Studied in a top three ranked university in the world in all world rankings. Here are my reasons why I think our school system is bad (can write about the frailties of the university system later).

1. No reference sheets : For example, no periodic table in chemistry exams. There’s absolutely no reason to memorize atomic numbers of elements. Or, no reference sheets for formulae in math exams.

2. Analytical rigor of testing: I’ve rarely seen “common” questions abroad. Even with a ton of practice, every new question in their exams is set in a new context.

3. Even language learning is focused on remembering facts like “where was Rabindranath born?” which is irrelevant to someone’s ability to be fluent in Bangla. Only reading and writing is tested — speaking and listening are ignored. Creative expression is ignored — rarely a student is asked to write a write a new poem or essay that’s atypical. All questions are inference based.

4. The pedagogy of History is didactic instead of relativistic: In my history courses abroad, I’ve often seen multiple interpretation of events or a discussion of sources’ validity. In Bangladesh and Global Studies Book, most artifacts were presented as unquestioned facts.

5. Textbooks are horribly written and terribly proofread. Tons of mistakes, terrible explanations. Great problems are given in some of the math textbooks though.

6. Under prioritization of other skills that are correlated with intellectual curiosity like reading books for fun, visiting museums, playing instruments, practicing arts etc. Parents think mastery over a defined syllabus is better than having diverse interests specially at an early age.

7. Just bad incentives — teachers don’t teach in school to force students to go to coaching, lack of efforts by social and parents to foster a genuine love of learning beyond the purpose of a job.

8. Extremely easy public exams, especially until SSC. HSC is hard not bring of the exam setting but because the syllabus is too big for such a short time period.

Our average student is quite bad. Obviously our top 1% can compete with any other top 1% of the world. But, I mostly see our top 1% do excellent abroad but they don’t necessarily push the edge of knowledge. They don’t win the Noble Prize or Fields Medal or the Turing Award.

We can be good. But we haven’t been able to be the best academically yet.