A breakfast comprising off a slice of bread, tea and newspaper, you think it’s another typical morning and then something not-so-typical springs up from those scrawny black and white pages. You’re stunned to see in the international page that David Cameron, the Britain Prime Minster, has enrolled his daughter in a state’s school. What may not be so earth-shattering for the Brits is a total shocker for a Desi guy. The news doesn’t let you turn further pages of the paper and engulfs you in a world of thoughts and ideas- the thoughts and ideas about the educational system in Pakistan.
Educating means to broaden the minds of the people with knowledge and thought provoking skills. Here the scenario is quite contradictory. Education, a basic and essential need, is a mold of several types of different educational standards. The discrimination of the education system rears its ugly head right from the beginning, from the innocent stages of ‘A, B, C’, and ‘Alif, Bay, Tay.’
According to the 1973 Constitution, each citizen has an equal right to the basic services the state can provide; including clothing, housing, sanitation, jobs, and most importantly EDUCATION.
The quality of education tends to trace out the entire life one is going to have. Someone getting mediocre education usually ends up not having an exceptional career and thus he will remain poor. His children will get the same kind of schooling he got and the cycle will continue on forever. Same is the case for rich people. This is the trend we have to change.
Unfortunately, the government spends less than 2% of the GDP on the education, and every ruling party has been earmarking the meager portion for the basic need of the citizens. But, one thing can be done which has nothing to do with the scanty allocation- uniform educational system. Undoubtedly, new schools buildings, universities and complete enrollment of the children are the fundamental requirements to improve the literacy rate. From the meager amount, the federal and the provincial governments can easily create a uniform educational system across the country which will eliminate the multiple educational concepts, which creates sub-multiple society within a society.
How do you actually go on to achieve this target? The biggest step of all, the government has to stand up for this cause because it is the biggest stakeholder in the business of the management of the state.
Secondly, Higher Education Commissions at provincial and Divisional level must be created to put the syllabus on the modern lines. According to the 18th amendment, education, now, is the provincial matter, but it does not mean that the every province will chalk out its own syllabus. Experts suggest that the provincial governments must be independent to formulate regional language syllabus, but science and arts studies must be made uniform with the mutual consultations of the federal and provincial bodies. In addition to it, each province will finance the plan according to the enrollment database.
Thirdly, updated and identical syllabus must be taught at the both school systems. This will create equality and similarity in the society and prevent from the clashes of the different thoughts and ideas.
Yet, nothing would be complete or effective until the implementation of the fourth and final step. Giving Urdu language the deserved worth that has not been given to it since the creation of Pakistan. Yes, we fought for it against the Bengali language, but that was it. Why should we make Urdu the official language of education? Many reasons.... In a society already divided by so many social and economic barriers, why not destroy one when we can afford to? Education should be imparted with due regard to the society’s common points, by reversing the current roles of Urdu and English education, we can revolutionize the current system. Everybody would be judged by the amount of information or knowledge he/she holds, not how well he speaks English or which accent he uses while speaking it! Science and Commerce books can easily be translated to suit us. As Doctor Syed Abdullah says in his article ‘Urdu Zareeyae Taalim’ “The scientist didn’t think about whichever language they were thinking in. They just expressed scientific facts the easiest way possible. These facts can be translated to suit our needs. Our mother tongue is in Urdu, we think in Urdu, so the learning process will be much faster as students would not have to accustom themselves with complex words each day’.
Our education system has been bombarded and toyed with for 64 continuous years. There’s no magic portion to revive it in a short period of time but if above mentioned measures are taken then a great progress can be made in the longer run which will put us in the category of ‘developed nations’.
