Gone are the days when the ‘floor mat’ and ‘wooden bench’ schools in the public sector across Pakistan used to produce intellectuals, highly qualified officials and researchers for building a strong and prosperous nation.
Till late eighties and early nineties, the government schools at all major cities, towns and even ‘Taat’ schools at villages were busy in chiseling raw students into artifices validly boasting for high quality education for the students.
Renowned judges, bureaucrats, lawyers, poets, scholars, teachers and other notables from different arena of life had studied from these institutions and there was a well-educated and trained force of countrymen to take it to new horizons.
Then the time came when this missionary profession was outsourced to the private sector that inspired by international chains more focused on numbers and grades on marks sheets than the training and character building of youth. This trend engulfed our noble traditions of respecting teachers like parents and honoring the societal norms as syllabi was gradually changed minimizing the portion meant for teaching students strong social and religious bonds.
“With the passage of time some ethical issues in learning and training have surfaced among the students and teachers at schools, including the issue of diversity stemming from students having different ethnic and social backgrounds,” remarked noted educationist and former principal of Government Islamia Postgraduate college, Irfan Zaidi.
“Unfortunately we lagged behind in coping with challenges emerging on moral and ethical fronts with the passage of time,” he told APP.
“Although the moral standards have deteriorated yet there is time for us to reform some worth noting issues through introducing good strategies, knowledge transfer, flexibility in curriculum development, continuous assessments of the students and best practices, across the board,” Zaidi suggested.
In this context we can also not overlook the phenomenon of earning money through education as in recent decades the education turned to be a lucrative business like health and real estate and our great norms were lost somewhere in the dust oozing out of the unruly race of earning more and more money.
The main culprits for this phenomenon are seemed to be respective governments over the decades that could not keep with local and international challenges in this sector.
Talking of the past glory of public schools, famous educationist and former headmaster at leading schools of Lahore, Mian Nazim Ali said these schools had remained exemplary in deliverance and ‘shaping moral and ethical characters of the students.’
“Just three decades back, there were the best institutions in the country busy in building strong character and transforming their students into ideal personalities, some of whom are even famous today,” he added.
Quoting example of Central Model School Lahore, he said, this school having golden traditions, delivered in qualitative and disciplined manner producing scholars, jurists, educationists, bureaucrats, judges and lot of other notable. This school has a unique historical building and now included in the list of National Heritage of Pakistan.
In this regard he named former caretaker Prime Minister of Pakistan, Malik Meraj Khalid, former Chief Justice of Pakistan, Justice (R) Nasim Hasan Shah, former Air Chief Marshal Sohail Aman, Chairman Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB), Ramiz Raja and number of others.
“Strong character based on desirable moral values can heighten the values of our society exceedingly,” Nazim said but regretted, “today, instead of building the moral aspects of the students, our institutions are more focusing on revenue generation.”
He said even if these institutions claim to building character, it should reflect in daily life of our youth. “My question is simple; does our youth possess the same ethical values which their forefathers possessed. Of course not. Therefore, it is role of our present education institutions and teachers to ponder on deteriorating values like respect for parents, teachers and elders of society, patience and graceful talking, abiding by laws and rules and respect for women.”
He said, “For me students’ disciplined character is important segment for creating a respectable society and this is shared responsibility of parents and teachers.”
The discipline that lacks at educational institutions is also lacking at home as parents most often bow down to illogical demands of their kids. Children spoiled at homes due to weaker discipline of parents affect overall environment of educational institution.
“Actually we have weakened the institution of mother. Today love for kids have overpowered discipline. This tendency at homes and institutions is gradually spoiling our social fabric,” remarked another educationist Prof. Muzaffar Sultan.
“Strong character training by teachers based on desirable moral values can heighten our lives exceedingly. Therefore, we need a balance in our curricula to avoid effects of immoral European trends in our society,” he pleaded. “Gradual permeation of external norms to our institutions will spoil our norms and time is not far off when we shall be bidding adieu to our noble, religious, cultural and respected Eastern norms.”
“The central purpose of education should be to groom students’ whole-personalities according to our Islamic, societal and cultural values,” Prof. Muzaffar Sultan said.
In whole of this scenario and changing global education trends one cannot remain oblivious to latest researches and teaching techniques. The argument is not simply against the English medium or private sector institutions but it is an issue of character building, morality and ethics and overall preparing a generation well equipped to counter malicious conspiracies against our motherland.
The responsibility of character building which our motherly as well as education institutions owe today is much more than the past to strongly promote noble habits of tolerance, truthfulness, righteousness and sense of responsibilities to our families, teachers and society as a whole.