KU Director A new book titled “Education: Problems and Solutions
Karachi:May 06:Enrolment of students in 1,500 seminaries in the country is on the rise while Balochistan leads all other provinces in their growth.
A new book titled “Education: Problems and Solutions” by Dr Jaffar Ahmed, the director of Karachi University’s Pakistan Studies Centre, gives a blunt picture of the state of education in the country, 67 years after its creation.
Ahmed, through various essays compiled in the book, talks about class disparity, lack of research at universities and the utter negligence of the state when it comes to education.
Citing the Economic Survey of Pakistan, he states that the number of students enrolled in seminaries across the country increased from nine percent in 2010 to 21 percent in 2012. The popularity of these seminaries which provide free food, education and shelter, and then in turn produce children with a narrow world view, points towards the glaring needs of the poor and unemployed population which make up the majority of the country’s youth.
Pakistan, says Dr Ahmed, has always paid attention to its defence by empowering the military because the policy makers seem to think that powerful armed forces are the only tool for its salvation. “If a strong military was the answer to survival then the Soviet Union, West Germany and the Baltic States would never have been wiped off the world map,” he argues. “The impoverished public of these countries threatened their existence.”
According to Dr Ahmed, Pakistan since its inception never had a policy on education. Perhaps it has to do with the haste in which the creation of Pakistan was decided upon. It took nine years for the first national policy to be drafted in Ayub Khan’ era, but even that was never implemented fully.
As a result various democratic governments brought schemes like Nai Roshni and Parha Likha Punjab one after the other, where provincial boundaries were closely guarded.
As the state failed to pace up in the field of education, the private sector began to grow in the late 80s. The result of this intervention is the disparity in education where one sees school chains which charge exorbitant fee for quality education, schools maintained by the armed forces, the low-cost private schools and then the state-run schools which no one wants to attend.
Talking about universities, Dr Ahmed discusses how the construction of universities is rising every year yet employers find it difficult to find qualified professionals. For instance, in Islamabad there are 25 universities and more are being established. Yet the Sindh Public Commission report reveals that in the Sindh government 267 posts remain vacant ... the reason being lack of qualified individuals. The report states graduates who sat for the civil service exam sometimes even failed to recognise the provinces on the map of Pakistan, got confused between 1905 partition of Bengal and the 1971 Fall of Dhaka, or had never heard of Margaret Thatcher or II Chundrigar Road.
The book is an important piece of document for anyone who wants to understand the topsy turvy journey education has made in Pakistan. It is an eye opener for politicians, commercial education institutes and students interested in history.The news.
