Which sectors of our society, we might ask ourselves, benefit most from a population that is systematically taught to be passive and uncritical and not to challenge the order of things?

This piece is based on my professional experience of observing classrooms across Bangladesh, but may also have resonances further afield in the region and in similar countries across the world. My work has been in the public sector schools, both urban and rural, catering to the vast majority of the population, not in the private English-medium schools that serve the elite.