What's wrong with our Education System?

I'm going to finish my BBA in March this year and then I'll put a BBA designation before/after my name. Literally, a glorious achievement! But in reality it is a pathetic accomplishment for sure. A conscious question-mark after my comment is highly expected. So, ask why?

Answer could be best understood by another BBA graduate like me who has just ended up a sweat after chasing a number of job interviews.

BBA accomplishment is pathetic because there is huge anguish after its completion. Number of employers out there to multiply your pain by asking for job application with a taka 250 bank-draft. Then they will call you for interviews and will offer you an employment opportunity that's surely an underemployment. At the same time, after spoiling your four to six years behind a university degree your family is now hungry enough to get their feedback soon. And you have no position to try anything else except job interviews.

The major flaw of our education system is that, it still deals with the challenges of 70s rather than 2011. It does not make you a real-life smart. Even, it seldom teaches you real life skills rather makes academically excellent. Just bookish. Our education system does not create leaders.

To me education system should be designed for creating leaders, entrepreneurs and employers. Unfortunately ours is opposite. Here good grades produce good "Yes Sirs" not great leaders.

Then, if you want to be an entrepreneur, a business tycoon you have to miss classes and get away of school to learn extra skills. Most of the successful entrepreneurs of Bangladesh are made up out of our education system. Although some of them attended university, it does not their university education that helped them to become successful rather they became successful by their own. I mean they learnt real life skills differently.

I do not know what I did in my last four years of my university life but to me it seems that it does not work. It's just waste of whole four years. No payoffs. I learnt no practical skills in gross specifically in class room. Few of my teachers ever asked me to think like an employer rather getting good jobs. There is huge chapter on BAT and Unilever and our good graders are often inspired to grab a job there. Nothing taught to think big like, create your own BAT!

Apparently, to me our education system is killing our dreams of becoming outstanding. It just limits our horizon of expectation of being something more than average. It does no allow us to think beyond box. It kills creativity, dream and hope.

In primary school our kids are learning to memorize alphabet, in high schools they become more competent memorizer and in university they become parrot. It's just waste of our valuable life time that gives us invaluable opportunity to wait for a job interview in a line with hundreds!

Time has changed a lot. It is now 21st century-the time of iphone & facebook. But we are still with 70s education system which even does not deal with real life skills.

My four years graduation program does not teach me networking skill, storytelling skill, interpersonal skill, communication skill and not any practical life skill that works except some definitions.
In real life the theory has nothing to do with a marketing problem. You need practical intelligence. But our education system does not teach us these invaluable skills.

I do not think we should shut down our schools rather what I think is that, we should focus on more practicality, more life skills and we should teach our students to think big, to be leader instead of an follower.

We are competing in a global market, to sustain we need leaders and our education system must take the responsibility of creating leaders.

If education fail to empower & awaken inner power, if it teaches you how to be a better servant instead of master than it may be better to be self-educated. Pink Floyd said the stuff best-

We don’t need no education
We don’t need no thought control
No dark sarcasm in the class room
Teachers leave those kids alone
Hey, teachers! Leave those kids alone!

 Note: This article has been first published in The Financial Express in Last December, 2011, here published with some simple changes.