'Greatest Problem of Bangladesh is...'

... no, it is not population. Not corruption. Not lack of resources, either. It is the lack of equivalency with western education systems.

My evaluations may and will surprise many. Bangladesh is the only country in the world that holds over 1,000 people per square-kilometer. There are almost 150 million people living in this 144,000 square-kilometers piece of land. The country has been ranked the most corrupt nation in the world for five years in a row by Transparency International. Forests are reduced to only 10% of the land, mere 20-30 years' reserve of natural gas remains, and all other resources depleted, what can be a worse problem? It is a country deeply divided in terms of political ideologies, infiltrated by fanatics, and submerged in bureaucracy.

I would still suggest that only an equivalency is the only "fix" for the problem - both in long and short terms.

Education systems of Bangladesh have some equivalency after the completion of every major stage, i.e., SSC, HSC, Bachelors, Masters. However, these are full of various kinds of inconsistencies. We claim that our systems are "completely equivalent" on the basis of two things: a) we now have semester system instead of annual, b) we grade in scale of 4.0 instead of 100 for each subject per year.

This complacency is so deep among the people in position that no one bothers to analyze further. The "grading scale" may be same everywhere (= 'out of 4.0'), but the "grading standard" isn't. Yet another major problem unsolved and ignored.

This installment of the blog is just to shed light and draw attention over the matter. Signing off with the promise to be a bit different than most and come up with some "real solutions" to many of the issues related to education reform in Bangladesh.