Notre Dame College

This chapter examines and discusses the educational aims of Notre Dame College (NDC) in Dhaka. It explores how NDC negotiated historical changes—internal and external—and how those changes shaped its mission. The chapter argues that NDC had a distinctive aim as part of its elite education. It originally aimed at developing and empowering the minority Catholic community in Bangladesh, by providing higher education and preparing seminarians and those seeking to become brothers to establish a self-supporting and self-governing church in Bangladesh. Additionally, it aimed at the diffusion of Christian spirituality and morals to elite youth of the country. However, as NDC went through changes in relation to political and educational shifts over time, so did its educational aims. To sustain and flourish in a predominantly Muslim Bangladeshi society, the nature, forms, structures, and policies of education at NDC changed. The chapter consists of three major sections. First, it elaborates on how the Congregation of Holy Cross (CHC) through the NDC took steps to realize its educational goals amidst political and educational shifts after the Partition of India. Second, it addresses changes brought by the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) and its consequences for education at NDC. Finally, it explores how the birth of Bangladesh in 1971 and subsequent educational shifts further shaped its mission and how it has negotiated the challenges, threats, and opportunities created by those changes. The findings and discussion in this chapter are primarily based on data from archival documents and oral history interviews.