Prof Amjad Ali Shakir, principal of Islamic College, Railway Road, Lahore, believes that government colleges in Pakistan are not lagging behind as far as infrastructure and other facilities are concerned.

“Students from the lower middle class join government-owned colleges and we on our part try our best to provide them with all kinds of facilities. Our laboratories are fully equipped and I can safely say that our libraries are better stocked than the ones in private colleges,” he asserts.

The professor is of the view that we must try to introduce a modern educational policy at par with the developed countries. There is a need to include curriculum experts from top-ranking universities of the world in our curriculum wing. “We should carefully select the experts for our textbook boards. This is utterly important in order to modernise our curriculum. And lastly, we must introduce a subjective type examination system, especially for social sciences,” he adds.

Going into the history of why we may be lagging behind in the realm of education, Prof Shakir says, “We inherited the colonial educational system. Punjab University was set up with a colonial purpose. On the other hand, three universities were set up in 1857 in Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata on the lines of the Oxford and Cambridge University.

“Aligarh University was set up to increase the job quota of the Muslim elite. It became a bastion of Muslim nationalism. The emphasis was on social sciences and there wasn’t any research culture. We should keep these factors in mind to understand what went wrong with our educational system,” he explains putting the whole issue in perspective.

“Government colleges and universities,” he rues, “were purged of the genuine and liberal academics to further a specific hard-line ideology which proved to be injurious to the research culture.”

He notes, “After Partition, the Sikh and Hindu teachers migrated to India, and thus the departments became deserted. Later on, people of a particular ideology ruled the roost, and discouraged genuine research culture.”

Prof Amjad Ali Shakir says that an academic should devote all his energies to share his knowledge with his students, and he should also study all the subjects immensely in order to chisel his knowledge.

He takes the tuition centres to task which, in his opinion, are also distracting the teachers. “Students as well as teachers are overburdened. Teachers also take classes in the private tuition centres and thus they cannot fully deliver their best while teaching in the government colleges,” he points out.

He thinks the teachers should try to do their job with a missionary zeal as the future of the nation rests with them. “We must try to inculcate the reading habit in students from class one. And for this to happen, we should set up small libraries while upgrading public libraries.  It is something which would be very beneficial for the both of us,” states the professor.

About his own college, he shares, “Islamic College, Railway Road, has a rich history. Its students actively participated in the Pakistan movement. The Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah visited here a number of times. Allama Iqbal was a frequent visitor, too. He recited his famous poem ‘Shikwa’ in our university hostel lawn and for a brief time also taught philosophy here. Abdullah Yousaf Ali taught here, too. Later, he also became principal of the college.”