| 26 February 2005 | Saturday | 17 Muharram 1426 |
Towards a practical and progressive curriculum
How should Pakistani children be educated as in what kind of curriculum should be used to teach them? There is a controversy raging on this question. While the present government wants to bring some changes in the existing system, it faces stiff resistance from some elements, especially those have helped shape and influence the system to bring it to its present form.
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The fight for gender equality
Before I begin to reflect on the topic in question, let me start with a very pertinent quote that comes to my mind (one, that I would used if a piece of writing required three words only on the issue): 'It's a man's world'. Besides, who would know better than women surviving (I deliberately avoid the use of 'living') in low/middle-income countries.
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A lost battle?
One doesn't need to dwell too much on statistics to realize that women in Pakistan have a raw deal. A look at the streets of cities like Karachi and Lahore, and women tend to get lost in the crowd. Go to smaller towns and villages and there won't even be a crowd.
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The truth about child abuse
According to a report issued by a child rights' watchdog group based in Islamabad in December 2004, a monitoring of crimes reported in 27 national newspapers indicated that at least 1,218 children were sexually assaulted in the first nine months of that year. A total of 1,826 cases of sexual abuse of children were reported in 2003 almost triple the 679 reported in 2002. ...
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Finding the right nursery for your child
Iwouldn't say that I ever had rose-coloured glasses on, as far as settling down in Pakistan is concerned. Being a staunch follower of the pessimistically optimistic approach, I was sure I would face some roadblocks in the course of mine and my husband's gallant efforts to leave our home for the love of family.
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Choosing the right career
The choice of a career potentially determines how you will spend the rest of your life. It determines what you will be doing day in and day out, what you will be known as, what your lifestyle will be like, how much you will earn and doing what. Choosing a career is hence the most critical decision of anyone's life. One simple reason for that also is that if, after years of education for a specific career ...
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Switching fields of study - good or bad?
During my school days we were often advised to choose one field of study and then not settle for anything less then a formal specialization in that field. However, the focus now is more towards combination in education rather than specialization. More and more students are pursuing an undergraduate degree in one area of study and then switching over to some other discipline for their graduate or doctoral degree.
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The joys of studying abroad
An education doesn't necessarily have to mean knowledge, especially if you're planning to go abroad. Speaking from my own experience, I can honestly say that the education I received by studying abroad was not just limited to classroom learning. It was also about being able to live independently, doing all the household chores like cooking, cleaning, paying bills and financial planning.
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Beyond the classroom
The excited members of the newly formed Social Sciences Society at Karachi's Institute for Business Administration (IBA) gather outside the room where the president of the Pakistan Democracy Foundation and corporate executive, Asad Umer, is about to give a lecture on the need for democratization of the country's political system.
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The life of a boarder
The thought of going to a boarding school or hostel brings mixed reactions from students and parents alike. Some students look forward to it, yearning for more freedom in life; others fear it, being so far away from the relative comfort of their home. Parents, too, have their own reactions. The most obvious and immediate is emotional centering around the phase of separation from their child.
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Studying at the country's best university
Evaluating my undergraduate days at the Lahore University of Management Sciences (Lums) is a daunting task. The university's merits and demerits need to be understood within the socio-economic perspective of Pakistan.
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Of college essays & interviews
The years whiz by, and the dinosaurs and ninja men that you rammed together in mortal combat, or the doll whose silken mane you combed for seemingly all of eternity becomes a 'once upon a time.' Its goodbye nursery rhymes, and hello college 'apps'.
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Assessing ourselves as teachers
A colleague once stepped out of a fifty-minute class with chalk stains all over her clothes and the colour drained from her face. "They give me such a hard time," she complained. On further investigation she revealed that the 'hard time' she refered to was the students' unwillingness to listen to her as they vied with each other for airtime in class.
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Women's education - bleak as ever
National statistics for education in 2003-04 might show a marginal improvement where female literacy is concerned but there appears to be no bridging the gender gap. If the percentage of literate females in the country officially grew from 39 in 2002-03 to 41.8 in 2003-04, figures for male literacy jumped from 64 to 66.3 per cent in the same period. At every level of education, we can see similar disparities. ...
