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We need to have introspection as to how much we are achieving. I think we are far from achieving our desired goals. For such shortcomings I think the whole society is to blame not only the education system. But then the educationists have to come forward to change the society. There is a saying change is one thing which is constant. Now education has to come up with this constant factor which is called change. Change the curricula, change the methods, change the infrastructure, change the medium, change the relations, change the relevance, change the mindset etc to keep pace withthe ever changing fast moving intelligent globalized 21st century.

These are some of the challenges that Bangladesh education is facing today. I believe challenges are not being faced squarely or in a holistic manner. All stakeholders are not involved. There are not clear strategic directions. There are varieties of institutions like Public, Private, English Medium, Bangla Medium, National Curriculum, O and A Levels, National University, Open University, Madrasha Education, Cadet College Education, and General Education etc. I do not want to go into the debate over pros and cons of these varieties. The point that I want to Highlight is not the varieties but the strategic direction. Do they all meet our end state? Do they meet our society's needs? Are they relevant and up-to-date? Are they creating new ideas and skills? Are they compatible with nation's core values? Do they cope up with the change? Let the hundred flowers blossom. But let all the flowers meet the common good of social objectives of education.

This paper attempts to point out some of these strategic directions and The way forward. Such points should not be viewed coming from an expert but from a common citizen or a stakeholder of this country. The ideas given in the paper are common and they need fine-tuning by the experts who are sitting in this august gathering. The point that is emphasized in the paper: we need a clear cut direction and a leadership to tackle the challenges in a functional and integrative manner.

Conceptual Issues and Responses Natural resources are in short supply all over the world. In order to overcome this constraint, innovativeness is the way forward to look for alternative methods of creating resources. And those could be natural and human resources. It is now believed present management techniques are reaching their saturation potentials; it is coming to a stalemate. In order to come out of this stalemate, innovativeness is again the way forward. Genetic engineering- where innovativeness is the core- is the way Forward for sustenance of living species. Alternative to natural energy is the search for ethanol, although that may not be a cost-effective alternative. This is again nothing but innovativeness. However, there are dangers of environmental degradation. Again there is degeneration in the value system.

In order to overcome these dangers, everything has to be done in a balanced way. Better education should take care of innovativeness and balance. Albert Einstein said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge”. Human Brain has unlimited potentials, which if properly harnessed and exploited can reach to the pinnacle of innovativeness. A man uses, it is believed, only a fraction of his potentials. Now this needs to be properly nurtured, ignited, provoked and challenged towards a constructive nature friendly direction. Self-actualization should be the ultimate goal of utilization of these potentials. However, self-actualization without the value system added to it may make the system derailed. God has created all systems- like the solar system, a river system, mountain ranges system, a family system, nervous system of a human body etc. - in a most balanced way. Now if this balancing is not utilized in the thinking or cognitive abilities, things will go astray. Education that can not take care of these parameters would bring no good to the continued growth and development of a nation. Apart from seeing development from traditional economic measures, development also entails in its ambit terms like poverty reduction, social justice, environmental sustainability, human rights and empowerment. Education, call it better or balanced, is the key to creating, applying And spreading new ideas and technologies. Any education which does not create new ideas- it only toys with the old, stereotyped ones- can not be called better education. New ideas augment cognitive or other skills that result in better productivity. Productivity should not be seen only from materialistic point of view. There has to be a moralistic or idealistic cascade on the productivity continuum also. Unless there is a happy marriage between these two educational strands it may not be able to reach the objectives. Education creates new ideas and also helps in achieving both the dimensions of productivity; and such situation may be called'win-win' strategy.

Bangladesh suffers from leadership/management crisis in every tier and segment of the society and the government. And today's leadership has to be transformational i.e. going beyond transactional. Now better education creates vision, futuristic ideas, charisma, moral values, human considerations, problem solving abilities, critical thinking, intellectual stimulation etc. And put all these together can create transformational leadership. Bangladesh exactly needs that. But our present education system, I am constrained to comment, is probably not providing much of these. Research outcome is pathetically lacking in our universities. Critical thinking abilities are missing. Stereotyped education system that makes one conservative, dogmatic, rigid, static, parrot like would not be able to handle the fast moving, complex multifaceted problems of this country.

