Education is the beacon of enlightenment. It is also the backbone of a nation. Pursue it well enough, and you can make it up the ladder of success. One doesn't need an incentive to pursue education because the entity itself has always been a means to attain one's goals. Why wouldn't it? What is so wrong about envisioning a better life for oneself, demanding greater resources, and thus mobility? How does one attain that?

Time and again, education has been professed to be an area of great interest—one where our "leaders" would like to invest more. However, a glance at the fiscal year budgets over the last decade coupled with recent developments reveals a rather grim picture of where our education stands. It is stagnant, discriminatory and, unsurprisingly, corrupt. If the supposed backbone of the nation is lofty, made to stand on false promises, as students, what can we hope for, if anything at all?

Meritocracy and perseverance—while lauded by institutions—simply do not have a place in the system anymore. Rather, what gets precedence and thus, opportunities are connections, mostly with the corrupt. In a report by this daily, it was revealed that a syndicate involving officials and employees of the Public Service Commission (PSC) had leaked question papers for government recruitment tests, including those for the Bangladesh Civil Service (BCS) exams, at least 30 times over the last 12 years.

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Govt failed to handle the situation properly

While investigators believe that the syndicate has been active for about two decades now, I can't help but wonder when this practice will come to a halt. Without much scrutiny, who is to say that the government officials who attained a position through the leaked question papers won't indulge in the same practices? After all, they themselves got in through unfair means. The possibility that these officials will allow future examinees to sit for the test without tampering with the outcome is slim. If this is the cycle that persists, who stops it? More importantly, can anyone stop it?

With momentum on the students' side, the quota reform movement has continued to stride forward and make its demands known. However, not even a united body of students across the nation, fighting for what is rightfully theirs, is enough to call for reform. Rather, it is being vilified and thwarted. If the students are unable to amplify their voices, what is our education being reduced to? When we are taught in classrooms, must we only learn to be obedient, even in the face of injustice? Must we submit with blind devotion to the powers that be? If so, then we all must be left to wonder what the real value of our education is. If we are unable to apply what we have learnt, think critically about a situation, and make changes that benefit the masses and not only the few, then we are only commodities helping the order remain in place—not enlightened, educated citizens. Yet, this shortcoming cannot be attributed to the education we undertake, but rather to the system that allows it to remain in place.

Ambitions, dare we have any, are more often than not rooted in change. Despite all the hurdles and bureaucratic inefficiencies of government jobs, I would like to believe that there are a handful of recruits who did make it based solely on their hard work and merit. Yet, it would be wishful thinking to assume that a handful of individuals can enact change. It seems awfully defeating that not even entering the realm of government jobs can help alter the status quo. They are, like most of us, at the mercy of the system, perhaps to an even greater extent. Even if someone were to take steps to eradicate corruption, who is to say that they won't be stopped, penalised, or worse?

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Saluting the spirit of our young people

All of this is to say that once the current student body graduates and joins the workforce, they will hope to see change or undertake it themselves. The vigour of youth emerges because they have not been disillusioned into accepting the deficiencies of the present. It is all the more important for us because these deficiencies pose a risk to our future. The persistence of the status quo is an attack on our aspirations because it undermines the role of education. Should we expect the next generation of the workforce to undertake transformations in the system? Absolutely. But whether it will happen or not will be determined by the actions of the present.

If the cycle is to be broken, the students' demands have to be met. Otherwise, we will risk being stuck in the same vicious cycle of perpetuating corruption and disparaging our brightest minds. More importantly, the onus will then fall on the next generation to fix the foundations of a rotten system, when it is really down to the system to not only rectify such issues but also enable the next crop of leaders to build on their progress. For the time being, though, we are a long way from talking about progress or even stagnation.

Abir Hossain is a sub-editor at Campus, Rising Stars, and Star Youth.

Views expressed in this article are the author's own.

This article was published in print on July 20, 2024. Owing to the internet shutdown from the evening of July 18  to July 23, it is being uploaded online on July 24, 2024.

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