually, they did just the opposite thing as note and guide books came in another form and there lies no room for fun in the learning which can easilybe detected when anyone goes through the textbooks developed on the basis of new curriculum. Many items have been introduced that go beyond the parameter of teachers’ understanding, let alone students.

Students are asked to collect information from google and many chapters don’t deal with any activity or information. Students are asked to collect information from different sources that mean practicing another type of note and guidebook culture to hinder the development of creativity in pupils.

Students have to remain busy all night to prepare the materials and search for the materials using internet that remove their sleep, and creative thoughts along with increasing the tension of parents coupled with increasing their education expenditure as they have to buy various types of items that many guardians cannot afford.

How students’ performance would be assessed was not transparent and the teachers, students and guardian have beenabsolutely in the dark for one a half year and still many things are not clear to them. There would be no written test and teachers will assess the learners observing their performance in the class which will be assessed by using three symbols namely triangle, circle and rectangle.

The NCTB people have been advocating that students will not have to face any competition, they will learn through fun. How illogical point they want to mean! Competition is everywhere. If the footballers or crackers know that they will not have to score any goal, they will just play all day long, that means they will not play seriously.

Similarly, students must have competition but that should not be an’unhealthycompetition’ and we needed to work here. But they did not think of this point.

The curriculum also says that students’ academic performance will not see any grade (A, A+) but just the symbols. They will have no marking system also and all these things will be done by teachers that will definitely create a huge gap and serious discrimination between rural and urban schools, better teachers and average teachers, better schools and poor schools.

There must be a national standard to measure the academic and other performances of the students that they don’t agree. They don’t agree to keep any formal written test for the students. However, after many discussions and criticisms, they agreed to introduce a written test for 65 marks and 35 marks for doing activities. It can be said somehow reasonable but they did it just to deceive the students, teachers and guardians who demanded written test.

When the half-yearly evaluation began on 03 July, we found that no such performance was checked. 65 marks written test was not taken as was expected, and students’ performance was not checked, that means, their presentation was not observed either.

At least the students of grade nine who are going to sit for SSC examination should have shown their performance.

But it was not done, no direction of such type was provided throwing the teachers, students and guardians again in the dark!

When things continue going in this manner, all stakeholder began losing interest in the matters of new curriculum. We know students need to undergo huge amount of practice to learn any subject well, maybe it is science, mathematics, social science or language and their base on language (Bengali and English) must be made strong to learn other subjects and prove their understanding of a particular subject which has deliberately been ignored. Thus a series of irregularities, impractical and bizarre things have been going with the curriculum that calls change to save the future generation from a disaster waiting for them.

(The writer is president, English Teachers Association of Bangladesh).