Challenging the status quo is the essence of creative thinking abilities. However, it should be seen that such challenging does not make the system dysfunctional. Such challenge should be directed to integration. Our education does not instil such challenging abilities in our students. Bangladesh needs a kind of building that suits the tropical climate and environment. Bangladesh has varieties of malaria which may not be found in the European theatre. Our students should challenge the stereotyped knowledge that we have inherited from the Western world and create its own and take care of its peculiarities. So education has to have relevance. To create relevance in the education, you need research, creativity, vision, and innovativeness. In Bangladesh we have hundreds of high quality economists in the traditional sense. What we need from these high quality economists is to give us ideas that can transform our systems. Only one Professor Yunus would not do. They have to reach to the grass roots, find out our heritage, explore the weaknesses and strengths, examine internal and external efficiency, generate options and apply those to the ground and take over the leadership. Such economists may lead a regiment of farmers or traders or manufactures in the workplace itself and bring about revolution.

We have made commendable revolution in our agriculture. Now this Revolution could be better sustained, both environmentally and economically, if it were physically led by our agro-economists or agriculturists. We do not need all drawing room type economists. We also need economists who can better synthesize theory and practice. That is true for the doctors also. Parroting the types of blood from Gray's Anatomy Book is one thing, but clinically diagnosing the leukaemia or bloodlessness of a farmer's wife or daughter is altogether something different.

Our education should also be oriented towards Case Method Type, In-Basket Exercises, Field Studies, Presentations, Interviews, Group Discussions, Group Research, Assessment Centres, and Critical Thinking Exercises etc.

This is not to suggest doing away with theorizing; this is to suggest linking theory with practice. And vice-versa as much as feasible. Education is a powerful tool for reducing poverty and ensuring egalitarianism. It then ultimately lays the basis for sustained economic growth, sound governance, and effective institutions. Countries with better educated population have higher economic growth rates and equitable distribution of income. The individuals with more education tend to enjoy higher incomes, better health, more geographical mobility, and so on. We are failing to ensure sustained economic growth, sound governance, and effective institutions. It shows there is something wrong in ensuring better education in our country. A management study shows even an elementary knowledge on mathematics and language of a common worker would make lot of difference in the productivity of a factory. Are we even ensuring that? Our bureaucracy, today, is not delivering as expected in a globalized world. This is mainly our universities are not producing competent, knowledgeable graduates having adequate creative ideas and dynamic abilities. However, poor compensation package is also another factor.

Governance issue is a real restraining factor in the development process of Bangladesh. Most of our state institutions are decaying. It is heartening to note that the present government is trying to revamp these institutions. But this would be difficult to sustain unless we ensure better education for our graduates. These graduates should be imbued with both latest knowledge and moral values. It is the job of the universities to ensure those. Moral education must start from the primary level. Value deficiency syndrome is practically eating into protein of the society. Unless this lingering problem is addressed Bangladesh can never expect to come out of the threshold of poverty trap. Reaching the level of middle income group countries would be a far cry. Without values, ethics and standards everything is likely to get disarrayed. And the likely fallout is: the institution building is coming under hiccups time and again.

Without institution building Bangladesh can not expect to move forward. Citing the example in the education sector itself, corruption reduces The resources available for schooling, and thereby limiting access and Lowering the quality. Key areas susceptible to corruption, according to a report published by Australian Government (AusAid) (May 2007) titled, “Better Education- A policy for Australian Development Assistance in Education”, are: “Planning and School Management- including manipulation of finances, procurement and distribution-particularly nepotism in awarding contracts for supply of school materials and fraud in contract execution, student selection and exam results- including bribery for admission to a particular school or academic institution and exchange of money or other favors for good grades, teacher management, personnel systems and professional misconduct- particularly in the filling of vacancies, transfers and promotions, and accreditation of schools and other academic institutions- including the payment of fees and other bribes to achieve accreditation or financial recognition”. Such practices are rampant and endemic in Bangladesh environment.

