I THINK it is time we decided the medium of our education. Education, yes; a fundamental so far down the list of priorities that it is like an illegitimate child in a royal family, hush-hushed and strewn away in the far side of the house so that people will not know that it even exists.

If anyone is interested, just pick up the Economic Survey of Pakistan, which is a government document, and browse through the trends in education. These, though, are just crude and fudged numbers. Just pick up any publication in the last two, three decades; barely a handful of Pakistanis have been able to make a mark anywhere on the basis of academic excellence.

The single national curriculum (SNC), like its predecessors, is a well-intentioned half-cooked scheme. The books churned out under the banner makes SNC looks like some Ponzi scheme meant to benefit a few at the cost of many.

Two of my children are in the primary levels and I simply refuse to accept the future consequences they will bear just because somebody in some cosy rocking chair thought it would be a good idea to make one curriculum for all streams without having any idea of the ‘why’ and ‘how’ of the deal.

I do not propagate a complete abandon-ment, as this was perhaps well-intentioned and much-needed, but, like many other things in Pakistan, this has turned into a forceful learning loss. Do not believe me; just look at the contents of grade III Maloomat-i-Amma (General Knowledge) book of your children following the SNC.

It is akin to going back to grade I, not to mention glaring mistakes in the books. SNC should not be rushed, it should be started from the primary grades and the courses can be built up each subsequent year. Unfortunately, our impatience with everything, like many other schemes before it, simply ruins the intended outcomes; just look at the number of times the bachelor’s degree has seen a timeline revision.

The main question though is the output the so-called system is producing and while the entire nation is fixated over party flags, some 20 years from now we are likely to have a complete breakdown of the already redundant education curriculum, which, by the way, is basically supposed to produce the future workforce.

Saman Hamid
Peshawar

Published in Dawn, December 10th, 2022