Editorial
Eight million with no education at all?
Something is going wrong somewhere
A society where as many as eight million young people between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five have never completed primary education is clearly an ailing one. And it is so because these people, a sizeable part of the national population, do not have the skills necessary that can enable them to shape their lives in accordance with their needs. The Unesco report which makes note of this anomaly in Bangladesh society is thus one with which we not only agree but are also disturbed by. The report should be a wake-up call for the authorities.
There are obviously some fundamental reasons behind the young not going to school, chief among which is poverty. And poverty not only has a telling effect on the health of the young but is also a big reason why these unhealthy young are nevertheless looked upon as tentative economic wage earners, albeit at a meager level, for their families. If now these eight million are without primary education, it is quite clear that the message has not gone down to them that education is one surefire method that can help push poverty aside. It is for the authorities to emphasise, on a nationwide basis, the lesson that primary education is a guarantee of a future of self-reliance because it will enable the young to understand and master those skills which will help them as they grow into adulthood.
That said, there now comes up the question of a lack of interest in the young about primary education. It is here that institutional measures, initiated by the government across the board, must be undertaken toward making primary education a compulsory affair. That calls for more teacher training methods and insistent, regular classroom teaching as well as attendance. In recent years, Bangladesh has certainly made qualitative improvements in education. Even so, the reality of 44 million of its people, out of a total population of nearly 120 million, remaining beyond the pale of primary education is a crying shame. In our times, countries which have gone through revolution before the revolutionaries eventually took charge have seen the numbers of their educated grow by leaps and bounds. Why should we, having won our own revolution four decades ago, lag behind?
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