Deterrence or regulatory/legal methods are one way to control such irregularities. But unless the substantial portion of our population, especially those involved in public life, is cleared of this morass, such practice would continue unabated. Although value injection should start at the family level, schools, colleges and universities should offer a package programme, in every discipline, that would cater to the needs of value/ethics deficiency of our future generation. Bangladesh needs a revolution in this core area of its social, political, economic, and cultural life. And this can be only effectively executed by an education policy that can take care of the values, ethics and morality to be inculcated in the psyche of the younger generation. Nothing can be more paramount than giving the young generation a shot in the arm which will provoke them to regenerate values.

Bangladesh's only reckonable comparative advantage is its huge manpower. Now this huge manpower, instead of becoming a liability, should be turned into a competitive advantage. To get that advantage is to turn them into human resources. And to turn them into human resources you need better education. Today our remittance earning is around 7 billion US dollar. A World Bank report forecasts Bangladesh can earn 15 billion by 2015.

And In order to reach there Bangladesh needs to impart better education, skills, abilities to its people who are going for jobs in the United States, United Kingdom, Middle East, Malaysia, Japan and elsewhere. They also need Better communication skills, commitment, mannerism, etiquettes, ethics and values, and emotional intelligence.

In order to achieve those you need a very sophisticated all round, liberal, balanced education curricula to be delivered by a very competent faculty in a proper campus environment. Such a system is a crying need of Bangladesh society today. Our education system has turned out to be text book and tutor based. Where are the extra and co-curricular activities for the students? Do we have debating clubs, drama clubs, science clubs, boating or hiking clubs in all our education tiers and institutions? Our students rush to the tutors immediately after they have finished with the stereotyped routine class rooms. Does he regularly play football, basketball, or go for a boat ride or hiking when he can at least think about nature? We do not give them enough scope to develop group dynamics. Without group dynamics, he is not expected to sharpen his emotional intelligence. He will turn out to be a social drop out. He will look for an exit strategy to move to Canada, Australia or the U.S.A. There is, therefore, a tremendous brain drain. What a price we are paying. He knows the location of the river Thames, which he has not seen, but he does not know the location of the Padma or Meghna which he could have easily visited and explored. However, this is not true across the board. What is suggested here: we should develop an all round, liberal, balanced education system. We need a lively, teacher-student friendly campus life. A vibrant campus life will give him the potentials to develop as a transformational leader. Bangladesh is in dire need of transformational leaders at every tier and segment of its national life.

I would now like to impress about the medium of instructions in our institutions. We have generally Bangla, English and Arabic as our medium of instructions. It is definitely emphasized that the mother tongue should be used broadly as the medium of instruction. But the reality of the globalized world is: transactions are mostly done in English. So we cannot avoid it. This is not to denigrate our mother tongue Bangla. What is suggested here is to look for another option which will make us more global friendly, vibrant, sustainable, growth oriented and creative. There are scholars who would contradict it. I applaud their idea. But we are constrained by our weak economy, not-a-healthy politics, weak governance, not-so-vibrant commerce and trade, and not- yet-fully developed information and communication technology. We have to overcome many, many hurdles, being a least developed country. We are neither Japan, or Germany or China.

Given these constraints we have to put our stress on English as an alternative medium of instruction. As an examiner of Dhaka University, I am appalled to see the students answering in Bangla after going through The reference books written mostly in English language. You do not have reference books in Bangla. We will need decades to reach to that level. I still remember, back in 1975, Professor Muzaffar Ahmed Chowdhury, Former Vice-Chancellor of Dhaka University, while addressing the 21st February Language Martyrs' Day lecture in the Bangla Academy said about 90% of our library language is English and as such we could not sideline English as a medium of instruction. We have, in fact, sidelined it and I think Result has not been good for the country. India has moved much faster Especially in areas like science and technology, information and communication technology, commerce and trade, international relations etc than what we have done due, among other reasons, retaining English, in most of their universities, as a medium of instruction. I think we have to draw lessons from the spectacular development India has made in different strata of its society.

