Feature

Pride and Punishment

Omar Rashid Chowdhury

DILIGITE Lumen Sapientiae, Light the flame of knowledge. As I sit cross-legged on the pedestal of a red, granite monument depicting Mother Mary and a baby Jesus in colourful murals, the motto keeps on sounding in my mind. It is the motto ruling this sacred church of knowledge. A line of Krishnachuras stands beside the asphalt road leading to the main entrance, guarding the entrance to an edifice of wisdom.

It was my last day at Notre Dame College, Dhaka. But I would come back again and again in future despite the conclusion of my academic year. Yet, for some students it is not their last day in the college. They are the 'debtors' students who still have to make up for the hours they missed during the academic year. And Notre Dame 'needs payback!'

According to Notredamian ruling, the students must have 85% attendance, whereas the official requirement is only 75%. As a result, at the end of each academic year there are always a number of 'defaulters', who fail to attain the mark: 85%. Notre Dame College is unique and unrivalled in its motto, morals, ideology of knowledge, method of teaching, discipline, and equally unique in its way of making up students' lost academic hours.

The punishment process, the make up method, is simple, not inhuman or disgraceful and has a way of carving a perpetual lesson in its students' hearts. The students are allotted different manual chores in the campus ranging from pruning grass to grinding bricks. Safety measures are taken. A supervisor is appointed to guide and supervise the students. The students labour only for those hours that they have lost. With much cursing, groaning, and occasional raised eyebrows of the guardians, the punishment continues. It is not a very rare sight if a visitor comes across students breaking bricks or mopping the staircase or sweeping the paths within the campus.

The punishment has its roots in an ideology that Notre Dame College is nourishing and upholding in its half-a-century pursuit of knowledge, knowledge of the truth, the true goal of life and duty to fellow beings. Labour takes its seat at the same throne as knowledge. Notre Dame believes education is not a mere way of acquiring a degree; it turns into a proper education when molded with the tongues of toil.

The typical products of our so-called education system are either a bunch of snobbish slaves or shabby skeptics dragging a weak, worn away posture, both light years apart from any type of manual labour, one of the sources of civilization. These virtual non-products of a virtual non-productive system grow up with a common contempt towards toil and those who toil. Suddenly the world consists of everything but the masses who have nurtured and bled and scavenged and died and laboured and ever been thrust aside into the darkest dungeons of the society. The silent sacrifices that nourish and pay for our education are lost into oblivion. The students forget the ties and their true identities and duty resides with. Books are read, essays are written, theories are woven and successes are achieved; yet there remains none to share and alleviate the misery of the 'Wretched of the Earth'.

Notre Dame College, in its constant quest for knowledge in its true essence, has almost been a lone lighthouse radiating an ideal that coalesce education and labour. Labour, the source of all human achievements, triumphs and victories throughout the history of civilization, has ever been held in the highest esteem in its premises. And the pride of Notre Dame lies not in being one of the best educational institutions in Bangladesh, but in its great goal of shaping young minds who honour and serve the toiling masses of this country. An educated, learned citizen is a product of the social labour. From the farmer who sheds sweat on the farmland to the underfed worker labouring overtime, all have their rightful claims over a student's knowledge, skills and services. Yet our education system has totally failed to imbue the students' minds with this idea and has created nothing but some adversaries to people who care only about their own stomach. Notre Dame College stands as a complete contrast in this system and among the institutions that are a part of the system. And that is the true pride of Notre Dame College. The pride lies deep within the ideology of its punishment. And yet it is the same ideology that rules Notre Dame where the torch of knowledge has been handed to generations of students only with a goal to pass that light within the grim, dark, forsaken, detached and doomed corners where the nameless, faceless yet ever toiling masses been shunted and confined.

A silent murmur rises and falls and a wind from west whispers within the tree branches and leaves. My mind is filled with memories, sweet and smiling. As the bright red academic building glows in a mid-day sun I see the pride of humble service of Notre Dame College imprinted in its firm stature. A flame is nurtured within these buildings, a flame of knowledge only reserved for the millions, the forsaken millions.

(The author is a student of BUET)