AT SCHOOL, I was an average student overall, but I was terrible in maths. Some of my friends claimed perfect scores in the subject. Their achievement level was beyond my reach. I don鈥檛 remember ever scoring in the 90s out of 100 in maths in my whole life. In fact, when I took my class X preparatory test for the Secondary School Certificate examination, my score was 34 out of 100. I was lucky to have avoided failure by one point.
I probably did the right thing without knowledge: I opted for the humanities group in class IX. If I had been in the science group, which required studying higher maths, I don鈥檛 know what would have happened to my student career.
When the results of our SSC examination were out, I found that I had scored 65 in the maths paper. This was one of the lowest scores in all ten subjects. Nevertheless, I found my name on the board merit list in the humanities group. Other students who were on this list invariably scored perfect or close-to-perfect scores in maths.
I was relieved when I completed my SSC. I didn鈥檛 have to do a maths subject in class XI鈥揦II.
My maths deficiency was unusual for a child who grew up in poverty in rural Bangladesh. For most of my friends, mathematics was their academic strength. This may be because they lived their everyday lives in maths. Many of them were family shoppers for daily necessities. They knew how money and maths worked. I didn鈥檛 do this family finance and consumption work as I lived away from my parents in my school days.
My early life didn鈥檛 give me the right mathematical environment. I entered my early adulthood with a love for words and a fear of numbers. I developed some interest in economics when I studied at college. However, that interest evaporated rather quickly. It was probably sensible that I studied English at university. It had little to do with maths.
I believed I would never encounter numbers in my life as an academic. However, I was wrong. My PhD research in Australia was a mixed-method study for which I collected both quantitative and qualitative data. Crunching the numbers generated by a questionnaire survey and an English language test given to secondary-level students was daunting. I had poor knowledge of statistics for analysing numerical data. Fortunately, help was around. I learned basic statistics with a generous colleague who never lost patience with me.
I have come across the number questions only occasionally in my post-PhD life. I have no enthusiasm for numbers, but if I have to handle them, I do as best as I can. A few years ago, I worked with a PhD student whose project involved working with quantitative data and statistics as part of the validity examination of language tests. I didn鈥檛 feel embarrassed because my colleague, who was a co-supervisor, was an expert in statistics and methods. He guided me and our supervisees at the same time.
More recently, I have found myself engaged in a maths problem. This is not part of my research, but it was inspired by the research context.
Examining English-language textbooks is an established area of research in my field of applied linguistics and language education. This research has been conducted in different contexts, using different methods and aims. It is common to analyse textbooks by Western publishers for their cultural relevance and pedagogical merit in non-Western settings. Some researchers also examine English-language textbooks that are published locally by government agencies in the developing world.
One of my abiding interests has been examining English textbooks in Bangladesh, which are produced by the National Curriculum and Textbook Board. The theoretical lens that I use for this research is related to the movement called 鈥榳orld Englishes鈥�. This is a new paradigm in the study of English, which calls for recognising local ways of using English as new varieties. New Englishes such as Indian, Pakistani, and Chinese English are products of this theoretical thinking.
My textbook research is based on one key assumption. I argue that if we want to know whether Bangladeshi English is emerging as a new variety, one of the best sources to investigate is local textbooks. This is not a new argument. Professor Hamidur Rahman, a distinguished English language educationist in Bangladesh, made this point almost three decades ago.
My research also follows a methodological approach called 鈥榣anguage as a situated practice鈥�. This is basically a descriptive approach, not normative. My aim is to understand how English is used in the textbooks 鈥� in what forms and for what functions. This analysis can tell us how the English language is deviating from native Englishes such as British and American English.
My analysis of the new textbooks in the new curriculum provides interesting insights. For example, I have noted that terms for family relations such as ammu, dady, chacha, and bhaiya are written the way I have written them here. This can be considered Anglicisation of Bangla and an important step towards the development of Bangladeshi English.
Where is the maths problem in this research?
Bangladeshi textbooks have introduced many new features in the past two rounds of curriculum reform. One innovation is that almost every English textbook contains an extra page at the beginning and at the end. The content of these extra pages has nothing to do with the teaching or learning of English. Typically, there is an image followed by its description in Bangla. The textual and visual materials are of different kinds. For example, they are about the father of the nation delivering a speech at the United Nations; a former Indian prime minister visiting Bangladesh; the current Bangaldeshi prime minister receiving an international award for her achievement; the social safety net programme for vulnerable groups initiated by the current government; Bangladesh graduating as a developing economy; schools in Bangladesh introducing computer labs and many more.听
Such extraneous materials may evoke curiosity among researchers about the idea and their authorship. This may be particularly so when one learns that the NCTB is an autonomous agency.
My curiosity is of mathematical nature, which is my weakness. How much does each of the extra pages cost? What is the total cost of the political decoration of textbooks with non-pedagogical content when we know that millions of copies are published for students all over the country? Where does the money come from for this queenly project?
I confess that such questions are not as profound as the one that Syed Mujtaba Ali鈥檚 Panditmoshai (schoolmaster) asked his students in a story by the same title. It was during British colonial rule. The Brahmin pandit admitted to his class that his eight-member family survived on a monthly salary of Tk 25 while the British school inspector鈥檚 three-legged dog had a monthly provision of Tk 75. How many legs of the dog was the pandit鈥檚 family equal to?
No one could answer the teacher鈥檚 question. I know my maths questions will also remain unengaged and unanswered, at least for an unknown while.
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Obaidul Hamid is an associate professor at the University of Queensland in Australia. He researches language, education, and society in the developing world.听
