Dear Alochoks,
I found this gem of a piece written by our honorable Chief Advisor, Dr. Fakhruddin Ahmed from 2005. In this letter he talks about his college days and how to build a first-class educational institution.
Regardless of what happens with our politics, we have been blessed, even if for a short time, to have such a distinguished and thoughtful person as our nation's leader.
Enjoy!
- Raheem
New York
Letter From America
Anatomy of a first-class school
Dr. Fakhruddin Ahmed writes from Princeton
While the Rhodes Scholars, the English-speaking world's cream of the crop, held their Reunion in mid-July at the University of Pennsylvania, the Bangladeshi version of "cream of the crop," the former students of "East Pakistan" (now Faujderhat ) Cadet College, held their Third North American Reunion on July 30, in New York City. Coincidently, the only two "East Pakistanis" to win Pakistan's lone annual Rhodes scholarship (1970 and 1971) were students of Faujderhat Cadet College. The writer was fortunate to be the first. The chief guest at the Reunion was the college's former English teacher, Mr. A. T. M. Nasir Chowdhury, of the illustrious Chowdhury family of Noakhali that also boasts of Kabir Chowdhury, the late Munier Chowdhury, and Pakistan's Col. (Retired) Abdul Qayyum Chowdhury. Faujderhat Cadet College is an example of how to establish an excellent school in Bangladesh.
Faujderhat Cadet College was founded in 1958 by the late Pakistani President Field Marshal Mohammad Ayub Khan, for the express purpose of supplying Pakistan's armed forces with "East Pakistani" officers. The real founder of the college is the remarkable New Zealander, the late Colonel William Maurice Brown. Colonel Brown's credentials were outstanding. He was a Squadron Leader, recipient of Britain's Order of the British Empire (OBE), observer (Extraordinary) of the United Nations, New Zealand government minister, mountain climber, shooter, boxer, graduate of King's College, Cambridge, and teacher and administrator par excellence. Starting with the planning and construction of the infrastructure, through the selection of the very best students and faculty, to the setting of the glorious house traditions that persists to this day, Col. Brown is synonymous with cadet colleges in Bangladesh.
The prerequisite for an excellent school is three basic ingredients -- excellent students, excellent teachers, and an excellent administration under a dynamic principal. My class (VII) of 1959 was selected from all over Bangladesh. Although a disproportionate number of students were from Dhaka and Chittagong, the rest of the country was well represented. I was from Feni. We had students from Bhola, Barisal, Khulna, Jessore, Bheramara, Parbatipur, Mymensingh, and Sylhet. Our best student, Adnan, was from Bhairab Bazaar and our second best student, Mushfique, from Ghorashal, Dhaka. Only one out of the five to place within the first ten (including the first three) in Dhaka Board's 1963 SSC Humanities examination was from Dhaka, everyone else was from rural areas or mofussil towns. Thanks to the foundation laid by Col. Brown, Faujderhat Cadet College has so far produced famous professors, Rhodes Scholars, head of the army in Bangladesh, top civil servants, top journalists, actors, national record holders in track, top industrialists and philanthropists, members of the parliament, and a Foreign Minister.
Col. Brown hired excellent native teachers, many of whom were first class honours and masters graduates of Dhaka University, such as, Mr. A. T. M. Nasir Chowdhury, Mr. Abul Kasem, Mr. Nazrul Islam, the late Dr. Badrul Millat, the late Kazi Azizur Rahman, Dr. Sirajul Islam, Dr. Selim, Mr. Bokiatullah, Mr. Salimullah. Mr. Haroonur Rashid, Mr. Abul Ashraf Noor, Mr. Ashraf, Mr. Wahiduzzaman, Mr. Abul Hasan, Mr. Kazmi and Dr. Anisur Rahman. An exceptionally-gifted and visionary principal, Col. Brown attracted British teachers like a magnet. The first two were Mr. S. L. Croft who taught English, and Mr. O. N. Bishop, an excellent teacher, who taught science. Later, Mr. Watson and Mr. Harry Shutt (who helped stage "Julius Caesar" in 1964) taught English, and Mr. Macbeth, another excellent teacher, taught physics. In addition, there were on campus several British Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO) boys, who were taking a year off before going to college. The VSOs were closer to our age and lived in the houses with us. Blessed with such stellar and inspiring faculty, failure was not an option.
