I met our new Education project Team Leader this week - he's called Onol. Well, that's how it's pronounced (as near as damn it) but it's spelt, and I swear that this is true, it's spelt Anal. As far as I know he and his family have no plans to emmigrate to the US or UK but can you imagine the nightmare his life would be if he did with a name like that? Anyway, that was just a cheap gag to say that this week I've been thinking about education.

There is a training course being held in our training centre this week, in fact there are 2. They are being run and financed by Plan International, an UK charity, to improve the quality of grade 4 and 5 teachers. I happen to know a few of the Plan folk as I go to their office a lot to use the Internet, so was able to chat to the course co-ordinator about it all. In actual fact I was quite happily sitting reading in the sun and he just came over and started talking but that's not the point. The point is that only roughly 50% of kids in Bangladesh are still at school after 5 years, and only 1.6% of them achieve the standard set by the national education board. Putting that together that means 0.8% of Bangladeshi children reach the targets their education system has set after 5 years tuition.

Those are pretty scary numbers I'm sure you'll agree, and they got me thinking about the general difference in intelligence between Bangladesh and Western Europe for example. Maybe intelligence is the wrong word, but what I'm wondering about is this: If, at the dawn of time, all people were basically as thick as each other, then the difference between developed and developing nations is not about natural intelligence or genetics, but about generations of successful education and training. If that is so then all that is required is for countries like Bangladesh to invest heavily in education and their economies will soon blossom. If you think that's a bit simplistic then I agree, as you'd also need to invest in healthcare to reduce sick days and improve productivity, infrastructure to facilitate movement, and law and order to keep people safe. If you've done all that, and I can think of one Nobel prize-winning economist who uses just this argument to explain the development of countries like Singapore and South Korea, then you're well on the way.

I suppose what's really being going through my mind these last few days is how hard I have to work sometimes to get an idea across at work. If I was feeling unnecessarily negative I'd say something like "it's bloody annoying living / working with people who are thick as pig shit sometimes" but luckily for us all I'm an optimist. This week I've been wrestling with a real gem of a problem which has nothing to do with how intelligent anyone is. In a nutshell, my belief is that management by punishment is counter-productive as it encourages staff to hide problems until it's too late rather than getting them out into the open ASAP and asking for support if necessary. Sadly, the Bangladeshi culture is very like this, and I wonder whether this isn't another legacy of Britain's glorious colonial past. The bottom line is that I've got an organisation stuck in a vicious circle as management doesn't trust staff because they don't share information and problems promptly, and staff doesn't trust management because it only seems to criticise their mistakes.

My mission, which I have chosen to accept, is to try and break this circle and make it a virtuous one. During a discussion with my boss I likened the situation, HIS situation, to someone learning to swim. For someone who can't swim a large body of water is a scary thing. But how can they learn to swim if they don't get in? To bring it back to my situation, my boss wants an open and responsible relationship with his staff but can't yet bring himself to dip his toe in the water so to speak and be open and responsible with them for fear of being taken for a ride. I'm convinced that it's for the leader to make the first move before the others will follow, but I'm up against some pretty serious cultural baggage. Right now it's like my boss doesn't even believe it's possible to swim as he's never seen anyone else do it. I think I've found someone (a local NGO manager) who can show him some strokes and generally coach him while he practices in the shallow end, but he's still got to jump into the water on his own as I can't push him (words of advice from the wise gratefully accepted on this one).

I had another education-related experience this week which was actually quite surreal. A young Bangladeshi lad who has done some translation work for me invited me to his university to meet his English literature professors. My educational background is basically maths and science followed by economics and business so I've never really delved into the joys of Dickens, Byron and the Bronte sisters. Regardless of this handicap I went to see them and was warmly welcomed into the department's staff room by 5 professors. My first thought was "surely they've got better things to do than sit around here talking to some random foreigner" but how wrong can you be? No sooner was I seated and tea ordered than the questions started. Naturally we kicked-off with the standard conversational gambits about where I was from, what I was doing here, how long I would stay, whether I was married, how many brothers and sisters I had, what they did and what my parents did. In case I've never pointed this out before, I get these same questions from any new person I meet, and sometimes from complete strangers in the street who absolutely have to know where I come from. The bright ones make no assumptions and ask "your country?" while others chose to wade in there and ask if I'm Japanese. If only I knew the Bangla for "oh wow you were so close with that one big fella".

Anyway, having thoroughly examined my marital status and family, we then move on to the first trick question i.e. religion. I was feeling fairly comfortable with what were supposed to be educated men so I calmly told them that I was an atheist. This is not a popular answer in a devoutly muslim country but to their credit they took it in their stride. However, they were clearly uncomfortable with the idea so they then sought to define my family's religious inclinations as a proxy for my lack of one. They were also a little surprised to learn that I did my own cooking! Next came a subtle change of subject when one professor asked me about the topography of Wuthering Heights and Thomas Hardy country (and no I'm not being pompous, he actually said topography). Again, not one of my stronger areas of general knowledge so I had to draw on my family holidays in Derbyshire and Yorkshire to get through. By this time they'd finished warming up and were throwing questions from all angles, sometimes not even waiting for me to reply to the previous question before lobbing in a new one

I was almost a little sad, though also quite romantic, the way they pictured England as it is depicted in 18-19th century literature. I did however completely stun them when I admitted that there were homeless people and beggars in London. I didn't mean to shatter their illusions when I said that even in London, the town paved with gold that so many Bangladeshis dream of going to, there are poor people, but the damage was done. More worrying though was the thought that came to me later. If that is their view of England today then what other outdated and sometimes even downright dangerous images are they transferring to the minds of their students? I mean, imagine your information about England comes from Jane Austen or William Shakespeare... and you're called Anal. Not exactly a dream start to a new life in the "promised land" is it?