APROPOS Dr Anjum Altaf’s opinion piece ‘Put to the test’ (Oct 5). This was yet another thoughtful wake-up call in the long series of scholarly thoughts on the education catastrophe we face.

Despite their different vantage points, Dr Hoodbhoy, Dr Hamid Zaman and Dr Faisal Bari all bring well-tested theoretical and practical ideas to arrest the collapse and breathe some sanity into our moribund education system.

While Dawn deserves credit for its commitment to education by highlighting the issue, I don’t know if the policymakers ever read such wisdom, or simply consign it to their oversized trash cans, but it borders on criminal neglect. At the policy level, the education minister seems enslaved to the edicts of someone who barely passed O’ Levels. Meanwhile, to add insult to injury we are tortured by pictures of abayas being distributed in a school.

May I suggest that just like the industry leaders these leading academics seek a meeting with the man who matters and apprise him of the wanton destruction of our intellect, our economy and most important, our humanity. Maybe an explosion of their learned, anguished and selfless thoughts at that forum can stem the rot.

Prof Wasif M. Khan

Lahore

Published in Dawn, October 19th, 2019