Daily Times

The current state of education in Pakistan tells a tale of neglect and inaction, which has lasted more than sixty years. We are only weeks away from the General Elections 2018 and education hardly occupies any room in the ongoing electoral debate on print, electronic,or social media.

The faulty designs of higher education with unregulated and underdeveloped primary and secondary tuition are producing unskilled and inert graduates. The pool of innovation and skill is shrinking every day and it is high time to build small and large reservoirs that can supply knowledge to this intellectual drought. Here are some of the most important challenges in this regard.

Multiple systems of education with different and even opposing content result in a divided citizenry. The majority in Madaris is ignorant about modern applied education and mostly relies on age-old pedagogies. Schools and institutions for higher education, on the other hand, put little or no focus on religious education. Another class is that of elitist English medium schools, which rather blindly replicates western models of teaching and learning, while shunning native traditions and challenges.

Each class is trained to protect its self-carved truth and oppose any opinion against it without comprehending the basic argument of others. In this situation, the divide and conflict among people are inevitable.

Reliance on traditional and outdated tools of assessment defines academic success in a narrower way. Students are taught to memorise content and reproduce it in exams in order to secure quantitatively high positions. An extended end-term written exam wholly decides the academic standing of students because institutions are either reluctant or incapacitated to employ any other innovative methodology to gauge students’ capability.

The commercialisation of education has shifted focus from “knowledge generation” to “profit making.”

In the semester system, however, students are partially assessed on the basis of their in-class performance. Yet,the question papers contain little to provoke any analytical skills within the students. Resultantly, the horizon of academic accomplishment has narrowed down to whoever takes the numerical lead, instant of something more substantial.

Authoritative governance of classrooms by untrained and nonprofessional instructors shuns creativity and independent thinking among students. Usually, teachers in public and private institutions are recruited through a shabby process and have negligible exposure to teaching methodologies.

In private schools and colleges,which attract the lower middleclass, teachers are hired through personal links and usually lack adequate subject knowledge. Later, they are sent to the classrooms without any significant training and orientation. As a result, the environment in classroom favours passivity and discourages innovation.

The commercialisation of education has shifted the focus from “knowledge generation” to “profit making.” Today, education has become a fertile field for business tycoons. To gain the fruits of their venture, businesspersons tend to widen the gap between income and expense. They reduce their expenditure by hiring incompetent lowest bidders as teachers and tend to avoid creating state-of-the-art classrooms.Nevertheless, a few big guns are taken into service in order to avoid growing criticism. Thus, original objective of an educational institution is lost.

An immaculate mechanism to conduct exams and deliver trustworthy results is still beyond the reach of educational boards, examination commissions, autonomous institutions and schools. Examination Paper leaks, cheating in exam centres, and negligent assessment are few of the problems that make the whole process dubious. Exams are reportedly cancelled or postponed by educational boards and universities many a times because of paper leaks.

On the other hand, in degree awarding institutions, teachers are sometimes accused of favouritism and partiality.Similarly,while counterchecking of answer scripts, inattention of evaluators is occasionally reported. Therefore, recent years have witnessed an unprecedented rise in the requests placed in front of the competent authorities for rechecking.

Moreover, the results produced by this fragile system are not respected as many institutions of higher education and employers conduct their own entrance tests instead of relying on the progress reports of candidates.

A low probability of getting an adequate job after graduation is making the whole system of education unrewarding in economic terms.Jobs created by public and private sectors greatly out number the graduates produced by educational institutions. Moreover, curriculum taught by universities and colleges has less to do with the applied side of subjects.

Therefore, many educated people are left either unemployed or underemployed. Thus, a rising number of unemployed young graduates indirectly discourages investment of time and money in education.

Education, it can safely be said, has never been the top priority of successive governments in Pakistan. The present condition, as narrated above, poses a gloomy picture. Thus, realising the ever-increasing importance of education, voters and civil society organizations should press for education reforms before it’s too late.

The writer teaches Political Science at GC University Lahore and can be reached at aamir9465@gmail.com.

Published in Daily Times, July 17^th 2018.