Educational Trends in Pakistan

In Pakistan, education sector has emerged in the recent years as the most promising business area. It has lately attracted the attention of masses from every stratum of society. Witnessing the prospects, people have come to the realization that education is the easiest means of earning—not necessarily confined in the hands of potential investors. It is why we cannot make even a vague distinction between true educationists and businessmen today. The concept of service in education appears no longer a valid idea. The engraving of Lord Macaulay’s “controlled education” on the face of Subcontinent could never literally be undone when it comes to Pakistan. In fact, our neighboring countries of India and Bangladesh have uplifted their educational standard to a healthy extent from the strands of Macaulay Doctrine. However, Pakistan could not prove lucky enough throughout its history to redeem its people.

The structure of education in the present history of Pakistan raises some serious questions. As we have two well-defined and well-described categories in our educational structure, public sector and private sector, the past performance of both requires to be critiqued in order to determine the healthy as well as unhealthy trends in the system. The imposition of English as the only medium of learning for Pakistanis can be justified on various grounds so much so it can be criticized with equal potential. The fundamental question is, however, related to the raison d’etre of Urdu in the wake of the Anglicizing-experiment of our education. Do we really need Urdu’s presence in our education or it is mere dust in the public eye? Private sector had already ignored Urdu in order to reap the commercial prospects of English as, allegedly, the best medium of learning. Now even the public sector has found the solution of our educational problem in replacing Urdu medium with that of English. It is here where the slave-mentality of our bourgeois society can be seen at its worst. The false impression of rapid success in life by dint of English has, to our depravity, developed into a devoutly held belief. If English were the only channel of development and modernization, China, Japan and Russia would not have been blessed with modern riches through the use of their own languages.

Another such problem is that of ‘unique identity’. In the thrill of intense exposition mania, much akin to the breaking-news mania of electronic media, every private educational institution, particularly schools, attempts to set up its distinct appearance. The foremost thing that falls prey to such a negative approach is the uniformity of student-stratum. For instance, uniform is made different from others in every possible way; syllabus is not kept identical with other schools’ syllabi; students are given such a mental treatment as to make them offensive towards the others; so on and so forth.

The noble profession of teaching has turned into an easy-to-abuse, least attractive profession in today’s Pakistan. Generally, only such individuals like to serve as teachers who are good for nothing. Individuals with better caliber and skill prefer to drive on other avenues of economic life. Moreover, teachers are not well-paid, particularly, in the private sector, though the situation of public sector is not encouraging either. Can such a mindset with inherent drawbacks introduce healthy trends in Pakistan’s extant education system and can it really cultivate a crop of inventive and free-thinking minds in such depravity? Certainly not. The whole ingenuity, in fact, gets badly affected in this type of environment.

We assume in our illusive perception that, by increasing the study hours and providing tutoring, we are educating our children in Western lines. However, this erroneous perception is immediately out when we take even a cursory glance into the Western education model. Schools and colleges have five working days a week in the West; and students are relieved with two holidays on the weekend. Furthermore, study hours at primary and secondary education levels hardly match our work routine. We far surpass them in our study labor, but with extremely poor results. Unfortunately, this notion has somehow found root in our society that we are doing a great service to our children by overburdening them with educational stuff and imprisoning them into the systematic clumps of a 10 to 14-hour study a day. Schools offering morning-till-evening teaching and coaching services are not only doing a handsome business, but they are also boasting an ever-increasing number of students enrolled every term.

In such objective circumstances of unhealthy educational atmosphere, the hurdles for Pakistani students are manifold. Such hurdles can be classed under three broad headings up until the secondary school. Thus, the problems our students face are: (i) non-native medium of learning, (ii) unskilled teaching, and (iii) mind-racking study burden of time and labor. Is there a solution to these problems? Indeed there is a solution to every problem; but, as it is taking us so long to fix the problems, we do not have it probably. Nay, putting it more appropriately, we do not have a solution, for we do not want one, and one must not forget in this current scenario that ‘where there is a will, there is a way’.
by

Syed Muhammad Waqas