Alumni News & Notes
Layli Uddin, Ed.M.’07: Not Just a Fluke
by Amy Magin Wong
Coming from a background of poverty and limited opportunity,
Layli Uddin, Ed.M.’07, says she viewed her arrival at the Harvard
Graduate School of Education as a “fluke,” but her previous academic
achievements, intellectual drive, and pure determination
indicate her attendance here was simply a culmination of her
enthusiasm for learning.
Uddin, the British-born daughter of Bangladeshi immigrants, grew up in East London in the heart of the Bangladeshi immigrant community, one of the poorest and most isolated in the country. “I grew up in a household where no one spoke English,” Uddin says. “My father, a factory presser, was semiliterate, and my mother, a housewife, was illiterate.”
Uddin’s school was segregated, with a student body that was 99 percent Bangladeshi. Her only exposure to the white British population was through teachers and healthcare workers, and it was from them that she learned English. The impoverished school barely had any textbooks to hand out to the students. Still, she managed to excel on her placement exams for university entrance, becoming the first person from her school to achieve such high marks.
Without any guidance or encouragement from either her teachers or parents, Uddin made her way to the London School of Economics, where she eventually received her bachelor of science in international relations and history. Her parents were pleased, as she was the first one in her family to attend a university, but upon graduation they ended their support for any further schooling. “I come from a very conservative family,” she explains, “poor in terms of ambition, which saw no need for me to continue my education.”
But a friend, who came from a similarly disadvantaged background and had ended up attending Harvard, encouraged her to apply as well. “It was a fantastical notion,” Uddin says, “and I was quite certain I would be rejected.”
When Uddin was notified her of acceptance into the Ed School, her family initially resisted letting her go. “For the girls in my community there aren’t that many expectations other than you pass through the roles of being a daughter, a wife, and a mother,” Uddin explains. “By coming to Harvard, I’ve been breaking a lot of boundaries and have faced a lot of flak.”
Uddin found the school “very welcoming” and says, “I’ve met some of the most amazing people, who have inspired and challenged me, not just on an intellectual level but on a very personal level. This is my first exposure to so many people outside of my own community and I’ve embraced it.”
With her master’s of education and international education policy in hand, Uddin says that her experience at Harvard has presented her with many options. “I get so greedy that I want to explore all possibilities!”
After going to China for six weeks after graduation on a fellowship to teach at Peking University, Uddin plans to return to her family in London. In January she will travel to Bangladesh to work for a year with the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee to provide educational services for marginalized, impoverished children. “I will be doing research on areas relating to education for children with disabilities and who come from tribal and indigenous communities,” she says. “Those who are traditionally excluded from the mainstream system because of stigmas attached to them. We will work to provide them with access to schooling that they wouldn’t normally receive.”
This work exemplifies her philosophy toward learning. “I am very firm in the principle that a quality education should be for all,” she explains. “Most children growing up in developing countries don’t have those opportunities. I feel that they should aspire just as much as kids in developed countries.”
About the Article
A version of this article originally appeared in the Fall 2007 issue of Ed., the magazine of the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
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