Education
Many things are being written about the importance of improving education in Bangladesh and, as one who has taught in Bangladeshi-run schools for 10 years, as Assistant Teacher, Principal and Headmistress, may I add my two-pennyworth?
Many assume that the answer is more money but millions have been spent on education consultants and major projects but with little impact. A friend of mine was a highly paid education consultant for 30 years and spent 20 of them in Bangladesh. She retired, saying she felt she had not been able to do anything at all! Impeccable research is carried out, reports made and advice given but, time after time, nothing happens.
Do any of your readers remember that excellent project - the English Language Teaching Improvement Project? I used its local district office when I was teaching up on the border. The Bangladeshi woman in charge, a graduate, said she could not wait to go back to university to do research. Let us listen to that woman. She was training and re-training teachers. She told me that when they went back to their schools, most of them sunk without trace. The moment they tried out the new skills they had learnt, cold water was poured all over them - by whom? By those teachers who considered themselves 'senior' to them! Too often, they told the newly trained, or newly re-trained, teachers that THEY had been teaching for a number of years and THEY had never taught like that! Such is the respect in your culture for 'seniors' that these 'juniors' usually give up any attempt to implement what they have learnt, often at great expense, and revert to 'traditional' teaching methods that fail to motivate the pupils, causing some of them to drop out, especially the boys who tolerate boredom less than girls.
I am not saying that there are not some wonderful older teachers in some schools - teachers who are ready to change and adapt and learn new skills and be a real role-model for younger teachers to follow but far too many seem to think of new teachers (some of whom have had a much better training than their 'seniors') like new recruits in an old-fashioned army - who have to be made to fall into line - their line!
Surely, the only new money needed in education is for the Golden Handshake - an irresistibly large sum of money for the early retirement of such teachers and a lovely party! You bring in old pupils, have speeches of congratulation and affection, thank them warmly for their wonderful loyalty to the school, say goodbye - and replace them!
Some 'senior' teachers need to be answered when they say, “I have been teaching twenty - or whatever - years,” with “No, sir. No, madam. You have not been teaching for twenty years. You have been teaching for ONE year and have repeated that year twenty times!”
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