Family is the most fundamental and first institution where children learn about language, ethics, culture, and so on. Children’s thought processes get developed by interactions with their family members. The family has a direct and most important influence over a human being’s activities.
School is the second institution where children pass on most of their time and learn about more things like science, math, society, culture, religion, and so on. School is the place where children interact with other children from different families, cultures, economic classes, and so on.
Unfortunately, both of these institutions are getting destroyed in Bangladesh over time. Maybe we can see their physical presence but the core values that they should hold up and teach to their members are getting demolished.
Families are becoming smaller, smaller, and even smaller. Family members seem to be quite busy with their own life. Father is at work, and so is his mom. Someone else is taking care of the baby. The baby isn’t getting sufficient time from their parents.
Parents try to get their kids admitted into English Medium School because they believe that it will make their child a better citizen. Sorry, I never heard that Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose, Muhammad Yunus, Muhammad Jafar Iqbal or Iqbal Quadir was a student of English Medium School.
Bengali medium or English one, our kids are raped by the course content. Though it’s the crucial time of their brain development, actually we’re destroying it by excessive content. More books, more study can never be a smart way to teach children. More books, more course plans, more exams mean shaping their brain in a particular way that will lose to produce creative works. This is why Sir Ken Robinson suggests not to keep school for children. Watch his renowned TED talk – Do Schools Kill Creativity?
Our children aren’t getting much of their teachers’ time also. Teachers are busy with coaching centers, focused on earning more money. Primary education or higher one, we are now confined to syllabus, suggestions, and GPA. There is no place for reading through the textbook, additional books, experimenting the learning. We have coaching centers also for university students, wow! Bangladesh has actually become the largest coaching home around the world.
Technology is destroying our teenagers. They are getting smartphones in class six or seven. Many psychological and physical changes take place at the teenage time. The smartphone at hand means the world is at hand. They have access to porn sites and they’re doing it. At this time, most teens should have a strong appeal to know about the opposite sex. As a result, teens are getting into relationships at an early age that leads to a physical relationship, and ultimately break-up. All the things are affecting their education, psychological development, and most importantly ethical values.
If we think we’re here to make the world a better place for ourselves and our family members, we need to think about our activities. We need to give our children sufficient time and interact with them. We need to teach them about ethics, right and wrong, about respect and politeness. We need to give them proper education, stop sending out them to coaching centers. We need to focus on studying textbooks. We need to encourage them to do innovative and social works, to think about society and country. We need to get them rid of the concept that money is everything. Above all, we need to help them develop a positive attitude that will lead them to ultimate success.
Otherwise, we’re doing great and Bangladesh is off to a great disaster because “wrong-headed” future generations can never make Bangladesh a better place.
