Aritri’s suicide demands bringing substantive reform in our education system

Aritri Adhikari, a student of class IX of Viqarunnisa Noon School and College committed suicide at her residence on Monday as she could not tolerate insult of his parents in her presence by the teachers. This matter was brought before the court on Tuesday by Jyotirmoy Barua, Barrister Anik R Haque, Ainunnahar Siddiqa and Jesmin Sultana. All of them are the advocates of the Supreme Court of Bangladesh. The High Court has directed the authorities concerned to form a five-member committee to determine the cause of Aritri’s death and submit a report within a month.
In this backdrop, DOT spoke to the lawyers involved in this matter.
Jyotirmoy Barua:
I read about the incident from newspaper and then I along with few other lawyers brought the issue before court’s attention focusing on the followings:
l Existing loopholes in our education system;
l Mistreatment by educational institutions and teachers towards students; l Need for a structural change in the education system;
l Guidelines for students and teachers’ counseling;
lAdopting good practices of developed countries from West in our education system.
If the abovementioned issues are properly addressed, I think we shall be able to avoid this kind of incidents and give a better Bangladesh to our future generations.
Barrister Aneek R. Haque
Bullying is a very common issue in education sector. Students are the victims always and the perpetrators could be either teachers or fellow students. The worst part is teachers, who are supposed to guide the students in whatever the situation is; they have a tendency of bullying students. This implies their lack of capacity and knowledge on student handling. Mental health of a student is very important which should not be ignored at least at this age where students are oversensitive due to having access to modern technologies and internet. When I was a child the situation was totally different than it is for my daughter and hence, this generation kids need to be dealt more cautiously.
Bullying in educational institutions is also there in developed countries, however; they have ways to help out the kids when they are bullied.
Our education system is so outdated that a student of class V and VIII sit for public exam and they sometimes adopt unfair means like cheating in the exam hall without knowing the consequence of it.
Viqarunnisa Noon School and College, as an institution it had a responsibility to provide its students like Aritri with proper guidance always in every situation. However, without doing that, what they did is absolutely wrong. They should be held responsible for this disgraceful act which is no less a crime. Hope the court would set an example in this case and provide us with a direction for reform of our education system.
Aynunahar Siddiqa
We start a protest against these sorts of unjust activities only after we lose a life. For example, the student protest began after losing precious lives of students in road accident. And this time also after the murder of Aritri, we started speaking about misconduct of educational institutions like Viqarunnisa Noon School and College (VNSC). Being a parent of a student of VNSC, I personally experienced misbehavior from teachers when my daughter was in class V or VI. Only the students with outstanding results get admission in VNSC and then the trauma begins- they need to prove themselves best of the best without proper guidance from teachers.
I think every educational institution should have a psychiatrist of its own for both students and teachers. It is our culture to ignore the mental health of a student, which should have been the most vital thing to take care of.