KARACHI, June 9: Speakers at a meeting of Shura Hamdard, Karachi chapter, urged the government to do away with what they called 'experimentation and bureaucratization of education'.

They also demanded of the government to allocate enough money in national budget to establish a Central Bureau of Translation, for boosting education, particularly primary education, and to appoint highly educated teachers in primary schools.

The meeting was held on the topic, “National Education Policy” and presided over by the Chief Justice of Federal Shariat Court, Justice Haziqul Khairi, at a local hotel.

They also urged to give primary education free of cost and in the national language, Urdu.

The speakers also questioned as to why the Higher Education Commission was immune from accountability.

Mrs Sadia Rashid, President Hamdard Foundation Pakistan, was also present at the meeting.

Prof Dr Syed Irtefaq Ali, former vice-chancellor, University of Karachi, speaking at the meeting highlighted the deteriorating condition of education in the country.

He said there were 328,829 schools in the country but 17 per cent out of these had no roofs, 39 per cent were without drinking water, 62 per cent without electricity, 50 per cent without toilet facilities and 46 per cent didn’t have boundary walls.

He added that there were 30,000 ghost schools, 40 per cent children did not go to schools, while the dropout rate was 45 percent.

The poor man, Prof Ali said, was unable to educate his children because of the exorbitant fees of private schools.

Though poor people were in a majority in the country and they had immense talent too, but they were deprived of education thus letting a large amount of talent go to waste.

He said that there was a wide rich and poor divide in our country, which was harmful for society, thus emphasizing on equal opportunities of education for the children of both the rich and poor.

Renowned scholar and former Vice-Chancellor of the Hamdard University, Dr Manzoor Ahmed, said there was much confusion in our minds regarding English education and the language, and that English education would lead Muslims away from their very national purpose, adding that these confusions had rendered Muslims great damage.

He said that even Allama Iqbal was the product of English education while Sir Syed Ahmed Khan had tried to implement his reforms under the influence of English education.He said it was a baseless fear that English education would spoil our morality.

“Such confusions should be removed otherwise we would not be able to make a positive education policy,” he said and added that without the creation of ideas and change of paradigms, there can be no education policy, which could bring good effects on our society.

He said that our universities should be research-oriented and all education from primary to higher should be made uniform and founded on broad-based knowledge.

He was critical of the centralization of education and emphasized that bureaucratization of education should be abolished forthwith, adding that the trend had harmed the country’s education system.

Justice Haziqul Khairi said that Muslim countries should cooperate with each other in the field of education.

He also said that the education system should be decentralized and controlled at the district-level.

Maj-Gen (Retd) Ghulam Umar said that Islam laid great emphasis on education and since Pakistan was an Islamic country, education must be given free of cost here.

“The national language is always a pillar of any society through which a nation makes progress. Therefore, it is imperative that Urdu, being the national language of Pakistan, be made the medium of instruction in the coming national education policy,” he said.

He added that emphasis on research should be laid in our intuitions of higher learning as “Allah has urged us (in the Holy Quran) to think and deliberate upon whatever is hidden in the earth and the heavens”.

Able and qualified experts of different languages should be appointed in the Central Bureau of Translation, which was the dire need of the hour, he suggested.

Engineer Anwarul Haq Siddiqui said the population growth rate was declared the number one problem in Bangladesh and China.

“We, too, must make a determined initiative through population education to control population growth in the country. In this connection, all teachers must be trained in population education.”

He said that students will need four essential areas in the curriculum to make education relevant, purposeful and useful in their subsequent life. These areas were basic skills, life experience, character education, and work education.—APP