The Main Way to Improve Society is Through Education – Professor Kamrul Hasan Mamun

A researcher’s index is often measured by citations. But is every citation just a number? Who cited, how it was cited, which journal it was cited in—these also matter. Beyond citations, there are other indices, such as the h-index and i-index. Moreover, if someone has a proposed model, that carries special importance. If others work on that model, its significance grows further. When someone works on another’s model, how do we count that citation? Some people have fundamental contributions in a research field that push the front of that field forward . How do we count those citations? Not everything should be measured by numbers alone. Where numbers are prioritized, quality escapes through the window.

This is where democracy has its problem. Everyone’s vote is equal. The lower the average standard of people in a country, the less effective democracy is there. Any system works well if the average quality of people is good. In England, where I did my PhD, an elderly man would come every morning to clean the office. I often went to the office very early and saw him there. You could talk with him about any issue in the world. That is, although his formal education level was low, through conversation you’d realize his understanding was greater than many of our highly educated people. The reason is that society itself is a school. In England, as truly educated people are common in society, in that sense any European society is a high-quality school. That’s why democracy is effective there. Japanese society, too, is a highly advanced school. In our society, public beatings still occur today. A mother was beaten to death by a mob while trying to enroll her daughter in school. Consider how tragic that is. Think of the pain with which her child is growing up. When the child grows up, they will always remember: my mother gave her life for me.

The main way to improve society is through education. Yet, we have always neglected education. We allocate only 1.69% of the GDP to the education budget! It should be at least 5.5%! The signs of ignorance and misinformation are present throughout our society.