JUST 10 miles of off-roading from main Sajawal town, the dusty unpaved track leads you to a cluster of villages where it seems as though the clocks stopped ticking a few centuries ago.

Amongst the small and rickety thatched huts, one comes across a four-room brick and cement structure that stands out as the prominent landmark amongst these hamlets.

The contents and functions of this structure are deeply and inextricably linked to the future of Pakistan. It is the nucleus around which every thinking Pakistani spends endless hours of discourse. It is considered the ultimate recipe for a better future, the path to salvation, the highest priority, a fundamental right and the only remedy to all our myriad ills.

This building is a government primary school — the key to the struggle for a better Pakistan. We decided to take a closer look. This was not one of those structures which fell under the definitions of 'ghost schools'. It was also not one of those that have suddenly been discovered as being 'non-viable'. It was a regular, functioning, school open to all the children of the five villages in the immediate vicinity. It was a school that is alive and active in the government ledgers; a school that has a budget, a teacher, salaries and maintenance expenses. A classic representative sample of an average rural school in Pakistan, this school has five classes and one teacher. While in the surrounding villages there are at least 1,000 children who could be studying in this school, the actual number of students enrolled here is only 69. Of these, on the day we visited, 38 were present and 29 absent. The school may as well not have been there at all.

The classroom blackboard provided a crisp summary of the state of education in Pakistan. Thirty-two children are enrolled in Class 1. These children are the first ones to discover the utter uselessness of what they are exposed to; half of them decide to drop out every time they are moved up to the next class. So from 32 in class one, the number of students keeps dropping; by the time the children reach Class 5 there are hardly any students at all.

The fact that 67 children out of 1,000 decide to attend the school and only three this year have made it to Class 5 may be shocking, but it is not unusual in the rural areas of Sindh.

To collect this data, one does not need a World Bank loan or a glossy report by an obscenely paid consultant. Walk randomly into any government school in the province's rural areas and you'll discover a consistent pattern of utter wastefulness — part of a costly facade maintained by billions of rupees of donors' as well as taxpayers' money. Clearly, the education budget does not go towards education; in fact, it is consumed by the workings of an unimaginably incompetent machinery. gutka

The sole provider of education at this school, teacher 'DG' was interviewed, along with his ageing father. The father had just one complaint against his son: “On most days he does not go to the school and just hangs around.” The reason was obvious. 'DG' consumes heavy doses of and finds it difficult to open his mouth frequently. Any conversation is subject to first jettisoning the large volume of the addictive red liquid from his mouth. He has no inclination or ability to teach, much less to inspire a child. His monthly salary is guaranteed. Considering the distress he is capable of causing, on the other hand, perhaps he does the children a great favour by not turning up too frequently. gutka

The village folk, however ignorant they may appear, seem to have grasped the pointlessness of the schooling ritual and are not keen to avail of its dubious benefits. The only real beneficiary of this school is the teacher himself, whose effortlessly earned monthly salary supports his unending appetite for the three loads of that he must devour each day. katha

(This substance, a corrosive, addictive and carcinogenic mixture of lime, and tobacco, seems to have become an indispensable element in the daily diet of almost 80 per cent of the men, women and even young children in Sindh's rural areas.)

While private schools are not much better, government schools are the ultimate disaster that Pakistan could have manufactured for itself. The ruling elite has little concern or interest in public education; their own children do not have to suffer this torture.

The Oxford-educated minister of education does not consider having fake degrees a serious issue. The Higher Education Commission, the Election Commission, the courts and parliament have issued endless statements but done very little to dislodge the scores of parliamentarians who hold fake degrees. The provincial education ministries do little to influence the education process and their role seems limited releasing funds to schools — open or closed, dead or alive.

Such contempt and criminal neglect of education could only cause to multiply what we already have in plenty — strife, helplessness, crime, intolerance and poverty. Pakistan is therefore at a great risk of harm from the contents and methodology of its own thoughtless education system. A completely new approach is needed to reconstruct the existing system, whose hazards far exceed its benefits.

Schooling must focus on developing rational thinking, creativity, inquisitiveness and life skills — an impossibility with the existing crop of teachers, books and bureaucrats. Beyond repair and reform, this structure needs to be dismantled and rebuilt from scratch. n

Is Pakistan ready to even begin a debate on how this may be achieved?