By Zabih Ullah Khattak (Pakistan)
Education plays a very pivotal role in the development of a nation. Strikingly, we can categorize that a dearth of education means a nation can’t progress, while a nation with a standard education can thrive in every field. One can observe a huge contrast between those who are enlightened with education and those who are not, because education gives a discretionary power to evaluate and decide about the future. Commonly problems are invoked by those who lack education. Great nations always try to shield the dignity of educational places and never let them fall.
Unlike developed countries, Pakistan is going through an educational tumult where 26 million children are out of school making up 37% of the total child population. The rest are not left with quality education but merely a formality being pursued. Poor education yields poor results; accordingly, Pakistan’s education system is dwindling at the lowest ebb in the quality index. It would take decades to restructure the entire system but nothing positive seems on the horizon yet.
In this fast changing world, 55% of school boundary walls are declared risky and thousands of schools have been empty for years. A most disturbing result from KPK boards sent seismic waves everywhere. Collective data from BISE Peshawar shows that 32,000 students failed in chemistry, 30,000 in Mathematics, and 28,531 in Pakistan studies. The system is going through a do-or-die situation, and the probability is that it will die because no panacea is available to remedy the fractured system.
Regarding Pakistan’s education, one can assume huge paralysis about the future of education because future decision-makers will probably be among those who could not even acquire fundamental education. The fact about the outcomes in Pakistan is portraying a very dareturbing picture. If the system cannot recalibrate, it will bring unstoppable misery to the field of education and we must fear for the future of today’s students.
Since that day, a dozen educational policies have been brought forth, but none could yield the desired results due to the ineptness of the policymakers. Those who are assigned to draft a structure for education do not belong to the same class; how can one expect better results?
Although several factors are involved in this messy educational system, we must not ignore the main culprits who sabotage the remaining vestiges of the system: the private school owners. I am an eyewitness to different exams but I will only present evidence from when I was a student. In my intermediate years I could not even multiply two simple numbers, and English was a language of aliens due to the teachers. Like me, hundreds of thousands of students could not write anything except their names, but after the results, we got A+ grades and happily left college. The Irony does not end here as the private school owners were properly collecting money for the supervisory staff to feed them in return for which they would let their students to do Nakal. One cannot even imagine the destruction that lesser students have inflicted upon us.
Adding to this, elitism in Pakistan’s education maintains the status quo and the system will not bring enormous changes until a grassroots issue like elitism and race-based education is eliminated. A common student hardly manages to get to school where government and private school teachers manipulate their innocence, as they do not know their rights and cannot be backed by their parents to ask for them. Among these students a few reach higher studies (I am the only student among my schoolmates who did a BS and now an MPhil; none of the rest have a bachelor’s degree), where students go through the harshest of times and just want to pass the examination. And a few sometime got motivation to give competitive examinations like me but encountered with such an inferiority which compel him to say that yeh hamara kam nai hai/ yeh badhey logo ka kaam hai ( this is not in our domain but those of wealth and status) because in competitive examinations most of the students are graduated of O/A level or other reputable institutions but students like us who still learning Noun, Verb agreement will rarely reach to the point.
In conclusion, those in power must fix the already relentless situation and reevaluate the entire system by bringing considerable changes to Pakistan’s education. Educational experts must study the education systems of developed countries like Finland, Norway and Sweden and adopt those aspects adjustable to Pakistani education. The government must tighten its grip on those of educational criminals and prevent them from sabotaging the system. While the teachers are requested not to manipulate students’ spirits, otherwise, a day will come when a person like me will openly criticize you and unveil the secret of your unlawful acts.
Long Live Pakistan!
Author is from Pakistan and pursuing an MPhil in political Science.
