ISLAMABAD, June 30: In youth we have the best hope to take Pakistan to new heights of glory provided they are taught to gain mastery of the natural causes of things.
However, that kind of understanding will be the result of an education system which encourages students to assess the problems and get over them.
This was stated by Foundation University vice-chancellor Prof Syed Zulfiqar Hussain Gilani at the Dialogue on Art programme at the Pakistan National Council of the Arts (PNCA). He was the guest speaker at the programme here on Wednesday.
Dr Gilani said it was the education system which raised nations out of deserts of ignorance to sparks of brilliance. Unfortunately, in his view, the present education system in the country was flawed. It was based on negative faculties such as memorizing lessons with no leverage given to students to question their teachers.
Dr Gilani said he could not find any foundational philosophy guiding the education system in all the nine reports he had read about higher education system. The reason for this lies in the hierarchical system on which Pakistani society is based where value judgments are evaluated on superiority over others, he said.
As an illustration of this mindset of self-righteousness with which we tend to judge others he gave a figure of speech. "I am a Pakistani, therefore, my country is superior to other nations, and as a Pathan I am better than any man of the other four provinces, and as a member of the Gilani clan I am the best person."
He said these notions had to be discarded through proper education, a kind of education which did not dehumanize people with a deep sense of powerlessness but endowed them with creative will.
For this kind of power we have to scrap the whole education system and begin casting youth into a new teaching mould which enables them to question and in the process the teacher must also become a student to learn from new experiences of his ward, he said.
Such a rational system would inspire creative faculties in the society to get over the old nations on which it had been bred on as well as support creative urges in a number of fields, including sciences as well as arts. "Creativity is not confined to arts but takes on wide ranging aspects affecting every department of life," he added.
Prof Gilani said these basic ideas must be inculcated among the youth and set them on the path of new discoveries of knowledge. However, we must first make a new beginning with proper education that developed the faculties of understanding among students, he said.
Former PTV managing director Aslam Azhar, sitting among the guests, praised Prof Gilani on his instructive ideas which he said were only self evident and should be seen as such by policy planners.
Prof Khawaja Masud said Allama Iqbal had offered a prescription to raise Muslim nations from ignorance. Iqbal had suggested renaissance that Europe had gone through but it had bypassed the Muslim world, he said. Prof Masud quoted a verse from Iqbal which said the real unbeliever (Kafir) is one who is quite literally unlearned.
