THIS is apropos the letter ‘Obsolete syllabus’ (March 2). I would like to share my personal experience in this regard. I am a retired professor of English. In the year 1965-66, I was a student of intermediate class. One will be surprised to know that the English syllabus that I had studied then still stands prescribed in the year 2021. It means the syllabus is almost 55 years old.

During my 30-year English teaching career, I taught the same textbooks to my students that I had studied as a student. Ironically, my children grew up studying the same books and now my grandchildren are also going through the same stuff.

Thus, this extremely obsolete English syllabus is passing through the hands of the third generation. How many generations are destined to read this rotten syllabus, I don’t know.

Our tragedy is that education is not our priority. We have never made a long-term plan to define and achieve national objectives of education. Successive governments have relied on ad hoc measures instead of planning for the future of the country.

The need of the hour is to introduce a new innovative syllabus that can develop analytical and creative faculties of our students, enabling them to keep abreast of the modern, smart world.

Prof Sarwar Pathan
Sukkur

Published in Dawn, April 5th, 2021