We need a world class education system -The Asian Age

The minister for education has promised that the matter of the names of two porn stars cropping up in the question paper of a high school examination in the nation's capital will be looked into. It is not that a grave crime has been committed by the person or persons who set the questions, but what is of importance here is for extra care to have been taken while the questions were being framed.

The general rule is that when questions relate to well-known individuals or alternative answers refer to individuals known in society and history, it is illustrious personalities whose names are cited. The moral failure in the present instance is not that the two stars have been named. It is rather that their background was ignored, given that every society teaches its young such essential components of life and living as those grounded on ethics.

We certainly do not want our children, especially those appearing at school examinations, to get in touch with actors whose record has been sordid through their roles in pornographic films. One can easily imagine the consternation which parents must have felt when their children asked them about the two porn stars in question.

Of late, question papers at different levels have also been framed around ideas that militate against the cultural ethos of the country. There have been instances where clear instances of religious prejudice have underpinned questions, obviously to the detriment of national history.

These matters should also be investigated for the good reason that we do not want the young in Bangladesh to grow into adulthood with false and misguided ideas of life. We have already paid a price, in the twenty one years between August 1975 and June 1996, in terms of gross misrepresentations of history.

That bad lesson should not be repeated, ever, if our goal is to pass on to the young the original ideas of secular and liberal democracy which served as the foundation of our twilight struggle for freedom forty eight years ago. Every effort must be made by the government to ensure that education is secular, that it eschews any attempt by any quarter to give it a dark spot of communalism, that in the end it upholds the spirit of Bengali nationalism upon which we earned our freedom as an independent nation.

The goal of education must be the creation of a society geared to the preservation of morality, in terms of both society and history. For this reason alone, we believe that porn stars and sectarian belief must not infiltrate the education system. Those who hold political power these days have a unique opportunity to give the country a world-class education system that will enable our young to compete with others of their kind around the globe. Let that be done.