Is it the cause of politics alone which has effected into rendering us a bunch of reactionary people with the precipitous societal breakdown and eroding intellectual servitude or do we need to really look out for some other adversaries, too?
The story of civilized and developed nations is not one scripted in solemn lines of peace and order; respect and gratitude; and the ideals of co-existence and tolerance. The plot has both the pain and joy; fire and fury; and power and corruption. But they rose off the gloom and witnessed the nature’s boom not through some always mistakenly associated heavens dawned inspirational leaders who changed their destinies but through a robust indigenous educational philosophy which lifted them off the days of darkened draconian idiocy. The common factor which turned around their ignorant pathos into civilized ethos was the education system.
Every education system is spirited in the soul through thought or philosophy which declares the vivid objectives and characteristics which the state would want to instill in its citizenry. This also contains the technical and professional classifications which the state would want to order in the country. All that which we call values, norms, social habits, attributes and qualities are vividly explained in this saga of educational philosophy. The means and methods to cater to those objectives and milestones, when added to the superstructure of this vocalized philosophy, engineer our education system. This system defines the number, quality and potential of let’s say not only how many but also what type of engineers, doctors, scientists, innovators, entrepreneurs, activists, volunteers and thinkers we require in our state. The education system driven by a faithful philosophy describes both the nature and the nurture of the human stuff we would want to aspire to.
Contrarily, our education, like our society, has fallen to the social statuses and socio-economic classes and all the elements we call social ills are equally rampant in our education system. The system is producing individuals who are either not required in our national stream of national issues or producing the class of individuals which are the source of our national issues in our national stream. Allama Iqbal’s remark “Juda ho deen siayast say tu reh jati hai chengazi” befits our education system with the later’s complete detachment with our society.
Ours is a unique education system which has parted ways with the social roots. The effect is that we cannot see ourselves in this system and beguile by identity crisis we seek ways to find deceptions. The originality is lost in the way and this provides us with an education system alien to our needs, requirements and demands and one that would never have any social impact in redefining our social ethos and integrity.
The education system has to rest in society and society is a complex mix of people, beliefs, religions, castes and customs. The system should be liberal enough to accommodate all equally without marking anyone within the social brackets as a minority or discriminated against on religious grounds. Since society is of all, the education system must be such that it appeals to all quite equally. There are social problems within society and these problems must be understood in the social frame of reference without attaching them the so much overused strings of religion. Education is the medium of self-realization and when it cannot perform that function, it becomes meaningless to society. Our educational philosophy has to be well spelled out. It must tell in definite terms what kinds of people are we looking for and how to fall back in love with our motherland rather than being made to fall in this love affair. The philosophy must clearly revolve our current and future national issues and the system to be arranged must base on achieving these ends.
The re-setting of our education philosophy and consequential rearrangement of our education system is the need of the hour. Our best brains and educationalists must sit together to not only locate issues but also come up with concrete suggestions in reclaiming our future which lies in a robust education system. Giving out this mandate to the clumsy politicians and the fattened bureaucracy would mean nothing more than mutilating the ethos of this audacious activity. It is not the need of the hour but is rather the only last ray of hope left to us if however, we would want to live long and live better. Readjusting the educational philosophy and system today would not be a magic work to start harvesting results in years. The impact would take a generation to come off but at least we would be remembered by our generation in some sober words.
The writer is a Civil Servant based in Quetta, Balochistan. He can be reached at [email protected]