THE ongoing heat wave has generated a serious shortage of electricity production in the country, adversely affecting all walks of life. The resulting shortfall in electricity production has also resulted in the shortfall of essential services like supply of water which have left some parts of the capital with an acute shortage of water.Dehydration along with the extremes in weather can lead to children and the elderly falling ill at any time. If schools and colleges remain open this would lead to a situation where many children could very easily fall it – especially if the schools are prone to frequent power outages and thus don’t have an adequate supply of drinking water, or indeed water for performing essential hygiene functions. Moreover, the children are experiencing extreme difficulties in their to-and-fro journey to schools during the hot hours. In such a situation the government should immediately close the schools for a week and let the children cool off while the temperature becomes more clement. This would go a long way towards making the children better off and enable them to focus in their studies properly. Going to school for the sake of following norms while the children can’t concentrate on education as they remain adversely affected by the weather is not a good idea. Learning can only function effectively in a climate conducive to it – and it will definitely not take place if the kids remain oblivious to all but the heat.It is not that it doesn’t happen anywhere else in the world. School districts across the Dallas-Fort Worth area in the USA closed almost 40 of their campuses in 2014 due to power outages from Thursday’s storms. The University of Texas at Arlington also canceled all classes in 2014 due to only a power outage. Meanwhile in our neighbouring country the Chief Minister of Delhi Mr Arwind Kejriwal in February 2016 closed of all schools due to a water crisis the capital city was facing at that time to ensure that the students don’t have to suffer.So it is not that precedent does not exist — it does, and in almost all parts of the world schools remain closed due to temperature extremes or inclement weather. It should not be a stretch for Bangladesh to keep our schools closed. The authorities should not add the misery of students to their failures of providing power or water, or indeed that of keeping the roads jam free. It is the least our students deserve.
