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Campus Feature

How about introducing some new departments in every university?

Mashuqur Rahman

Friends, what do you think about it? Opening a new department in all universities and calling it something like - 'Department of Moral Studies and Manner Training'. It should offer some undergraduate basic first year courses like - 'How to Stand in Queues Patiently -101' or 'Learning to Control Temper in Traffic Jams - 104'. Some advanced undergraduate level courses like 'How Not to Pester Pretty Female Classmates - 202' or 'How to (Truly) Respect Parents, Teachers, Seniors and Elders - 304' can also be offered.

I can suggest some graduate courses too that the Department can provide to prepare the students to face the challenges of reality of the workplace. For example some two semester courses like 'Serving in Government Jobs Without Taking Bribes ' or short courses like 'How to Work Efficiently in Public Sectors'. These Departments can sometimes hold workshops for school or college teachers like '3-Week training on 'How to Focus on Teaching in Schools Without Taking Money by Private Coaching'.

\These Departments should hold some daylong seminars, at least once a year, on say 'How to Beat Your Opponent in a Gentle Manner without Swearing or Using Ugly Expressions' or more importantly on topics like 'How Not to Deify Leaders' and invite some of the respected Members of our Parliament or other leaders to attend it. I think it can also offer doctorate degrees to any head of our state who can provide a comprehensive research paper on themes 'How to Run this Country Without Exploiting the Poor People with the Help of Party Members'. And if the universities can provide the Departments with enough funds - they could create a Research & Development branch and try to do some groundbreaking research on 'How to Remove Moral Corruption from the People of Bangladesh'.

I strongly feel that all the universities in our country should establish such a Department, if and only if, we want to do any good to our country and our society and our people. We don't need any new department of astrophysics because we are not going to make a rocket anytime soon, nor do we need department of nuclear physics because of the same reasons.

We have enough advanced education going on in our country with the kind help of 21 public and 54 private universities. They are producing thousands and thousands of competent graduates every year who can write programs, build power plants, run offices, control corporations, invent robots and what not. But I feel most of them lack one fundamental education which is making all the difference in our country -that is moral education.

The virus of corruption and moral degradation is eating away the entrails of our country. No wonder Bangladesh is becoming champion in the 'Annual World Corruption Cup' for the last few years. And believe me, it takes hell lot of corruption to beat a country like Nigeria in this field, and we Bangladeshis did it ! And the only reason is: most people in our country lack moral education.

Some of you may point to the western countries which do not provide any kind of basic moral education whatsoever in their high-schools or at any level, but people from those countries still behave in very good manners and in systematic ways. This observation is apparently true, but if you delve a bit deep you will find this assumption is not fully correct. Most Bangladeshi people face hardships every moment of their lives- load shedding, long queues everywhere, high temperatures, scarcity of everything and many other problems, and they do react to these situations in a not-so-well-mannered way. But an average westerner does not face these situations in every aspect of their lives so they do not need to be ill-mannered.

Their true manners are exposed whenever there is a crisis.

Take a look at their behavior during the great power-outage in the eastern part of North America few years back, or after Hurricane Katrina. These apparently mild-mannered gentlemen became unruly mobs and started vandalizing and looting !! Shoot on sight orders had to be given to control them!! One can also see what happens when there is a clearance sale. So we can presume that moral corruption in some degree is present in all societies that are not trained in moral education and it is exposed when it faces any crisis.

Traditionally we have a very rich culture of moral education for thousands of years in our region. They were present in Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism and Christianity. In Islam it was taught as 'Tasawwuf' or 'Sufism' and in Hinduism it was taught as 'Sanyas' and Buddhisms 'Ahimsa'. Now as our society has 'progressed' this education was gradually removed from our curricula because of 'secularism'. Of course in the days of yore the priorities of the mass were the religion and afterlife and now our priority is this life and better living. So apparently studies on moral became 'obsolete'.

But I would emphasize that the study of morality has NOT become obsolete even if we want a better worldly life. We are in dire need to re-introduce moral studies in our basic and advanced education curricula because we need morally upright people in our country. And I feel that moral corruption is the number one problem in our country. We have enough resources, enough competent people but we lack morally upright people especially at the leadership level who can make the difference. As they say that the rot in a fish begins from its head. By my proposal to introduce moral education I don't mean introduction of Sufism or the like in our curricula (we have enough pir-s or sufi-s or shadhubaba-s in our country who are supposed to be our spiritual guides and morality teachers, but in reality most of them are more corrupt than our most corrupt government officials or politicians). No, I mean we need to have courses at all levels of our education to teach basic values and morality to pupils so as to produce morally honest citizens. It will help religious people in their quest to get a better afterlife, and help non-religious people to get a better life in this world.

If one Mahathir or Mandela can make this much difference, a country full of morally people can really create wonders.