STAR DIARY

Photo: Prabir Das

FAULTY TEACHING 

Recently my friend told me a story that not only shocked me but also made me quite disappointed in what our teachers are teaching the children of our country. Last week, while the students were rehearsing for a show, they were listening to a Michael Jackson song that they were going to work with. Suddenly, an earthquake hit and while all the students and teachers were scrambling around, terrified, the Islamic teacher of the school made it a point to go the children and tell them that it was their fault the earthquake occurred. According to him, the Michael Jackson music they were listening to was the trigger, and God had gotten angry with them and punished them with an earthquake. Instead of calming them down like a proper guardian, he scared them and made them believe that this natural disaster was their fault!  If respected teachers of a school are teaching the students these things, then we are not far from watching our country crumble into nothingness because of the lack of proper literacy.

Nazneen Hasan
Dhaka

RACIST EXPECTATIONS

My friend recently got her son admitted to a very reputed English Medium school here in Dhaka. My friend is from abroad but since she married her Bangladeshi husband, she has been living and raising her three children here. She made sure her children were more fluent in Bangla than English. When her eldest child attended his first class, the school authorities rang her up and blasted her about why her son cannot speak fluent English. She replied saying that he just got into school and knows his basics like every other student. But the authorities replied saying, "but he's foreign! You are foreign. He should know fluent English. We expected at least this much from him!" When she told me this I was so shocked at the racism she had to face. I suppose the authorities don't even know they were being racist. But in this day and age, at least school authorities should know better than to make such assumptions and resort to stereotyping their students. 

Samara Hashib
Dhaka, Bangladesh