The plight of education in Pakistan

Despite PM’s promise to reform the education sector, our system is continuing its notorious policy of producing robots. Its key causes are ineffective educational policies, inexperienced teachers, lack of critical thinking, and an unsystematic approach for grades.

Education in the 21st century is a matter of life and death for any country; it’s the education that is calculating the future of different countries in such a way that foreign countries are making wonderous progress in every field of life due to their effective educational system. Every country is forming their educational policies according to the upcoming time. On the other hand, the education system of Pakistan is facing many complexities. We can better understand this system in the light of our colonial past. Before the arrival of the British in India, we had a unique educational system. The educational policies of the Mughal era were designed according to the native culture. Furthermore, the society was multilingual like in the early days a child used to get education in his native language and after basic understanding, he moved on to Persian, Hindi and Sanskrit, writes Dr Audrey Truskey.

Dr Romila Thapar writes that the scholarship at the time of Shah Jahan was more than the total budget of Turkey, and students from other parts of the world used to visit India, and this Mughal policy of education remained until the British colonized India and destroyed the basic structure of our society. They gradually changed the structure of our indigenous model of education.

These structural changes posed a threat to our future, and we are still dealing with the consequences of their ruthless policies. According to Shashi Tharoor, when the British came to India, GDPA was almost 27 per cent in 1723, but when they left, it was only 2.5 per cent, and the literacy rate was 17 in 1947. The sole purpose of the British educational system was to produce clerks.

In 1935, Lord Macaulay stated, “We want to set up an education system whose primary goal is to establish a class colour in Indians, blood, and taste, but who are British in intellect, morals, and opinion.”

There is a deep connection between our colonial educational system and the current system of education. Dr Shahid Siddiqui writes in his book, Education Policies in Pakistan: Politics, Projections, and Practices, that our educational system cannot produce skilful students when we look at the current educational policies of Pakistan. our policymakers are those who have no relation to education, like our current education minister, who is a bureaucrat and has no experience of the education system. Furthermore, when these kinds of ministers make the policies, what will be the outcome? In the last six decades, our education system has collapsed in a bad way. Our students are getting full grades, but they can’t write a single sentence correctly. It is the result of these wrong policies that Pakistan is facing an educational crisis nowadays.

According to a survey conducted by Gallup, only 9% of Pakistanis are keen readers and 75% aren’t reading any book. However, it seems as though the students in Pakistan are unaware of this and have become oblivious to the importance of books and reading. Students usually avoid reading books, and this is impacting our nation in many negative ways. Reading books makes a person more literate, educated, and rational, but it seems students have forgotten the benefits of reading. This is one of the reasons why our nation is failing in the fight against radicalism since people have become intolerant of others’ views and opinions, and critical thinking is disappearing from our education system. Critical thinking is the backbone of a country’s progress, but our education system is based on memorization. So how do we expect them to be able to develop critical thinking and self-creativity among the students?

Educational institutions, accrediting bodies, students, and employers all agree: students need to develop better critical thinking skills. Modern-day access to instant answers means many of us are falling behind in our ability to ask the right questions or analyze the answers we get.

Critical thinking has been defined as the ability to
• Ask the right question.
• Recognize the existence of problems
• Read between the lines.
• Recognize implicit and explicit assumptions.
• Distinguish between relevant and irrelevant information in arguments.
• Recognize bias in yourself and others.

The best example of a critical thinking system in Finland. There the students research a topic and then discuss it with their teachers. It is the best way to enhance curiosity among the students.
There is no concept of grades in developed countries to judge students based on grades, but when we look at the legacy educational system of Pakistan, students are judged based on grades, not on skills and that’s why students memorize things without understanding the concepts. The recent intermediate results are so horrible. Many students got 1100–1200 marks, but who is responsible for students’ skills? Do the students who receive perfect scores truly capable? What will be the criteria for judging the skills of a student? These are some questions that need to be addressed while talking about the education system in Pakistan.

To sum up, the education system of Pakistan is not able to fully meet the requirements of the modern world but if the government changes the structure of the education system and makes such kinds of policies according to the model of developed countries like Finland, China, and Japan, then our educational system will be able to compete with rest of the world.

The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own and do not necessarily reflect The Asian Mirror’s editorial policy.