Bangladesh Cultural Overview

Dr. Tooley: His conclusions on Private Education and Entrepreneurship

Professor James Tooley criticized the United Nations’ proposals to eliminate all fees in state primary schools globally to meet its goal of universal education by 2015. Dr. Tooley says the UN, which is placing particular emphasis on those regions doing worse at moving towards ‘education for all’ namely sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, is “backing the wrong horse”.1

On his extensive research in the world poorest countries such as Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, India, and China, Dr. Tooley found that private unaided schools in the slum areas outperform their public counterparts. A significant number of a large majority of school children came from unrecognized schools and children from such schools outperform similar students in government schools in key school subjects.2 Private schools for the poor are counterparts for private schools for the elite. While elite private schools cater the needs of the privilege classes, there come the non-elite private schools which, as the entrepreneurs claimed, were set up in a mixture of philanthropy and commerce, from scarce resources. These private sector aims to serve the poor by offering the best quality they could while charging affordable fees.3

Mother tongue or first language is perhaps the most favorite thing for any person. The question of language has resulted into many conflicts and discontentment. The prime example of such discontentment is the Language Movement of 1952 in Bangladesh. On the other hand we can not live in isolation. We have to be in contact with the speakers of other languages. Bangladesh is considered to be a monolingual country in which more than 98% of the population is speakers of Bangla language. However, there are more than ten languages in such a small country like Bangladesh. Monipuri, Urdu, Chakma, Santali, Garo, Rakhain, Tipra- are just some of the other languages present in Bangladesh.

Bangladesh is the seventh most populous country in the world and third most populous Muslim country. More than one hundred and fifty million people call Bangladesh home. Bangladesh was part of India under the British Raj. In 1947 when the British Raj ended in the Indian sub-continent the country was divided into India and Pakistan. Bangladesh was part of Pakistan and was called East Pakistan.

Bangladesh gained independence from Pakistan in 26 March 1971 after popular agitation against Pakistan. The capital of the new state was and still is Dhaka. The official name of the country is People’s Republic of Bangladesh. Victory Day is December 16 and is commemorated as the official creation of state of Bangladesh. The government type of Bangladesh is parliamentary democracy. Chief of state is the President and chief of government is the Prime Minister. Bangladesh legal system is based on the English common law.