Daily Times

The world literacy day has come amidst a grim backdrop this this year. After years and decades of all kinds of efforts the global community was finally able to say that some progress was being made in the fight against illiteracy. But then so mysteriously came the coronavirus and the lockdowns it mandated all over the world. That, unfortunately, took billions of children all over the world out of their schools. And while a small number of them have been able to make the best of a bad situation and at least continue online classes, hundreds of millions of students just do not have that luxury, particularly among the lesser fortunate lot in the poorer countries.

All this has brought the world to a very strange crossroads. For even if the pandemic is over sooner rather than later, which is very unlikely, the effects of children missing out on precious months and years of education are likely to show for many years to come. There is also a very real danger, according to the UN, of a lot of these children finding themselves being pushed into poverty, which if true will throw their lives into a very different trajectory than what they were used to before the pandemic. This urgency is forcing officials in some of the countries that are really struggling with providing online education to their students, especially in the African region, to lobby for reopening schools even in areas that are unquestionably suffering a severe second wave of the virus.

The story in Pakistan is very different. Due to the government’s strategy of enforcing smart lockdowns we have been able to deal with the virus perhaps much better than any other country in the world. That is why our schools are now set to reopen. No doubt the authorities have ensured that the greatest care will be taken when going about this business. Pakistan is of course no stranger to all the problems that come with illiteracy and we, like so many other countries, have fought an uphill battle to bring about whatever little improvement that was possible. Surely considering how things are going right now on the global scale it is time to declare an education emergency so all countries can join hands and share experiences and resources to protect every country’s future. *