Life and Legacy of An Amazing Father

Originally from Bangladesh, Ruhul Amin, is a former Senior Research Faculty at Morgan State- and Johns Hopkins-University in Baltimore, Maryland, USA, and a former Associate Professor at Chittagong University, Bangladesh. In Life and Legacy of An Amazing Father, the author tells his late father’s remarkable and inspiring life journey from his birthplace in an isolated, remote, and obscure village of the early 20th century British India—circumstances that guaranteed the opposite of success in life through modern higher education, which was introduced and spread by the then British Colonial Administration of India. Yet, at that time, being inspired by his mother (author’s paternal grandmother), when his father (author’s father) started to attend the only modern elementary school, on foot, beyond the 3-mile parameters of his village home, his neighbors used to ridicule and discourage his school attendance. Because they thought that he had no chance of getting any modern higher education beyond his elementary level, which would enable him to get a job good enough to improve his and his family members’ life-chances. And, thus, they thought his elementary school education would provide him no better future than that of his father’s (author’s grandfather) occupation of a village farmer. But their discouraging comments did not diminish his father's passion for modern education, and he continued his elementary school education, which resulted in his obtaining a scholarship to pursue his middle school education. After obtaining his middle school graduation, his determination to pursue still higher education spurred him to obtain his high school- and junior college-graduation, and, ultimately, his graduate degree from Dhaka University, Dhaka, East Bengal. Subsequently, after his graduate degree from Dhaka University and a post-graduate degree from a Post-graduate Teacher’s Training College, author’s father joined as the founding Headmaster (Principal) of a newly established and the only High School, Kapasia High School, in his native Thana (sub-district) of Kapasia. As a Headmaster of Kapasia High School, he set out to spread modern education among his relatives and many others, who were aspiring and seeking modern higher education from his native and surrounding Thanas by directly teaching, mentoring, and supporting them as well as indirectly providing them his success in life as a role model. He did the same for his own eleven children, including the author of this book, his younger brothers, his grandchildren, and his great grandchildren. While majority of them attained or were in the process of attaining their higher educational and occupational success in life, others encountered some difficulties in attaining success in life. Drawing from interdisciplinary perspectives from Sociology, Cultural Anthropology, Psychology, Biological Sciences, Economics, and Political Science, the author of the book sought to understand both the causes that led to the higher educational and occupational success among his father’s four generations of descendants as well as the failure among some of them. This he did in the contexts of some background circumstances of the four generations of descendants of his father, which influenced their success and failure in life, respectively. For both types of descendants of author’s father—those who became successful and those did not—the causes for their success and failures, respectively, in attaining their higher educational and occupational attainment have also been provided in the book. The focus of the book is on the generational transfer of ingredients for higher educational, occupational, and other worthwhile attainments of the children of a previous generation to those of their subsequent generations of descendants, which enabled the latter to reproduce the attainments of the former. Implications of the book’s findings both for the children and parents are discussed throughout the book.