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| October 2, 2002 | Wednesday | Rajab 24, 1423 |
Private educational institutes making Rs22 billion a year
LAHORE, Oct 1: As many as 36,096 private educational institutions in the country are extorting Rs22 billion from students in tuition fee and other charges annually. Twenty-eight per cent of the income is devoured by owners of these institutions, about 70 per cent of which are not recognised by the government.
Former caretaker prime minister Malik Meraj Khalid made these statements at the inaugural session of the two-day Allama Iqbal Educational Conference arranged by the Nazaria-i-Pakistan Foundation and Pakistan Movement Workers Trust at their auditorium here on Tuesday.
He said 300,000 teachers were employed in these institutions, but 65 per cent of them were untrained matriculates.
While the private institutions were fleecing the public, government schools were in a woeful state, he observed. Then, there were Deeni Madaris which had a separate system of education. He termed the parallel systems of education as harmful for national integration.
He said Muslims of the sub-continent had greatly benefited from the educational philosophy expounded in the prose and poetry of Allama Iqbal. “Unless we change our educational system in the light of Allama Iqbal’s philosophy, we cannot make any progress.”
He said the Allama had laid emphasis on learning in the fields of science and technology, as he rightly thought that unless the Muslims equipped themselves with the latest scientific and technological knowledge, they could not compete with the rest of the world. He said it was heartening to learn that the Nazaria-i-Pakistan foundation was trying to revive the spirit of Allama iqbal and Quaid-i-Azam among the youth.
Mr Khalid said dignity of man was the main theme of Allama Iqbal’s message and formed the basis of his educational philosophy. However, his philosophy had been ignored in Pakistan where parochial, sectarian, provincial and ethnic prejudices and social discriminations had done great harm to the cause of national integration. These prejudices must be ended if Pakistan were to develop and survive, he added. He said there was no respect for teachers in educational institutions, which was one of the causes of deteriorating morals among the youth.
Federal law minister Dr Khalid Ranjha said that emphasis of students in educational institutions of the country was on passing the examination and obtaining high marks. The students had a tendency to rot instead of forming concepts. This had given rise to what he called tuition culture. There was no provision for moral training, which could inculcate the spirit of mutual cooperation, tolerance, patience and personal sacrifice for collective interests. He said there was great need for moral training of students.
Former senator Dr Javed Iqbal in his key-note address discussed Allama Iqbal’s educational thought in detail and said that he wanted reforms in Islamic jurisprudence and laws as well as general education for the masses — particularly inexpensive education for the poor and the under-privileged.
He recalled that Iqbal wanted reconstruction of Islamic thought, which he had explained in his famous lectures delivered at Madras. He did not want reconstruction of Islam but its thought and Islamic Shariat. He said Iqbal was inspired by the developments in Western thought following the Reformation, Renaissance and the French Revolution. He said exercise of rationalism and revolt against the hegemony of the Christian orthodoxy had resulted in emphasis on acquisition of knowledge in science and technology, which opened the doors of progress and development for the Western people.
Allama Iqbal wanted Muslims to follow the West in acquisition of modern knowledge. He wanted reconstruction of Islamic thought as he believed that with the old methodologies of Islamic thought, the changing requirements of the society could not be fulfilled.
He said that except for Syed Ghulamus Saiydain, no scholar had written on Iqbal’s educational philosophy. He also traced the history of educational development of the Muslims of sub-continent with reference to the efforts of Sir Syed Ahmad Khan, Syed Jamaluddin Afghani and Allama Iqbal.
He also lamented that Pakistan had three parallel systems of education — the posh English medium schools, resourceless government schools and Deeni Madaris. He emphasised the need for a uniform system of education.
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