Once Napoleon said, “Give me an educated mother I shall promise you the birth of a civilized and educated nation”. Our Islam has also emphasized the education of the woman folk. The prosperity of a country mainly lies in the education of her population. It is said that education is the backbone of a nation. The most common barrier to the implementation of female education is early marriage. There are also some group of people who tries to bring false religious arguments against religion. About fifty percent of the total population in our country is female. A country cannot achieve her prosperity avoiding this large part of population. It is quite impossible to do everything in life only by men. From this perspective, female education is a must. Firstly, it’s true that women have some special tasks and duties towards her family. She has to perform many roles properly. A female can play the role of a mother as well as a wife in the same family. She has to face many impediments and obstacles to perform her duty entirely. Education is the key factor to perform their duties properly. Secondly, every woman is a potential mother. Education of a child greatly depends upon its mother. An educated mother would be able to bring up her child properly by installing good values in them that she acquired on the path of her learning. Thirdly, social responsibilities should also be shared between men and women. In conjugal life, a woman can help her husband in every sector of life. She can earn too so that husband doesn’t have all pressures on his shoulder. Therefore, it’s important that woman should be educated. To promote female education, government has included cooking, child rearing, home economics etc in the syllabus. Nevertheless, it seems quite a long way to tread on.
Besides, women of present society are very neglected. To keep our women free from unexpected negligence women should be educated. There are still some people who are strongly opposed to the female education. They think that women’s only duty is to do household affairs and rearing children. Empowered woman can enlighten the whole nation through her knowledge solely. Hence, we cannot think of the progress of our country without the education of female. So, all necessary steps should be taken to encourage female education for the betterment of the country. I recently heard of someone where he claims that he would rather marry an uneducated illiterate woman than an educated woman because he believes the former would be humbler and introvert than the latter who might turn out to be gregarious and nonchalant.
To my dismay, I can say that such mindsets are eternalized by cultures and religion where a woman — a wife is considered property rather than a co-partner. More saddening is the fact that girls and women in such cultures are inherent with similar beliefs — that their sole purpose is to be a wife, bear children, run home and nothing more. There is still little or no emphasis on girl child education in many rural areas of Bangladesh. Whereas, country is developing by achieving success in some target parameter; conversely, female education system in the rural areas is ignored and still primitive. There is no denying fact that Bangladesh has made much progress in girls’ education, for which Bangladesh now stands as a model in South Asia.
Since the 1980s, secondary school enrolments for girls jumped from 39 percent in 1998 to 67 percent in 2017. Such progress is the result of several stimulus, especially the Female Secondary School Assistance Project (FSSAP), which was instrumental in achieving gender equality since it started in the early 1990s first as a pilot and then a nationwide programme.
Data from the 2017 Bangladesh Bureau of Educational Information and Statistics show that dropout rates for girls are at a high 42 percent at the secondary school level; completion rates are low, with grade 10 rates bottoming at only 10 percent, and secondary level completion rates reaching a mere 59 percent.
Most disturbing scenario is that dropout rate is higher for female than the male students. There is a wide disparity between male and female in respect of completion rate, dropout rate and survival rate. According to a research, if we look at different location segments the higher rates of enrolments were observed in the metropolitan area, while the lower rates of enrolments were found to be in rural areas. In 1998 of the total enrolment 50.6 percent was male and the rest 49.4 percent was female. In 2000 the enrolment of female was 54 percent of the total enrolment. In 2003 the proportion of female students further increased to 56 percent. It is quite good news though. Higher percentage of female enrolment was mainly due to selection of more than 50 percent girl’s school in the sample. The main reason for these wide differences in the participation rates between male and female was implementation of female stipend program along with tuition fee waiver particularly in rural areas.
Global organizations have emphasized that girl child education is fundamental to a nation’s development and the full optimization of the citizens’ potential. Below is an excerpt from UNICEF’s website:
Investing in girls’ education transforms communities, countries and the entire world. Girls who receive an education are less likely to marry young and more likely to lead healthy, productive lives. They earn higher incomes, participate in the decisions that most affect them, and build better futures for themselves and their families. Girls’ education strengthens economies and reduces inequality. It contributes to more stable, resilient societies that give all individuals – including boys and men – the opportunity to fulfil their potential education should never be looked at as a waste. Still many believe a one-off bride price is of more value than the life-time opportunities afforded by education. Unfortunately, they don’t understand that education is much more than a series of instructions in a classroom in the learning years rather education refines and reforms you. An educated woman is a better decision-maker, a better citizen, a better co-worker, a better woman because education opens up a wide range of opportunities to the building of a strong woman. An educated woman is a precious asset to her home, family and children because she can make enlightened decisions. She is an asset to the workplace and community as she can contribute her intelligence equally alongside a male. It is more to do with attitude and mindset of people. It’s our religion too which is misinterpreted that women must be confined only to do some particular assigned works. We really must keep aloof ourselves from certain weird beliefs and cultural connotations as their sole aim is to keep women from attaining their full potential. These are the kind of scenarios where a woman is discouraged from being successful as it would scare off male suitors. It is a common notion that a woman is expected to wait for marriage before she has a life. No! A woman should keep improving and building herself up through educating herself for the betterment of next generation.
The excerpt from the World Bank website helps us to recollect the fact why the education of girls is mandatory and favourable to all:
Girls’ education is a strategic development priority. Better educated women tend to be more informed about nutrition and healthcare, have fewer children, marry at a later age, and their children are usually healthier, should they choose to become mothers. They are more likely to participate in the formal labour market and earn higher incomes. All these factors combined can help lift households, communities, and countries out of poverty. Eventually, we can sum up by saying that, God endowed men and women equivalently with eminent efficacies. Therefore, education in no way can be the only possession of any gender or section or class. A female alongside a male completes the family. If she is deprived from basic education, she will have no competence to contribute in building the enlightened nation. Today’s child could be the leader or representative of a country in future and definitely the basic schooling starts from family. A mother acts as a teacher here and a child is the disciple who takes primary lesson of life from her mother that helps him or her to get prepared to compete in the vast complicated world. Consequently, only an educated female as a mother can accomplish this job thoroughly. She can also share her entire experience about acquiring knowledge with her children. Thus, they get the notion about outside world and do not feel alienated being in unfamiliar environment later. So, in every activity’s female has an equal share of success.
Hence, it is high time we encourage female education so that they can work hand in hand with male to contribute in economy of family and go forward to achieve success. The government should take necessary steps to facilitate women education. The good news is that government has already initiated free education for rural female students up to H.S.C. Nonetheless, it’s necessary to make them aware about the programme that is taken up for the welfare of them. In this matter, many Non-Government Organizations (NGO) and urban students can play a role to urge those unprivileged girls to educate themselves. In my opinion, government should launch more opportunities for female to make them interested towards education.
The writer is Associate Professor & Head, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Asian University of Bangladesh
