November 11, 2007

If policy-makers want to bring changes in quality of education, they must first ask some serious questions, writes

Salahuddin A. Khan

Many writers have explained various reasons for the absence or lack of quality in the education that is imparted in Pakistan. My approach, however, is different. I feel that before we try to understand any of the reasons, we need to ask questions like: should a certificate, a diploma or a degree -- obtained after studying volumes of printed materials without understanding them in the wider perspective -- be regarded as quality education? Or, should a certificate or a diploma embellished with a baggage of quantitative information be called quality education? Should quality education be gauged by the ability to persuade the populace to consume goods and services delivered by the multinational corporations? Or should it be seen in the capability to respond to the culture of science-based industrialisation and post industrialisation? Should the education that can mould the people to meet the demand of technological imperialism be considered quality education? To me the answer to these questions is simply no.

Quality of education, as I understand it, could be reflected when it is knowledge-oriented rather than degree or diploma oriented. Knowledge is differentiated by true knowledge seekers from descriptive and statistical documentation numbers. Numbers, no doubt, have their practical values. For example, Plato (428-347 BC) saw “warriors were to learn numbers in order to arrange the troops”. But now in this age we see electronic machines can do the calculation more efficiently than the human brain. Does it mean that a machine has the better quality than the human brain? Of course not. It is the human brain that has invented it.

It appears Plato saw quality education as “using pure intelligence in the attainment of pure truth. Truth, for Plato resided in thought and in the sense particulars (Mukhergee, 1999). Furthermore, taking the non-qualitative aspect of education “Plato looked it as an instrument of moral reform, for it would mould and transform human souls. Education inculcated the right values of selfless duty toward all, and was therefore positive. It helped in the performance of one’s functions in the society and in attaining fulfillment” (Ibid).

Some intellectuals are of the opinion that the IQ difference found in students of different races and cultures are responsible for lack of quality in respect of education. This is not true. Based on their research, anthropologists have found only marginal differences in IQ of different races. Moreover, they believe that the IQ test cannot be taken as a reliable standard to measure intelligence of people of developed and non-developed countries, because IQ itself is the product of developed countries. As I said education should be knowledge oriented. By this we must not mean a total negation of the information frontiers. We know well that this is the surging age of all kinds of information. What you don’t have is a balance between true knowledge and information giving data.

At this juncture I’m increasingly inclined to agree with Prof. Dr. Salim ur Rehman, Vice Chancellor of Sarhad University of Science and Information Technology that “the development of any country depends on people who can take informed decisions, who have a vision of their own and have clear thinking.” He gives more importance to the qualitative value of education rather than the quantitative. And to me, the quality of education needs to be distinguished when it is more knowledge-oriented than information-loaded. The difference between the two is not so complex. Knowledge revolves round the question ‘why’ whereas answers to the questions like ‘what’, ‘when’ and ‘where’ lead to the dazzling array or jumbled mixture of information.

We are human beings who inherently want to live together in a humane society. In our heart of hearts we wish to be cared for not by tools and technology but by love and sympathy. We need a society free of coercion, authoritarianism and alien directives. We need a society where all people can be happy in the real sense of the phrase; a society free from hatred, greed, enmity, violence and terror; a society full of peace and tranquility. But can we say that their, that is, American and European and our Ph.Ds and highly qualified scientists have succeeded in bringing about the sort of human society we have just talked about? A common man appears more fearful about his future and destiny. With the beginning of the 21st century all these miseries have worsened thanks to the so-called quality education paradigms of the west. Under the craving for tasting a different drink, youth are on the go all day long searching for the memory of the computer, the website etc. They cannot manage to juggle their craze for the luxuries of the internet with their home life, friends and people around. Hence, tension, frustration and alienation within and without the home.

I can’t define quality education. Or, to put it differently, I can’t do it as it is the task of a team consisting of intellectuals of high caliber who sincerely wish to help humanity by educating the new generation by virtue of humanity-friendly education and not polarise society and domesticate the institutionalised values exported by the foreign masters.

I can, however, pose some more questions which I think could be helpful while embarking upon a different approach to defining ‘quality education’. Should mass production and mass consumption be the goal for which education needs to be institutionalised? Must education have the characteristic to produce minds to back up material development and progress without limit, without destination and without vision and imagination? Should energising a person with materialistic objective be the goal of ‘quality education’? Should grooming students to conform the free and modern values be seen as quality education without thinking and questioning where these will lead?

Finally, should education that denounces all ethics and believes in ‘science for science’; ‘art for art’; ‘invention for invention’ and banishes the question of their usefulness for all humanity be regarded as quality education? Let me end this writing with a question from an American historian Theodore Roszak (1973): “Why in our time, have societies well endowed with industrial plenty and scientific genius turned uglier with totalitarian violence than any barbarous people? The desire of total war continues to haunt the children of Enlightenment, more oppressively now than in the age of Voltaire? Why do nihilism and neurosis brood over what we please to call the “developed societies?”