This is not a piece explaining to you the need for preserving the rich literary works of Bangla language and this isn’t certainly a rant on the current diminishing quality of Bangla literature.

This is, however, a reactionary outburst of a recent UGC announcement which indicated the opening of language centres at 30 universities focusing on teaching Mandarin to university students.

Good idea! One would absolutely applaud UGC’s decision. But my job here is to take you beyond this utilitarian view, and make you question the very aspect of learning a foreign language in the first place, and that too at the expense of your own mother tongue (and yes, Mandarin will be welcomed at the expense of Bangla, just as English has been welcomed at the expense of Bangla).

To understand my reaction, I must first tell you the purpose of education as I see it. Let this be a fair warning, I’m not a scholar, but as an English Instructor of a local institution and therefore, as a spoke on this wheel known as our broken education system, I do pray upon those who lag behind, and I have seen competent minds, who could’ve perfectly been capable of grasping complex concepts in our curriculum, struggle, only because they didn’t grow up watching English TV shows and WWE like I did.

The purpose of education should be to convey and teach the complexities of the world, for only by understanding this complex world, one can change one’s predicament, maybe climb up the social hierarchy, gather some capital, and die knowing his children are to be taken care of.

Education, therefore, as a human right, must be universal, must be thorough, and must ensure a smoother merit-based path from its primary level to its tertiary one.

When any one of these musts collapses, or fails to fulfil its intended role, education doesn’t remain on its intended path towards spreading knowledge, rather it becomes a tool for enriching the already rich by actively neglecting the already neglected.

So, looking at today’s landscape, it is clear that the true purpose of education isn’t being enacted inside Bangladesh at this moment.

The primary school located deep inside the district of Faridpur, in my dadu bari, doesn’t hold classes. The headmaster doesn’t sit in her chair, and the children, many of whom who’ll probably never leave the farmlands, may remain unable to count the interest rates imposed on them by their local loan sharks.

What to do in this predicament? Western researchers have said to make primary education free, introduce a lunch programme, go door to door spreading the word, disallow child labour, and so on.

Much of this is being done in many places, but not by the government, and it is certainly not possible to be done by NGOs on a large scale also.

So then? Then there’s actually nothing else to say. Move on and don’t bring up this uncomfortable issue in polite company. Let capitalism work out its magic.

What you get then is some pockets of hope, maybe door-to-door campaigning worked, maybe free lunch and early scholarships from the government initiated an awakening, and some of the neglected are not being neglected any longer, then comes the question of qualified teachers.

And with that lack of qualification comes the challenge of learning complex subjects such as Maths, Bangladesh and Global Studies, Religion, Bangla, and the one in question, English.

Every other subject, other than English and Maths, the small town kid can cope with even without quality teachers, the main reason being he reads it in his mother tongue and the concepts don’t feel and aren’t foreign to him at all.

Now comes the difficult part.

There comes a time when the small town kid has to make a choice. To truly try to understand the core concept regardless of the quality of teachers or to depend on rote knowledge. And depending on the rote memorisation, knowledge gets him to pass the SSCs and HSCs, sadly, the board examinations are not able to catch these slouchy tendencies.

It is in the admission phase where he first feels that a wall exists between him and his dream, and even if through luck of sheer question paper analysis he gets through, he finds himself surrounded by English. From the textbooks to the ancient slides of his lecturers, each and every small definition to large-scale mathematical concept can never be understood unless he has a good grasp on a language he had skipped wilfully or didn’t have the resources to master in the first place.

At this predicament, when he has to immerse himself in the complexities of the world and learn everything there is to learn, he first has to grasp the medium of the text, and then hope that this subpar language skill will be enough to take him through.

In this globalised climate, English is of course important. In this globalised climate, every bit of knowledge is generated, shared and expressed in English. That is the justification people give behind jamming this foreign language down our throats.

If it is true, and their logic is of course based on facts, then why doesn’t the German, the French or the ever industrious Chinese follow this Anglo enlightenment? Why didn’t China decide in the 80s, when its GDP was below a developing nation’s, to introduce English as a medium of learning from the first grade? Why didn’t the Japanese, after being bombarded by the West, embrace English as the true master language and introduce it in its curriculum?

A deeper analysis of their development and curriculum needs to be assessed, and why would those nations not feel the need to incorporate a foreign language in their curriculum in the first place should also be a topic of fascination for the average policymaker.

Because in this country, the conversation always seems to be about the job market, about the employability factor, and about keeping up with the world economy. And these goals seem only to be achieved through the utilities of English education.

A French, German, Japanese, or Chinese engineer doesn’t speak English, yet he is able to do his job, lead competitive companies, and progress through the ranks. Language isn’t his forte, solving engineering problems is, which is the intended goal, isn’t it?

In Bangladesh, the utility of learning Mandarin is felt just by the inclinations of impending Chinese domination in the global markets. That is why investments are being made, but how much the core knowledge is being incorporated in our undergrads is a discussion far too complicated and complex for us to have openly.

Just as the subcontinent had embraced English in the 1800s since it was the tongue of the all-knowing blue-blooded whites, we are now feeling the need to do the same for the industrious Hans as well.

Perhaps blindly following trends and not looking deep inside were not the policies of the aforementioned nations, which is why they focused on learning 2+2, and not on the language of expression for said 2+2.