Attending school: Rural girls' woes

Few people related to school education in the rural areas appear to have given serious thought to the issue --- the problem facing the child and teenage learners in reaching school and returning home. In the remote areas, the students have to cover the distance between home and school invariably by walking. On occasions, the boys and girls have to walk along dirt roads for miles. They have to go through the similar physical ordeals during all seasons, including the hot and humid, and rainy days. The students include a considerable number of teenage girls. In the low-lying flood-prone areas, a desperate and lone teenage girl wielding a small country boat is a common scenario. But this is an unpalatable sight.  

A reason the rural parents oppose the girls' school education may be found here. However, these parents support their daughters', as well as their sons', education career in principle. They take heart from the view of girls passing out of the village high schools and getting admitted to the colleges in the nearby towns. As staunch supporters of young women's higher education, they dream of their daughters going to universities one day. Their number is few and far between, though. The education experts do not consider them as any significant social segment, as they emerge mostly as isolated cases. But the fact is a large number of rural people nowadays love to see their daughters pass at least the SSC exams. Days are changing fast.

This view stands in sharp contrast to the general trend of marrying girls off while they are at the junior level at rural schools. The rural scenarios of sending girl students to school and keeping them there as long as possible are fast emerging as a new development. These spectacles were like a pipedream decades ago.

Against this backdrop, few rural parents are prepared to watch the miseries their daughters undergo while going to school on foot. Going to school on foot and in groups has been an old spectacle in Bangladesh. But unlike in the cities filled with crowds including law enforcers, the rural girl students are helpless while on a deserted road in tiny groups. This situation spawns many premonitions and continues to enervate the rural parents. It is especially the mothers who pass their fraught time in worries until their daughters return home. Thus a large number of chronically worried mothers start considering the option of marrying their daughters off. As they are different from the average women, many are found unwilling to arrange the marriage of their daughters post haste. Unlike in the past, they carefully weigh the age difference between the bride and the groom. Moreover, a lot of them are prepared to wait until their daughters reach marriageable age.

Things should not have come to this pass vis-à-vis the girls' marriage. What have begun leading to this unwarranted situation are the ordeals the school-going girls have to go through in their regular school attendance. Thus the necessities of well constructed and safe roads occupy a major place in students' regular class attendance. People well acquainted with the rural areas do not forget to mention the 'sankos' (bamboo bridges). Students have to use these wobbly, improvised bridges while crossing a shrunken river or a canal. The extent of panic and worries the pre-teen and adolescent boys and girls have to endure while crossing these so-called bridges is understood.

The rural landscape is changing fast. The thoughts of both students and parents have undergone incredible changes over the years. Thanks to the electronic media, smart-phones etc the success stories of students in the city-based areas reach villages in no time. Students there now have learnt how to dream.