The pressure Bangladeshi students face is invisible to the world but crushing to us

HSC results came out last week. Within two hours of the results being published, a boy in Cumilla had died by suicide. Another in Rajshahi. By evening the count was higher. Every year this happens. Every year we share posts for two days and then forget. Nobody talks about what it is like to be a student here. From Class 5 you are being prepared for a single moment — the exam. Your worth as a human being is reduced to a GPA. Your parents have told everyone in the family your result before you have even seen it yourself. The shame of failure is not personal — it is collective and public. I got a GPA of 4.5 in my HSC. In any normal country that would be considered good. Here, it felt like failure. My coaching teacher told my mother I had wasted my potential. I was 17 years old. We need to have a real conversation about what we are doing to our children. The education system is not preparing them for life. It is teaching them that their value is entirely conditional.