What is education for? Is it to transmit our collective social wisdom from one generation to the next, to pass on the best that's been said and done? Is its main purpose perhaps to promote socialisation: preparing the young to work together as a society, follow its customs, and achieve social harmony? Or is it to equip young people with the skills and knowledge they need for independent adult life and the demands of the labour market? It's a basic but vital question, and yet on my many visits to classrooms up and down the country, I'm not sure it's one we've fully thought through in relation to the way we actually teach and learn here.

Classrooms are microcosms of the whole education system, and indeed in many ways of wider society. When all the conventions are implemented, policies drafted, plans made, training given, it's here that the real thing happens. So what goes wrong?

Let's push open the door, enter a typical classroom and observe from the side. This morning the geography teacher enters the class (bare walls, gloomy light, a fan turning slowly overhead) and offers a hurried greeting. The students dutifully chorus their response. She spends a significant amount of time taking the register and recording the details of attendance on the board.

Once the class gets underway, she writes up a short title and text. Some of the students appear to copy it down. She fires out a question, "How long is the Jamuna Bridge?" One student answers correctly and is ordered to sit down. She then asks the same question of six more children. All offer identical answers and are also told to sit. The next question is asked, "How many rivers are there in Bangladesh?" Towards the middle of the class, a boy who is called on mumbles an incorrect response. He is left standing, his eyes full of resigned shame: he has been here before.

Next we turn to the textbook and the class reads aloud one by one from its pages. More questions follow and all are answered by those keen students in the front benches. They look well fed and bright. They lean forward and follow the teacher's instructions with eagerness. In the back row a student stares at the visitors for a while, then gets bored and looks out the window. He doodles idly on a piece of paper and opens his book slowly when asked. His exercise book is a collection of half-finished sentences, gaps, and torn sheets.