::: Star Weekend Magazine :::

Special Feature

Education and Great Expectations

Tamanna Khan

Guess what is the sole purpose of being a Bangladeshi urban child coming from a well-to-do family? If your answer is “to enjoy the precious short-lived years of childhood” then you are wrong. In our country, a child is employed into education. S/he has to earn her bread by performing well in school and the moment she learns to speak, she is taught the popular Bengali proverb 'lekhapora kore je garighora chore shey' (those who study will have the opportunity to ride vehicles). And lekhapora or education becomes the sole purpose of the child's entire being.

Thus, for Sayera, a high-achiever who has secured the highest position in all her classes since nursery, the extra burden brought on by the Primary Education Terminal Examination, yet another experiment of the Bangladesh government on the education system, appears in the form of a blunt headache all day long. She has to take two model tests a day and has extended her study hours to 12:30 am, while still getting up for school as early as 5:30 am. For many kids who do not have the same knack for studies, the result can be devastating.

Professor Md Abid Hossain Mollah, professor of Neonatology, Dhaka Medical College Hospital (DMCH) received one such case where the patient, a Class 4 student complained of constant headache and was doing badly in school, in spite of the fact that he had successfully passed the school admission test competing with 70 other kids. Dr Mollah, after thorough check-up and all kinds of clinical examination, could not find any physical cause of the problem. Thus he asked the parents to consult with Dr Abdullah Al Mamun, head of the department of Psychiatry, DMCH, who after detailed conversation with both the child and the parents and analysing the history of the patient, discovered the headache to be a somatoform disorder, a kind of health problem not related to any physical cause but to psychological problems.

Lately, Dr Mamun has been receiving quite an increasing number of such patients, mostly school-going children. The complaints of the children vary from headache, stomachache, dizziness and nausea, to unspecified pain in different parts of the body. Some cases are as severe as Ananya's (not her real name), a 14-year-old student of Class 7, who became paralysed and mute just before her examination. At first she was giving excuses of stomachache to avoid attending school, with the examination knocking at the door. From her history, doctors came to know that her parents used to pressurise her constantly regarding studies and good performance. Coming home after six hours of school, that usually starts at 8:00 am, she would take an hour's rest and then sit with a tutor to help her with her studies and then in the evening again she would go to another tutor. Psychiatrist and epidemiologist, Dr Muhammad Zillur Rahman Khan, who works closely with Dr Mamun, while relating the case says, “Ultimately, we see that a child is leading the life of a mature busy professional. This is not expected. A child needs time to play, time for entertainment. She needs a proper environment for growing up.”

A peek into little Dipu's life brings forth the same corporate schedule, that burdens children with pressure beyond what they can take. A nursery student, Dipu's day starts at 7:00 am daily and between three hours of school, one hour of school-homework, two and a half hours of coaching class and another hour spent on homework assigned at coaching, he hardly gets any time to play or interact with his parents. Dipu being a sharp child can finish the homework assigned at school by himself, yet he needs to attend the over-imposing coaching centre to guarantee his admission into the highly competitive government primary schools. Of course the decision regarding the coaching centre has not been made by the six-year-old, but by his parents, who have willingly traded his leisure time for a better quality education in future.

Unlike American and Canadian parents who complain about the burden of homework causing family problems, according to a study by Curt Dudley-Marley of Boston College, Bangladeshi parents seem to support the idea of homework. In fact, Salma Begum, whose son studies in Class 2 at a reputed English Medium in Dhaka, is quite unhappy as at her son's school, homework is assigned only on Thursdays. However, she has found a way to fill the gap of homework from her son's daily routine by asking his tutor to give him homework instead. Her son too can manage the schoolwork by himself but she sends him to the tutor because she has seen that the kids who top the class, complete the school syllabus in advance.

Tahmina Rahman, working as a class teacher at an English Medium school in Mirpur, informs that at kindergarten level they have six subjects and 13 books. The students are given homework on each of the six subjects on a regular basis. Many a times she has seen students not coming to school as they could not finish the homework the night before. Yet, Rahman often gets complaints from guardians saying that the there has been too little homework lately.

Tanzeem R. Abdullah, Vice Principal of South Breeze School where children are not loaded with pages of homework, says, “Some parents are buying education. They think that if they can put the child in an expensive school and after school-hours, send them to an expensive tutor, their duty as parents is over.” Abdullah further adds that once parents put the child in a good school and hire a good tutor, they obviously want the child to perform.

Commenting on parents' high expectation from their kids, Khaleda Habib, Principal of Udayan High School, says. “They are sending their kids to coaching centres for each and every subject. From all this commuting, children become tired and they fail to be attentive at school. And if they get poor marks in class tests, they often hide it from their parents in fear of reprimand.”

Parents like Farida Begum do not want to send their child to coaching centres yet her son in preparation for his O-Levels has to attend four different tutoring classes after school. “If I have to spend two to three thousand taka behind tutors for each of the subjects taught at school, why should I pay six thousand taka per month as school fees? My son's uncle does not feel that without extra tuition, my son can do well.”

Reflecting on this attitude of guardians, Tanzeem Abdullah says that once the students move to higher classes, parents start suffering from uncertainty about the school's effort in preparing the students for the upcoming public examination. Interestingly, the same teachers who teach at the coaching centres work at reputed schools. Children who are weaker than average may opt for extra tuition as in most cases a teacher in a class of 20-25, aims to look after the average student's need. However, at many well-known Bengali medium schools of Dhaka, the class size often exceeds 60. Khaleda Habib admits that the overwhelming number of students often becomes a barrier for teachers to look after the special needs of the students.

For proper physical and mental development, a child needs to play and socialize, says Dr Zillur Rahman Khan. He further adds that a child learns from exploring his/her surroundings. However, in today's deteriorating society, parents remain highly concerned about the security of their children. As a result, they try to control the lives of their offspring with academic and forced extra-curricular activities and the child is left with no voice of his/her own, their creativity and emotion trapped. “We think if parents can create a balance between guidelines and freedom in a child's life, listen to the child attentively about what s/he likes or does not like, behave with and support the child in a friendly way, then these problems can be solved,” continues Dr Khan.

Tanzeem Abdullah resonates Khan's point-of-view saying that most parents miserably fail to understand the importance of spending quality time with the child. More than a mobile phone or a computer, or an all-knowing tutor, a child needs his/her parents. Abdullah says the parents do not need to teach the child at home if the child attends school regularly and is attentive in class. She suggests that all parents need to know is what is happening at school. Changes in the curriculum are also needed, she says, by incorporating subjects like sports, music and debates and assigning marks to the same.

Khaleda Habib says the syllabus for social science and science subjects at primary level at Bengali medium schools is too large and it needs to be adjusted. She also suggests that the curriculum board should include more school teachers rather than university teachers, so that the capacity of the students will be rightly reflected in the selection of topics and syllabus. Habib also emphasises on the importance of sports grounds and activities to provide children with relief from study-related stress.

The advent of technology, loss of playing grounds, rise of nuclear families, long working hours of parents, decline of social security -- all these are creeping into the minds of our children in the form of headaches, stomachaches, paralysis, depression, anxiety and even aggression. It is time we acknowledge and confront this social change. The prime minister's recent directive to appoint psychologists at each and every school to provide counseling to children with special needs could be a starting point. However, parents too need to change their attitude and expectation about their kids. After all, people get to be “children” only once in their lifetime; for knowledge and learning, they have their whole lives ahead of them.