They observed that consecutive education policies and action plans had failed to work or create any impact as those were only well-worded documents, short of substance. All, from policy makers to executers and teachers to parents, failed to achieve as they were either unable to speak up or not ready for any mental agitation, they claimed.
The symposium on “Understanding Quality Education”, organized by the Sindh Education Foundation (SEF), was inaugurated by the Sindh Minister for Education, Dr Hamida Khuhro, at a hotel.
A number of national and international scholars and intellectuals are participating in the three-day symposium aimed at discussing and exploring the problems, issues and challenges faced by the contemporary education system in the country.
In her opening remarks, Dr Khuhro said that there had been problems of investment, quality teachers, infrastructure and consistency in the related policies, which had certainly been affecting the process of education in the country. We don’t see education policies, evolved from time to time, implemented in a true sense in the past, she remarked.
The minister was of the view that the education sector was full of problems which were not recent occurrence because the governments in past paid only lip-service to education.
While the syllabus for students needed innovative changes, it was unfortunate that we were still hung with the ideology to do this and not to do that, she added, saying that the new generation needed education which could provide them source of livelihood and that was why the government was trying to promote sustainable professional, technical and vocational education.
SEF Managing Director Prof Anita Ghulamali said that during the course of symposium the obvious area of exploration would be a set of criteria of the desired outcome of education, with reference to aspirations, attitudes, norms, and values, strength of character, degree of commitment and discipline.
During the session, speakers sought to understand the historical evolution and moral and philosophical foundations of the concept of education.
Dr Rubina Saigol, a Lahore based expert and activist on educational and social issues, said that efforts should be made to take care of nationalization and localization while moving for acquisition of modern education under the globalization concept.
She said that less attention was being given on qualitative education, while on the other hand existing system of education had lost its relation with the daily life. The modern life has cut off education from the daily life or social system, which was a contradiction of the two major objectives of education, i.e. preservation of values, thoughts and culture and change for development.
Dr Saigol said that logical emphasis for creating a world of science and technology was also proving a threat to the education in social sciences, which should be checked, otherwise morality and politics would finally diminish. We should think about our children’s relationship with the philosophy of life and every day problems as those were the only means to keep the concept of collective life and social relations intact, she added.
She said that during the last many years the different established and accepted aims of imparting education to individuals could not be determined and incorporated in the country’s education policy as there had been no agreement what constituted a good educational system.
Dr Pervez Hoodbhoy of Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad, said that quality it self was a meaningless thing unless it was identified with a set of aims and objectives.
He said that education should be aimed at producing people who could have confidence in their mind capabilities, understand and resolve the issues and problems of their “material world”.
Unless the things having commonality in our affairs and external world were included in our curricula we can not walk together with others, he replied to a question, adding that efforts should be made to identify our inner shortcomings and get the finer points of modern education as well.
Dr Qaiser Bengali, an educationist turned economist and social researcher, referred to some data pertaining to enrolment and expenditure on education and said that the existing affairs of the educational sector in the country reflected that the state had never aimed at providing education to people.
While stressing on quality in education, he remarked that so far we have been unable to decide about the objectives of education, whether it should be for learning or for the purpose of documentation only. We are producing distorted minds and as such unable to get a Pakistani mindset, he added.
He said that despite seeing seven education policies and eight five year plans country could not achieve even some modest targets in education.
The last five years were
the darkest period as far as
educational developments were concerned as most of the indicators remained negative, he claimed.