Then there was the extracurricular component. We played football, cricket, rugby, hockey, basketball, boxing, swimming, gymnastics and track and field. An avid rugby fan, Col. Brown desperately attempted to make us rugger players, with limited success. While the inter-house contests brought out intense rivalries, the only outsiders we played were the Britishers of the Chittagong Club, in cricket and rugby. Later, a few Pakistani school teams played us in football. Every autumn we had the steeplechase run, which the student body hated; although a few like the writer did not mind because they did well. Col. Brown would use his enormous clout to bring famous sports personalities to the college. Pakistan's Olympic gold medal-winning hockey team visited in 1960 and presented the college the hockey stick with which the winning goal was scored. In 1962, during the rest day of the Dhaka Test against Pakistan, the English Test Cricket team visited and gave us lessons in bowling and batting. Col. Brown insisted that students learn and play all the games, "so that you can enjoy watching when your playing days are over." To top it all, we had the Outward Bound and Adventure Training Camp, a wilderness survival camp, on the Rangamati Lake, every year, under the tutelage of Mr. MacGregor and the VSO boys. Students who underwent the full cadet college training, could not remain bookworms and had to become all-rounders, just as Col. Brown had envisioned.
Culturally, Saturday evenings were set aside for watching documentaries supplied by the British Council, Dhaka. Occasionally, Shakespearean films such as, Laurence Olivier's "Hamlet" and "Richard III" were screened, as were British feature films such as, David Lean's "Great Expectations," Alec Guinness's "Kind Hearts and Coronets," and Kenneth Moore's classic "A Night to Remember." American movies were never shown and Col Brown frowned upon American expressions such as "OK!" We never had an American teacher! Once in a blue moon, Col. Brown would take us to Chittagong's Ujala Cinema Hall to watch Hollywood blockbusters such as Gregory Peck's "Guns of Navarone." Touring British Shakespeare companies (a la Merchant-Ivory film "Shakespearewala") visited occasionally and put on acts from Shakespearean plays. Col. Brown taught us some gentlemanly etiquette: "When eating, do not put your knife in your mouth," (just as Herbert teaches Pip in "Great Expectations") and "When you shake hands with a man, look him in the eye and give him a firm handshake; be gentle with a lady!" Col. Brown trained his boys to be socially savvy men of the world.
Overall, Col. Brown's moulded his students in his own image and through his guidance made them citizens of the world. Stationed in the tiny village of Faujderhat, we did not simply imagine the outside world, we lived in it. When a devastating cyclone and tidal bore hit coastal Chittagong in the autumn of 1960, Col. Brown suspended class for a week and made us help reconstruct the houses of the poor in the neighbouring villages, earning profuse praise from the press and "East Pakistan" Governor Azam Khan. When John Glenn completed the orbiting of the earth in 1962, Col. Brown informed us. When President Kennedy was assassinated in November 1963 and Sir Winston Churchill died in January 1965 we observed two minutes of silence for them. In February 1964, Col. Brown sent us the wonderful news, "Cassius Clay has knocked out Sonny Liston!" We may have been living in Faujderhat, but we were tuned to the world. We were trained not only in the best tradition of Bangladesh, but also in the best of tradition of the British public schools. Col. Brown made us gentlemen fit for the world.
There was only one cadet college in Bangladesh during our time. Now there are several. Since the cadet colleges have become regional, the caliber of the student body has diminished. But, we still have good students. The quality of administration and teachers is a concern. The principal has to a person with charisma and a vision. I do not know the quality of the principals we have today; I don't know how they measure up to Col. Brown. Is the current Faujderhat Cadet College attractive enough for visionary foreigners like Col. Brown to take the plunge? Why not? This is an age globalisation. We should be attracting talent from all over the world. Many of the brightest Bangladeshi students now study in excellent Indian schools. Why not the reverse? If we regain our past glory, students from India and neighbouring countries will be coming to Faujderhat Cadet College to study. We should not be insular. And we must make sure we set aside certain number of seats for foreigners. If Col. Brown and our former teachers were there today, we would be pulling in foreign students and teachers by the planeloads.
A few weeks ago, there was an article in The New York Times about Dhaka's Bashundhara, the largest inner city mall in South Asia. The reporter interviewed the visitors at the mall, and every man and woman said that Banshundhara was possible because it was a private enterprise; if the government was involved, it would never have been constructed.
So, how does the college get back to its glory days? Simple, really. Make Faujderhat Cadet College a private institution. Make it a global institution. Nestled between the Bay of Bengal and the hills two miles inland, Faujderhat Cadet College's setting is idyllic. With land and sea breezes, the weather is excellent. It is connected by road, sea, railroad, and air, not only with the rest of Bangladesh, but also with the rest of the world. If foreigners were attracted to Faujderhat fifty years ago, they will find it far more agreeable today. The college should not only recruit the cream of the crop from Bangladesh, it should also be welcoming foreign students. It must be made attractive to foreign faculty. If in seven short years (1958-65) Col.
Brown's uncompromising genius could transform a fledgling rural school in Bangladesh into one of the finest educational institutions in the Indian subcontinent, surely the least we can do to honour his legacy is to take the college back to its glory days.
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