May 25, 2003

At present, three parallel education systems run in the country, with none of them having anything to do with the other. The prevailing realities are only promoting social, economic and cultural differences

EDUCATION in Pakistan is at present passing through a critical phase. This is natural because national life as a whole, of which education is an integral part, is also passing through such a phase. The most dangerous fallout of our existing education system is the polarization of society, which the current education pattern is continuing to support and promote in every devious way.

On the one hand, the medium is English; the fee structure prohibitive and the facilities, enormous and envious. On the other extreme lie the state-run schools where students are made to sit on the floor and wait endlessly and fruitlessly for the elusive teacher to make an appearance in the class and to start the hackneyed rote process.

Such schools are at best places where formal training in certain mundane skills like reading, writing, and arithmetic; or a plethora of subjects taught to please one or the other pressure group in the country, is conducted in a dull and routine fashion. At worst, these are the instruments for killing the spirit of joy, initiative and love for learning in children.

Much can be written about the outdated, outmoded syllabi in schools’ curriculum in the Matric system, and about the poor quality and contents of text-books published by state-owned boards that find fulsome support by the education department.

Equally pathetic is the manner of conducting Board examinations where cheating is rampant; papers are leaked out against graft; and results are manipulated and positions awarded for monetary considerations. Answer scripts are lost with aplomb and complete shamelessness by the examiners and the boards, and marks are then awarded on estimates or even on the basis of whims in total disregard to the fact that such acts may ruin the pupil’s career beyond repair.

Anyone who is even remotely familiar with the working of our matriculation schools and the psychological equipment of the students can clearly see that such schools definitely militate against development of individuality. They not only fail to bring out the uniqueness and possibilities of each pupil, but by their very methods of teaching and discipline, suppress individuality and let his or her distinctive gifts die of inaction and disuse.

The system has tended to emphasize dubious objectives and values like rote learning and competitive success, by fair means or foul, and has ignored some of the finest and most permanent values and purposes.

The education system prevailing in Pakistan is one that we have inherited from colonial days, and have failed to develop one of our own to meet our distinct needs. If Chief’s College (Atchison) was founded in 1885 to provide high-quality education to sons of feudal lords and tribal chieftains, then the present-day elitist brands of schools, with their prohibitive fee structure, keep the children of the poor, lower middle class and even middle class at bay and deny them the exposure provided by these well-equipped educational institutions.

The elitist schools of Pakistan, where the tuition fees is anywhere between Rs 5,000 and Rs 10,000 per month with a number of other accompanying charges, follow the ‘O’ and ‘A’ level system of examination of British universities and syndicates.

Bemoaned the trustee of a public school run by a charitable trust, “I would have preferred to go to the Grammar had my family not compelled me to study in the school founded by them.” Why? “No particular reason. Snob value, I suppose,” he conceded honestly without realizing even for a moment that his innate honesty comes from the values acquired in the non-elitist school in which he had studied. His son and daughters are now doing what he could not.

Even in cadet colleges that are intended to attract and to meet the needs of the sons of the poor and the lower middle class, have hopelessly missed their objective. “Since the skill of English speaking is essential to get admission in cadet colleges, only boys who have studied in good English-medium schools for the first six or seven years of their educational life find admission in these colleges,” said a former student of Hasan Abdal.

The adoption of the medium of English is mainly because every parent wants his child to learn English as a language of social and professional advancement. People are taken more seriously in this country if they can speak English, even if it were to cover up for their general ignorance and lack of understanding of vital issues.

One is led to believe that our education system dutifully follows the 1835 Education Policy of Lord McCauley. It is obvious to any fool that the decision to establish the Urdu University in Pakistan is a cosmetic measure and an act too late and too little to make any change in the education profile of the country.

But the upper class wants English as a pas-devant-les-domestiques code to distance itself from the rest of the countrymen. Schools are equipped with state-of-the-art equipment for learning with ample grounds for games and physical activities. The annual curriculum of the institution includes art, computers, electronics, science modelling, music, dance, photography, carpentry and many other vocational outlets to discover the ‘intelligence window’ of every individual child.

While most of such co-curricular activities are considered taboo from the point of view of religion in ‘ordinary’ schools, they provide the elitist children a high degree of self-confidence and self-belief and a blossoming of their inborn talents by highly paid and qualified faculty.

After a sound school education in the country, the sons and daughters of the elite seek admissions in universities abroad or join up equally exclusive centres of higher education in the country. Some of these like AKUH, GIK, LUMS and others have rightly been described as export promotion zones for Pakistani human talent.

The fields to which they go are large and widespread, like medicine and technology, information and communication, management and accountancy and others to prepare themselves for all the plum jobs in multinational firms and the private sector, besides ‘superior services’ in the government.

As if this was not enough injustice, all the scholarships and education loans offered by the government, foreign missions and even the private trusts are cornered by off-springs of the military brass and the politicians, bureaucrats and men of big business. The reason is that such endowments are given not to encourage scholarship, but as a public relationing exercise on the part of bureaucrats and businessmen who control charitable trusts.

