Rubaiya Murshed

Does “simplifying” the curriculum really guarantee that children will not be able to pace themselves in higher studies?

When a student is in a place of despair, on the brink of taking their own life, what does one do as a teacher?

We need a peak in social consciousness, and not just in our GDP.

Universities should be about creating the next generation of thinkers, right? Even in terms of skills, haven’t we been failing largely?

There is an inherent bias in our thinking when we imagine the aspirations and career trajectories of students from different socio-economic backgrounds.

We rarely think about the fact that individuals studying under different education streams may have different perceptions of what being educated means and may have different educational goals and aspirations.

Today, students are still subjected to, more or less, the same so-called education that we or our seniors experienced.

As I write this, I am overrun with a rush of helplessness. I remember feeling the same way when I was preparing for a keynote presentation on the “Recovery of Covid-19 learning loss” that this writing stems from.

I’ve always wanted to be a PhD student. I love reading and writing and a PhD is literally being facilitated—often with a full scholarship—to think, read and write.

“Won’t you change your birth year?” my class teacher had asked with a confused look. She was processing the paperwork for changed birth years in our class nine cohort, and amidst all the “new” 1992s and 1993s, I was one of the two “original” 1991s left.

June 12—World Day against Child Labour—wasn’t supposed to be just another Friday. It would have been the launch day of my first book, containing stories about street children.

Growing up in a joint family had its perks. For example, there was hardly a chance to get bored. On the rare occasion I did get bored, I vividly remember my mother threatening to make me memorise my time-tables if I complained. It was a much dreaded punishment. It makes me wonder how the children are coping in this pandemic.

As my students entered the exam hall, their faces were a tad bit more tense than usual. I was nervous myself. I would finally find out whether our efforts to make the course different had been a whopping failure.

”It’s going to be a long night,” I thought to myself as I pressed the redial button for the fourth time.

As we bade farewell to the teens of this century, most of us—if not all of us—must have been looking back on our changes, gains and losses as a person, as a society and as a nation.

When job seekers look for new employees, they need a system to filter out the best candidates. Indicators of potential or skill are a key component.

I once faced a question from someone I would have never imagined it to come from. It was a humid afternoon and we had assembled under the large banyan tree on the green

The University of Dhaka has achieved a lot in these 98 years, and it has played a pivotal role in structuring the country’s economy, politics, society and development. Through the many scholars it has given birth to, the university has made inspiring strides in different fields and has taken academics substantially further from the point it was at almost a century ago.

We grew up in a joint family. I'm the eldest of the girls, and have always felt like I have to set an example for my two little sisters. So, nine years ago, when I was the first of us to get a national ID card, I was beyond excited.

We have an education system in which student after student—countless of them—write the same definitions as answers. They probably get the same marks too— four out of five, nine out of ten.