'Life in Eskaton' describes the experience as a substitute teacher of seventh grade in an international school in Dhaka, Bangladesh.
"To enhance quality, the administration has aped the syllabus followed at more successful schools, where standards are higher. The children here lack the grammar and reading skills to respond and are bamboozled into memorizing answers.
The only way to make it easier for them is to set factual questions, which seems more like a weak history lesson to me. My students are privileged to receive an English education but they’re being thrown into the sea without knowing how to swim. Still, they’re under a constant pressure to perform. One can’t blame them for looking for an easy way out.
I saw it during my A levels and here I was seeing it again - a corporate approach to education. After school ends, the children attend private tutors to help with ‘getting ahead’. Weekends are time for extracurricular activities which is a fancy name for more lessons.
The product of this system is an immensely skilled individual who does everything necessary to succeed, but without passion for any of it. From an economic point of view, we’re churning out people who may one day end up with zero job satisfaction and it amazes me that few seem concerned about the effect this will have on overall productivity in our society."
Too bad most parents nor the educationists appreciate the extracurricular education needs of the adolescents.
