Overhauling of text bookson the cards

The government is all-set to bring major changes in textbooks, focusing more on quality and reality based education. The decision is encouraging, but we expect the changes to be aligned with proper and holistic planning. On this note we are in full agreement with the education minister's statement - Quality and reality oriented education will help in making our students more experienced and patriotic human beings.

While participating at a video conference, the education minister also claimed that the country's education system is excessively based on examinations, creating extra pressure on students as well as parents. This particular observation is widely noticeable in today's Bangladesh.

The point, however, for too long our school, college and university goers have focused pursuing academic degrees, otherwise suffering from ' Diploma Disease'. This narrow degree-oriented psyche must change.
Active and experiential learning theories have not dramatically changed collegiate classroom teaching methods, although they have long been included in the pedagogical literature.

From the teaching and learning perspective, it is well known that keeping the student enthusiastic and attentive at high levels during the academic year, is a difficult task. This difficulty rises due to different factors. One of the most important is the differences in the level of knowledge that the students attain during their studies. Another is the students' individual level of interest in the presented information and, with the same importance, the student's motivation to learn.

Changing the perspective, the teacher's role must also be considered in this regard. His/her level of knowledge as well as the interpretation of the lesson subject may transform the lesson in a very accessible and effective one, or, on the contrary, in an incomprehensible, black box-like subject for the students. Teacher and student motivation are therefore strongly interrelated.

Understandably, our teachers will have to get properly trained and motivated to deliver reality based teaching. Changing or overhauling the contents of our textbooks is just a tool of the entire methodology.

Now that the overhauling of textbooks are on the cards, relevant education authorities must also get prepared to train our teachers accordingly.

We would suggest our education authorities to give a special priority on knowledge-transfer from other countries, and especially from Western countries where quality and reality-based education is delivering expected results. At the same time, it is also crucial to make virtual learning more accessible to remote corners of the country. Quality of virtual teaching methods must also be upgraded in today's pandemic hit world, and for the unpredictable future.