The last point I would like to harp is our ignoring or not-putting-enough stress in the disciplines of basic sciences. Private universities are totally ignoring those although public universities have the infrastructure to offer such disciplines. Basic mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, economics, politics, history etc are the areas where you create knowledge for other disciplines to emulate or borrow. You have to undertake research in these basic subjects. Only then can we think of reaching to the space age, if at all. It is a sordid affair to note that the most brilliant students are even tempted to go for business administration- its necessity is no way castigated- when they could be better utilized in basic research. Commercialization of our education could be a factor for this. I would urge upon the private universities to come forward in real Earnest in this direction. We need an Einstein, Innas Ali, Bose, Kudrat-e-Khuda; we have Yunus, or had Razzak; but may be we need another Amartya Sen or F R Khan. For basic research we need huge investment and for that we need the private sector to come forward.

We need greater public-private Partnership to get fundamental research outcome which would benefit both the sectors. “Research, particularly in topics relevant to important local problems, has been substantially curtailed by the lack of recurrent budgets.... In 1996, Dhaka University spent equivalent of only 1.5 percent of its UGC grant on research; BUET spent 1.4 percent on research; at the University of Rajshahi the amount was less than 0.5 percent.” A Daily Star report, quoting sources in UGC, indicates only Tk. 45-50 lakhs are usually allocated annually for research; in 2005-2006 only Tk. 45-59 lakhs were allocated to this end. UGC awarded only seven researchers in 2005, three in 2004, six in 2003 and five in 2002. UGC could not award any one in medical science, as quality research publication was not found.

This is, indeed, a dismal scenario. Please bear in mind we need strategic thinkers. Without Basic and fundamental research you can not create strategic thinkers. Without correct strategic direction, tactical or action level programmes are bound to go wrong. This is the way my military education has taught me to think. And I believe that equally applies in our national education arena.

Concluding Remarks. We have to first strategize our directions, develop our long term Strategic objectives, provide the necessary logistics and resources, develop policies, develop year wise objectives- we may put those in management by objectives format- and then put those into action. And we have to constantly take support from the feedback loop. But we are going haphazard. We need a vision from our scholars who are sitting here.

If you give the correct vision- which I am sure you will and the leadership in implementing the plan of actions, I am sure the whole society will come forward to support you. We have lost the Oxford of the East, the much heralded Dhaka University. Can we not rejuvenate or reengineer it? BUET is still in Good form but it is also decaying. Out of 100 universities in the Indian sub-continent, BUET ranked 24th, and Dhaka University 56th, as reported in the Daily Star. Let us refurbish those and bring many more to the global or regional level. Can we not be proud of our heritage found in the Bengal Renaissance? Where are we going wrong? We have the basic potentials, we have the infrastructure available.

What we need to do is to retouch it And get it restarted and provide the leadership. Remember this is a nation of 150 million very vibrant, proactive, productive, and creative human beings. Mao Tse Tung cautioned the Chinese people after the October Revolution that the human beings are never a liability. You have to turn them into resources. And education is the only way out. I will end by quoting a Chinese proverb: “If you are planning for a year, sow rice; if you are planning for a decade, plant trees; if you are planning for a lifetime, educate people”.

(This paper was presented at a National Seminar on Better Education for Better Bangladesh Organized by Dhaka Language Club on 17 May 2008 at CIRDAP Auditorium)

Major General Mohd Aminul Karim ndc, ldmc, psc is presently the Military Secretary to the Honorable President of Bangladesh.
Email:mdaminulkarim@yahoo.com