For instance, the SET programme pioneered by the late Mahbubal Haq to improve the quality of science education in Pakistan, failed miserably as the young scientists sent abroad for post-graduate and doctoral level studies returned home as ill-informed, as devoid of analytical ability and thinking process as they were when they had left. The reason was simple. The selection was not on merit, but on the basis of power and pelf.

The creation of socio-economic differences and an unjust social order on account of inheritance, unearned income and adoption of corrupt practices is one thing. To do so through the instrument of education is a totally different thing.

Education, which is considered a panacea for social ills and is normally expected to bridge the gap between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots’, has actually resulted in the creation of two distinct socio-economic groups that show no signs of coming closer. The rich are getting richer, and the poor, poorer. No middle-class is emerging in Pakistan, unlike in neighbouring India and elsewhere in the world.

The solution may perhaps lie in creating a more challenging environment for the educated but deprived group, and also to build avenues for economic activity in agriculture, industry and the service sectors. If we do so, we may yet create a better social order though there appear no signs of this taking place in the foreseeable future.

As if this scenario was not morbid enough, in our country we have religious education and secular education running on parallel lines. The mental moulds that are formed through the old education and the new education are so incompatible that unless one or the other, or both, are changed, there is no possibility of their adjusting themselves to one another.

Some religious seminaries have also earned the bad name of churning out foot soldiers for ethnic strife at home and jehadi activities abroad. This is, of course, sad because seminaries have played a useful role in the past to provide education and knowledge to all segments of society, irrespective of socio-economic segmentation as at present.

As things stand today, even seminaries are further divided on several lines, the main ones being Hanafi Deobandi, Hanafi Barelvi, Ahle Hadees, and the Fiqah-e-Jaffriya.

This has been the main reason for sectarian differences arising among the people that sometimes take a nasty turn, and have a deadly impact on the minds and actions of the people. If secular education system has created economic differences, the traditional system of education, as it is followed presently, creates socio-cultural differences.

What is required is to reform and re-organize the seminaries so that they can play their rightful role in society as was brought to the consciousness of the Muslims by Maulana Shibli Nomani and other religious leaders in the past. It was to solve this problem that the Nadvat-ul-Ulema and its educational institution, the Darul Uloom of Nadva, was founded. But this movement withered in the blasting political winds of independence.

For the purpose of reform in the system it has to be decided whether religious schools are places of general education parallel to secular schools, or special vocational institutions for training of those who have to perform the functions of religious education and guidance.

In their present form, these institutions cannot fulfil the economic objectives of general schools, and can only be useful as vocational institutions. Admissions should be open only after a thorough test to find out which of the candidates have the inclination, disposition, capacity, temperament and character required to make them suitable for the important function of religious teaching and guidance. They should possess a natural inborn urge to find out and realize the eternal reality behind a changing world, and the will to devote themselves to the spiritual welfare of their fellow-beings. The government should provide adequate resources for religious schools so that the teachers may be given adequate emoluments. After acquiring due education, the students should be given the opportunities of serving according to their capacity and choice, as teachers in religious schools, fellows of literary academies, writers, journalists, preachers and Imams. This should be encouraged with sufficient remuneration so that they may provide a moderately comfortable life for their families.

Those who go for higher religious education must acquire at the same time higher secular education, as otherwise they cannot succeed in their objective of religious reform. Similarly, seminaries must provide a special course of religious studies for Muslim graduates of secular institutions who are wishing to acquire higher religious education.

In this way, the gulf that divides the minds of religious and secular educated classes will be bridged and both will be able to grapple with the tremendous task of reforming the religious and cultural life of the people, which cannot be tackled without the cooperation of both sides.

Finally, and yet most importantly, comes the size and pace of the change that must be brought about. To the politician and his hatchet man, the bureaucrat, to the businessman obsessed with large-scale happenings and results, the trees are invisible because of the magnitude of the wood. But to the teacher, the educationist and the man of vision, it is the individual tree that constitutes the wood, and the individual men and women who make the great collective that is humanity.

They find as much pleasure and significance in implanting the seeds of good emotions in the nascent mind of the pupil, and love watching them grow into saplings as an industrialist does in launching his new and massive venture.

The continued polarization of society into economic groups of vast differences is a wrong and humiliating position. Let us, therefore, mobilize all our forces in the development of sound and meaningful education for all, and not just a select few.

Let us stretch our hands to all those who wish to join in the great fellowship of knowledge. Let us make public opinion so strong in favour of our goal that no government or system, however chauvinistic and aggressive, would dare to create a divided society.

In bringing out this inner psychological revolution, education must play its special part, and the educationists should take into regard all the vital forces that are shaping the modern world, and, thus, help to orient the growing generation towards a more equitable and humane social order.

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