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Winning a gold medal, or two, from KU
A little over a year ago, when I graduated, I was confronted by a mixture of bittersweet emotion - after all, its not easy to let go of a place that came to mean so much to you in the four years that you spent there. Like a hurriedly produced movie, fleeting memories of those four years whirled around in my head, as I came to collect my mark sheet and other relevant documents. Of course that was just one part of me. The other excited, adrenalin-charged, part was ridiculously happy.
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Are children really blank slates?
The mind is "like a blank slate" or a tabula rasa. This was an idea forwarded by the well-known English philosopher John Locke who wrote extensively on education. Although the idea has merit for it rejects the view that knowledge is innate, it is not without limitations. If one looks at how the education system works today, there is indeed an underlying notion that students' minds are like blank slates that need to be marked; that learning is about "absorbing" material and that teaching is essentially about "imparting" knowledge.
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Favouritism in school
"In school, the administrator used to give tuitions to my classmate. Every year that student would get a position. I was a good student too but I always fell short. In the beginning I couldn't understand what was wrong. But for one year, I got a class teacher who refused to push that girl and deduct my marks.
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Time for a business school re-think
Business education at the tertiary level has been grappling with two interlinked paradigmatic issues for over a decade. While one of the two issues stands resolved at the conceptual level, the other remains a major challenge. The issue that has been resolved revolved around the question whether business schools are teaching colleges or full-fledged research institutions. ...
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A woman who leads from the front
This is a tribute to the excellent work done by Gulakhta Palvasha, an Afghan refugee with no formal schooling, in Pakistan. Her life story is proof that bookish education is not always needed to get a good job, even in the education sector. At the same time, we should not forget that literacy and basic education remain a cornerstone in upbringing and socialization of our children. ...
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Faltering dreams
A funny thing happened on our way to becoming a major player on the global IT scene: we got mugged by reality. Readers will recall that around five years ago, the air was thick with hype emanating from the ministry of science and technology about how Pakistan would soon be able to compete with India in the international outsourcing of software.
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Roots of teacher demotivation
Every organization and institution has a percentage of employees who do not seem to 'gel in', no matter how long or how hard they try to become a core part of that organization. Such a group of employees is often seen flocking together, venting their frustrations and blaming the management for lack of support and understanding.
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Need for re-orienting the curriculum
Greeks considered education as a process necessary for the creation of a sound mind in a sound body. Today we all agree with what was defined by Dewey that education is "a process of living through a continuous reconstruction of experiences and the development of all those capacities in the individual which will enable him to control his environment and fulfill his possibilities".
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Studying to become a journalist
In this age of convergence and specialization in the media, it is difficult to source competent journalists in Pakistan, especially at the entry level. While both entry level remuneration and the opportunities available to entrants have improved considerably over the years, there continues to be a shortage of such people in the market. There are a number of reasons for this which need to be addressed at the earliest ...
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A battlefield of ideologies
"Pakistan's so-called religious parties are up in arms at reports that references to jihad are to be removed from Pakistani textbooks - biology, for example. Never mind the relevance of jihad (and that too, a particular kind of jihad) to biology; the Pakistan government's policy of appeasement continues.
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In the name of Pakistan studies
With the emergence of the nation state, education, controlled in the past by private and religious institutions, was taken over by the state in order to use it to inculcate sentiments of nationalism and patriotism in young people. To fulfill this objective, a national curriculum was designed to disseminate classified knowledge and use it to make students obedient citizens to serve the interest of the state.
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Partners in progress
Arena Multimedia: Arena Multimedia is an international training centre, providing training in the field of computers in an organized way, which has been tested and preferred over and over again. Arena started its operation in Pakistan in 1998 and currently having 9 centres across the country with 7 in Karachi, 1 in Lahore and 1 in Hyderabad. Arena now offers AMSP (Arena Multimedia Specialist Program), through which you become a Graphic Designer, 3D Animator or Post Production Specialist. Arena builds up you to be a complete multimedia professional. ...
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