My daughter is still an infant. Before she could even sit up, I began introducing her to picture books; now that she can sit, she treats them as her favourite toys. She grabs them, chews the corners, and turns the pages with her whole hand. She cannot read, of course, but as she listens to me read aloud, she has begun to realise that these pictures carry meaning. Turning a page to reveal a new image is her first real lesson in cause and effect — the foundational spark of human discovery. It is a quiet, subtle triumph, but precisely the kind of developmental milestone a parent learns to watch for.
In raising her, we draw on the principles of the Montessori method, which at this stage mostly means granting her free reign over ordinary household objects. The kitchen holds far more magic for her than any store-bought gadget. A stainless-steel bowl, a wooden spoon, a stray lid, or an empty bucket—these unglamorous artefacts capture her focus and ignite her imagination far better than battery-powered toys with flashing LED lights. Whenever she is awake and with us, our smartphones stay out of sight and the television remains off. We guard this boundary strictly, even when it means drawing a firm line with relatives — like the aunt who tried to entertain her with a phone when she was just three months old. She commands our full, undivided presence, which happens to be the one thing no screen can ever supply.
Like most new parents, I spent her early months hunting for answers. The deeper I waded into developmental research, the clearer one essential truth became: for a young child, play is not a distraction from real learning — it is the learning. Yet somewhere along the line, society began conflating education with sitting quietly at a desk, memorising facts, and drilling for examinations. The slow, essential work of building a flexible mind — fostered through art, music, and unstructured play — gets routinely set aside, discarded either for financial reasons or because we have been conditioned to believe that a coaching centre offers a shortcut to success. In the process, we have mistaken schooling for true education.
We celebrate early literacy, neat handwriting, and rapid mental math for a simple reason: they are visible, measurable, and easily weaponised for parental comparison. Look how fast my child reads compared to yours. But the capabilities that truly determine a child’s long-term flourish defy standard report cards. How do you assign a letter grade to deep concentration, independent problem-solving, emotional resilience, or the courage to fail and try again?
This insight is hardly novel. For more than a century, educational theorists like Maria Montessori, Friedrich Froebel, and Loris Malaguzzi have insisted that children are not empty vessels waiting to be filled with adult facts, but active architects who make sense of the world by touching and manipulating it. Nor is this perspective alien to Bengal. Long before hyper-academic pre-schools and touchscreens invaded daily life, Bangladeshi children learned through immersion — moulding clay dolls from riverbank silt, pushing handcrafted wooden carts, and absorbing language, ethics, and history through the oral tradition of storytelling elders.
Nor has this wisdom vanished entirely from our borders. Two decades ago in Magura district, a community experiment known as the Kajoli Model set out to prove that quality early-childhood education required almost no money. Abandoning traditional textbooks, these village classrooms relied on pocket boards, floor games, songs, and communal spirit, with mothers taking turns cooking midday meals and neighbours sustaining the teacher. Built for the poorest families, the project succeeded because it treated learning as an act of joy rather than a source of anxiety. The expensive urban coaching centres, in their rush for metrics, have forgotten what those rural spaces understood from the beginning: curiosity thrives on freedom, not pressure.
As our cities grew denser and concrete replaced green spaces, that tactile world receded. Screens moved swiftly into the vacuum. A robust body of global research now links heavy early screen exposure with delayed speech and reduced attention spans. Even if scholars debate the precise boundary between causation and correlation, the pattern is clear enough to give any parent pause. An infant has no need for a digital interface. What she requires is the steady, responsive presence of a human being who answers when she calls.
Instead, the competitive rat race begins almost at birth. Terrified that their toddlers will fall behind in a global economy, parents introduce English vocabulary drills and math worksheets long before the child learns to button a shirt. A well-meaning relative asks if the baby knows her letters yet, oblivious to the subtle pressure implied in the question. Ironically, many progressive schools across the West are moving in the exact opposite direction — delaying formal academic instruction until age six or seven. They recognise that unstructured play and physical movement build the precise neural architecture required for self-regulation, focus and authentic confidence.
Now, artificial intelligence has added a fresh layer of anxiety to parenting. Should my four-year-old learn Python coding? Will an AI tutor keep her from being left behind? Technology will indisputably shape her world. But an algorithm can only offer answers; it takes a patient, curious mind to know which questions are worth asking in the first place. That capacity grows slowly, cultivated through physical play and human interaction long before a child ever touches a keyboard.
A toddler does not need a study schedule. She needs unhurried time, physical objects to inspect, and adults who listen without reaching for a phone. As Bangladesh prepares for an automated future, we ought to reflect on the kind of human beings we are raising — and whether this frantic hurry serves them at all. For now, my daughter turns a page, watching it move simply because she moved it. There is time enough for the rest.
Namia Akhtar is an anthropologist and has previously worked at the Embassy of the Netherlands in Dhaka, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), and the European External Action Service (EEAS).
[The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the position of The Daily Bonik Barta or the organisation they work for.]