Untold Facts

Religious Education must for School Children

A Western funded NGO’s Bangladeshi boss has in a recent interview with a foreign electronic media lamented for imparting different religious education to school children having religious beliefs of varying family background, in her opinion, that adversely affected quality learning in primary schools in Bangladesh. Is that really so? She did not clearly state though that if she would recommend for no religious education at all or would have only one for pupils coming from different religious backgrounds.

The NGO based in the USA, possibly, was in tune with the existing system of that country to the fact that they do not have anything that could be taken as religious education or learning in primary school classes. That is not the case in all Western European countries. In fact, for example, soon after the industrial revolution, Britain had abolished religious education in schools, but soon they realized that that was a wrong step that adversely affected ethical and moral values of the new generation, and so following the World War Two Britain reintroduced religious education as compulsory school learning through enacting the 1944 Education Act. The provision of the act to the end, so far I know, has further been improved in the1988 Education Act. In Japan for another example, they don’t have formal religious education in school courses, but what they have and teach there is ethical and moral learning drawn as a summary of moral values of major religions. Primary schools in the USA though do not teach formal religion, the church system is so organized in every community throughout the nook and corner of the country and the families in the communities are so attached to the churches that the children get socialized in the teachings and orders of local churches not necessarily of the same denomination but of whatever of many denominations that could be. That is how ethical and moral foundations of upcoming generation are built up for norms of behavior based on Christian teachings and beliefs. One survey conducted in the USA some time ago showed that more than 90% of the Americans believe in religion and in the Almighty God not for fancy but to get on with mundane lives better.

Bangladesh is not only a devoutly religious country but also of different formal faiths of millenniums old. Neither is it a country of Marxist atheists in so far as its state principles are concerned. On the contrary, Bangladesh’s Constitution has clearly stated that it is a believing country having no discrimination between faiths in all matters of state including public education. It has, therefore, only choice that all school curricula would have courses of religion for all pupils at the formative or primary stage for shaping their minds and psyche as believers of own genre. This clearly means further that as the Constitution of the country has ensured religious freedom, religious courses must provide for different faiths and so has Bangladesh some in primary and secondary curricula. As the students are to learn one and only one religious course, there is no question of overburdening the minds of the pupils in school learning materials.

Bangladesh should have had a good lesson during the last decades as is clearly seen having had a sort of serious moral erosion among a section of the educated and learned men and women that obviously led to the 1/11 scenario in the upper strata of the society and politics mainly underpinned by the syndrome of widespread corruption, evil power of black money and still more dangerous evil of muscle power fully nourished by black money. I am sure that the moral erosion caused by non-adherence of religious norms and learning has a big role in the matter. That we have some ethical and moral norm still practiced in the country is due to religious and moral learning received mainly at home and some at school not necessarily in religious learning but somewhat informally in school environment. That high ethical and moral standards can raise quality of human being is a well known matter, and so such persons could be more productive for additional incentive to work on one’s own and of higher utility, if we use the economic term. In a recent study conducted in Dhaka city among 100 young professionals, 50 men and 50 women, it was found that productivity in business has shown increasing trend for maintaining high ethical and moral standard. Not only that; 80% of the employees believed that religious practice can increase ethical and moral standard of workers that positively affect their productivities (See, Kaniz Fatima, ‘Ethics and Young Employees: A Study in Dhaka City’, Darul Ihsan University Studies, volume 2, 2007, pp.48-61).

It is as such, I would maintain that religious learning in primary and secondary schools must form essential core of compulsory lessons not only for building higher standards of ethics and morality but also for higher productivity. None should stand against this subject if one would mean serious business in forming, at least, if not anything else, sound mental health of the learners, the future citizens of the country.

M.T. Hussain
Dhaka-1206
23 October 2008