Creative method in exams ineffective

Crises have pervaded the country, badly affecting education, health, and cultural sectors, administration, and even people's thought process, a discussion was told yesterday.

Frequent murders, disappearances, looting of money, the rise of militancy, repression of the capitalist forces, and falling education standards—all these show that anarchy is prevailing in the country, the speakers said.

They said there was no alternative to revolutionary politics and a cultural movement to get rid of the anarchy.

The discussion was held at the inaugural session of the 14th National Council of Bangladesh Lekhak Shibir, a literary and cultural organisation, at the capital's Bangla Academy. The two-day council will elect new leadership. In his welcome address, author Badruddin Umar said murders and disappearances were taking place everywhere in the country, but there had been no proper investigation.

"A good society turns a bad person into a good human being, but the reverse is happening in our society," he said.

Umar, former president of Lekhak Shibir, said the education system had gradually been destroyed, as it made students dependent on notes and guides.

The education minister considers pass rates as the parameter of education standards without emphasising on what the students are learning, he said. The practice of reading books, besides textbooks, is completely absent now, he added.

Umar said the situation stemmed from the political crisis.

Noted critic Khalequzzaman Elias said hundreds of people were making dangerous trips to countries like Malaysia and Indonesia, thinking there was no rule of law in the country.

"Due to the unhealthy capitalist competition, they think that they would have a good life in foreign lands."

Khalequzzaman viewed that the people who were sending their hard-earned money from abroad were the most patriotic, while the capitalist class and the wealthy were the enemies. He urged the writers of Lekhak Shibir to write more satirical books, essays and poems. Economics professor Anu Muhammad said the government had set an example of how successfully all institutions could be destroyed and how absolutism could be established.

The former general secretary of Lekhak Shibir said students of the public universities found it difficult to speak freely now.

Former Dhaka University professor Abul Kashem Fazlul Haque criticised the creative methods in secondary education.

"In my view, it is completely an anti-education system," he said. Now education means tests, he added.

President of Lekhak Shibir Prof Shantanu Kaiser, litterateur Shawkat Ali, and writer Nur Mohammad also spoke.