Berkley Center

Relationships between religious beliefs, institutions, educational strategies, and delivery pose practical challenges for policymakers in Bangladesh. A related challenge involves national objectives to instill shared civic values through education and to address mounting intergroup tensions. This article describes and analyzes faith-inspired education providers in Bangladesh, the most prominent of which are Islamic madrasas and Catholic schools. It sets faith-inspired education in a historical context and highlights contemporary issues for policy makers that arise from their approach and that feature in public discourse about the links between religion and education. The aim is to build constructively on the legacies of religious contributions to education, address both articulated and unarticulated tensions, and to identify ways in which contemporary innovations among religiously inspired education providers contribute to broader national education goals. This article was published in the International Journal of Educational Development 79 (2020). 

This article first appeared as a white paper of the same name published by the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs at Georgetown University in May 2020. The PDF below is provided courtesy of the publisher.