From the dawn of civilization, education and advancement in the dissemination of education have been primordial to human survival and continuation of the civilizational growth. Education is the source of the human creative base and shapes their instincts to survive, adapt, and flexibly create. Coming to Pakistan. More precisely more rooted and expensive industry of Pakistani Education; Mentoring CSS.
With the rise of technology, everyone has a say. This is called the democratization of the availability of resources and availability for education. But accessibility and availability never decide the efficiency, effectiveness, and efficacy. As democracy can lead to majoritarian authoritarianism, likewise accessibility or democratization of education can lead to wrong choices, wastage of money, and ending enlightened creativity.
From physically existing academies for preparing CSS to Instagram-based mentoring, there are few good choices and a majority of bad choices to make an individual competent and professional bureaucrat. For one subject they charge 7000-8000. This coursework is for 15-30 months. One of the largest and millions of rupee-based industries is without formal economic institutional makeup firsthand. Secondly, the majority of them teach or evaluate on the basis they just appeared in CSS for one time and failed 1-2 subjects. After their adventure, they are best-suited mentors to tell you what to do and what not to do. Is this an enlightened version of the propagation of education? Just first-hand experience of even passing the exam couldn’t create incentives to teach because teaching involves multidimensional variables to consider. After all, it is going to leverage the best human potential for state machinery. Without considerable professional excellence in the subject, it would be just an effort to prepare individuals for some fixated rules to clear exams rather than incorporating them for state efficiency by amplifying their potential for creative policy orientation.
Consumerist information has merely transcended into confused individuals.
For a case study, an individual has a degree in BBA or Engineering; how can He/She evaluate the Essay exam? An essay that is entirely dependent on clauses like having a professional background in English Linguistics, to get ideas written in the essay should have a knowledge bank in Political Science, International Systems, Gender studies, Theology, and many other facets of socio-political and socio-economic variables. This would just be an adventure or recipe to redmark their papers to play them psychologically. Without being a proficient reader, writer, and professionally and analytically robust individual, there would be just a psychological downplay with the thousand aspirants to make them more confused. Consumerist information has merely transcended into confused individuals. This educational system is not for sustainable mindsets but for the confused version of mindsets.
Secondly, how a person with a natural science degree in any subject like Chemistry, Physics, or Biology can address the topics of Current Affairs? Although he/she prepared him/her during CSS preparation. The topics change very quickly within a few days about current affairs. Is passing an exam for one-time is a prerequisite qualification for teaching? If such teachers come into the market, they would be confused themselves, making their students 2X more confused about state resources.
CSS is not meant to earn a job only. It had the purpose of preparing neutral human beings as the best resource persons to understand and create policy formulation for the state machinery. Nowadays, it is merely substituted into a choice to clear CSS and then come to mentoring new aspirants. It has become a corporate where an enlightened version of citizenship is in decline.
Too many choices and too much availability of information have snatched human beings and new aspirants from the art of knowing, creating, and reproducing. For example, a CSS essay is the art of using the mind and creating a piece of writing in the exam hall. Instead of cramming, and investing huge capital, it was just meant to understand the structure and general information to utilize and incorporate it for creating arguments.CSS mentoring has created this rift. It doesn’t equip individuals to think and create, it is meant to equip individuals with cramming and empowering them with information. Information has created dependent mindsets rather than free inquiry and creativity. This vicious cycle is just penetrating the already challenged bureaucracy of Pakistan which will eventually produce a new generation of bureaucrats to not effectively create a policy mindset for the cause of progress and enlightenment.
CSS has become an industry of test sessions. It is good to practice. However, hyper-sensitivity and hyper-persuasion of tests, academies, and joining different mentors have created a deficit of clarity. It is just meant to exhaust individuals rather than empower them to think independently.
The way forward is very simple. It must be a government agenda to control the advertisement industry, CSS mentoring should have few restrictions and responsibilities, formalize their earning into tax poll, and efficiently demarcate the clear limits and responsibilities of new civil servants to teach and mentor in private space. The neoliberal model of education is just creating a generation of monotonous thinkers. For the enlightenment version, there must be checks and balances to empower aspirants with creative skills and brainstorming minds for the futuristic vision.
To end, if we want to compete globally and utilize our coming generations as resource-efficient capital we need to consider aspirations of education, purposes of information, and the social responsibility of people to serve the best interest for competency rather than a continuation of the money model for education will be a recipe of disaster and downplay to the true potential of education. We should own collective responsibility for making good choices, de-sensitization of money-ideals, and avoiding resource-curse in coming times.
The writer is Transportation Engineering graduate from UET Lahore and holds post-graduate degrees in Political Sciences, Sociology, and English Literature.