LAHORE, Dec 3: “The millions of children studying in public schools across Pakistan are like time bombs – they can be groomed into quality human resources with a little sincere effort or may be left to become burden for society, if neglected,” said singer-turned-social activist Shahzad Roy who is on a bike tour of Pakistan.
“It is my firm belief that the state-run schools can be improved. There is a big reason to believe this because I have seen a lot of good, energetic and committed people working in provincial education departments,” he said.
Mr Roy, who is running Zindagi Trust and campaigning for bringing improvement in quality of education for average Pakistanis, is exploring education scene all over the country for a TV show aimed at identifying problems in the estate-run schools, suggesting solutions and calling to action for change in the existing policies that are not serving the purpose.
“There are four As – Analysis, Agitation, Advocacy and Action – and this show will demonstrate Action,” Mr Roy said.
Mr Roy was in Lahore a few days ago on his way to south Punjab, when he talked to Dawn and explained that the TV show project aimed at assessing issues in public sector schools and pushing government through leaders to improve its policies.
“This show will help even a layman to understand that what education is, what is schooling and how a child can be benefited through education?”
As the show required him to travel across all provinces of the country, Mr Roy said that being an enthusiastic biker, he decided to become part of environment by traveling all over the country by his Harley Davidson in three months. His crew members are leading him in a coaster.
Mr Roy began his journey from Gilgit-Baltistan and has so far traveled through KP and Punjab and captured country’s scenic beauty, besides getting first-hand knowledge of state of education in these areas.
“I am disturbed by the fact that the textbooks being taught to children are very unimaginative. I have talked to educationists on textbooks and other issues pertaining to education,” he added.
Mr Roy said the basic flaw in Pakistan’s education system was that it did not guide children to their respective fields of interest.
He said the textbooks were tools to educate and groom children but regretted that in our system they encouraged rote learning and any ‘out-of-course’ question caused problems for students.
Similarly, he said, the textbooks were not promoting religious and social harmony and instead fanning hatred through the “hate material” they contained and were distorting history.
“Besides removing hate material and distortions in history (from textbooks), there is a need to introduce problem-based learning to start overcoming learning problems among children across the country,” he suggested.
“There are some islands of education in the country, including Hunza and some areas in Punjab,” he commented. Still, he said, most public schools in the three provinces he had so far traveled through, lacked basic infrastructure for education.
Comparing private schools with those in the public sector, he observed that the low-cost private schools were worse than those being run by government. However, he said, the public schools were lagging behind because the element of governance was missing there.
“I believe that the fate of a common citizen can only be changed by brining a paradigm shift in government schools’ governance and teachers’ performance,” he added.
He suggested that the headmasters must be empowered to take decisions and spend available funds in their respective schools.
Mr Roy said the ground realties about education in Pakistan were much different from the figures being presented by respective provincial governments.
He stressed the federal as well as provincial governments should give priority to education through visible political will.
“There is no rocket science needed to improve education delivery in Pakistan,” Mr Roy concluded.
