Where knowledge is the goal …..

The Asiatic Society of Bangladesh calls its new two-volume encyclopaedic series Junior Banglapedia. In truth, it is much more than that, given that the information the Junior Banglapedia provides to readers instructs not only the young but adults as well. That is where the beauty of a knowledge-based work lies. In recent years, the Asiatic Society has done truly commendable work in such areas as compiling, in a number of volumes, the history of Dhaka on the four-hundredth anniversary of the city. That was truly a stupendous performance, given that the Society covered nearly every possible facet of Dhaka, including such areas the history of Dhakai food, and in the end giving people not just a taste of history but also an insight into the changing fortunes of a city which remains as vibrant as it was four centuries ago.
And then, of course, comes the Asiatic Society's gigantic work in the matter of the Banglapedia, an enterprise which today serves as a rather rich point of reference for scholars and students alike. The Banglapedia series is in a very important way an enumeration of the culture, history and politics of this region, with special emphasis on Bangladesh. And because it is, those drawn to history have found in the series information that earlier was hard to come by. The Society has fulfilled a huge need, without question.
Now, with the Junior Banglapedia, the Asiatic Society reaches out to the very young in the country; and by so doing it actually extends its knowledge towards a region where even adults can benefit from. Volume One, given over to Bangladesh and the rest of the world, covers such vital areas --- where the country is concerned --- as its flora and fauna, its administrative divisions, natural environment, culture and history. The importance of the work, which in its section dealing with the world encompasses the ages stretching from the prehistoric era all the way to the modern age, is that it comes at a time when the study of history in Bangladesh's educational institutions has quite declined. Indeed, the increasing emphasis on job-oriented subjects of study at universities is a potent sign of how history and politics have been consigned to the backburner, with results that are none too cheering for citizens. Moreover, the pretty inexplicable manner in which school and college-leaving examination scores (read here the GPA figures that supposedly attest to students' academic attainments) are celebrated are followed quickly by the thought that such good results do not include an understanding of the history of the country and the wider world it is part of, on the part of the student. Naturally, therefore, in the aftermath of the academic results, students invariably tend to feel lost or at some point get lost on the way to the future.
The Junior Banglapedia is therefore a powerful statement of why the study of history must become an integral part of curricula at schools and colleges. Moreover, an observation of these two volumes, the second of which is given over to science and technology, reinforces the notion that the subjects taught at schools, colleges and universities notwithstanding, there is a tremendous need for history to be included as a compulsory theme in classroom teaching. Observe the fields covered in Volume Two of the Junior Banglapedia. Here you have simple presentations of some of the complex subjects that have gone into a widening of the field of knowledge through the ages. In this volume, the young will come by a rich store of information about such significant areas of science as biology, physics, chemistry, the animal kingdom, astronomy and the environment. A particularly rich section of the volume is the one dealing briefly with the lives and achievements of scientists who have across time and generations contributed to an understanding of our place in the universe. It is a who's who in the world of science as we have known it so far; and on the list you have such celebrated names as Archimedes, Aryabhata, Descartes, Fermat, Bose, Ibn Sina, Newton, Pavlov, Hawking and, of course, Einstein.
These two volumes of Junior Banglapedia deserve a place on the shelves at home. And, yes, school and college libraries around the country will be doing much good to themselves, to their students, by adding the works to their library resources. If education is the key to the growth of a knowledge-based society in Bangladesh, the two volumes of Junior Banglapedia ought to be brought in as a necessary structural foundation of such a society.