Education in Pakistan

Education has never been Pakistan's strong point. As part of his program to overhaul Pakistan's institutions in the 1970s, Zulifkar Ali Bhutto nationalized private educational institutions, many of which were gifts by philanthropists. The government then wasted little time in quickly dissolving these schools into nothingness. The resulting mediocrity soon gave way to apathy, a phenomenon further compounded by the "quota system." This obstacle in the way of an equitable merit-based system exists even today. The result of these measures is the travesty that passes for education in Pakistan. There are basically three kinds of schools: the elite private institutions that cater to the upper class; the government-run schools serving the lower echelons of the population and the Madrassah, the religious school. Private schools have become a necessity for contemporary Pakistani society since the government has failed to provide quality education for its population. A majority of parents, even those from lower income brackets, send their children to private schools so they can receive an education that will enable them to be competitive. Also, most Pakistanis want their children to learn English. Private schools offer all instruction in English while government schools offer instruction in either Urdu or the local provincial language. The feudal state of Pakistani society has prevented meaningful educational reforms from taking place. And, in many rural areas where the local tribal chief's word is law, schools will not function without his say so. There are many cases where chiefs will not allow any schools in their "jurisdiction." Budget allocation for education is another important issue. There is no doubt that like many underdeveloped nations, Pakistan faces financial constraints for various reasons. Still, the government allocates less than 3%of the total annual budget for education. The current military government has apportioned a meager 2.9 % for the fiscal year 2001-2002. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, (UNESCO), proposes an underdeveloped nation allocate at least 4% of its total GDP for education. Chad, one of the poorest nations in the world, has allocated 6% for education in its last budget. The condition of government schools all over the country and the quality of education being imparted there are going from bad to worse, day by day. Thousands of government schools are "ghost schools," existing on paper only. The buildings, mostly in rural areas, that were meant to house these schools are either dilapidated due to negligence or have been converted into otaqs (drawing rooms) for the local wadaras (land owners). Thousands of "ghost" teachers have been drawing salaries from the education departments of the four provinces. They do not do any actual teaching since there are no functioning schools. Theysimply show up to collect their salaries on the appointed day. According to a survey conducted by the education departments of Sindh and Punjab provinces in 1998, some 700 primary and secondary schools and 18,000 teachers were found "ghost" in Punjab and 340 schools and 7,000 teachers in Sindh.

Currently, the government claims Pakistan has a literacy rate of 47%. However, independent analysts and educational organizations put the actual figure at about 20%.

Higher Education in Sweden: An Overview

Swedish higher education has been shaped by historical, social, economic and intellectual forces. Some of these are peculiar to Sweden, like a long tradition of neutrality and the pervasive influence of social democracy. Others apply more widely, like the shift from industrial and post-industrial society and the movement towards postmodernism. The last reform of higher education in Sweden took place at a time when neutrality was still unchallenged, social democracy seemed to represent the most advanced form of modern society, industrial growth appeared to be inexorable and faith in the scientific tradition was still unchallenged.

Today, with the end of the Cold War, the rapid movement towards Western European unity and diminishing Third World ideals, Sweden's traditional neutrality needs to be redefined. The rise of neo-conservatism has pushed social democracy on the defensive. The high-technology revolution, especially in telecommunications and intelligent systems, has disrupted old industrial patterns. And the sanctity of science is being challenged both by powerful "green" movements and also by the intellectual incoherence of postmodernism.

Swedish universities and colleges, therefore, have to operate in a less certain world. A redefined neutrality may make it easier to pursue closer academic collaboration in Europe. Higher education's egalitarian instincts may be modified if social democracy becomes a less dominant , or less confident, force. And post-industrialism and postmodernism point to a volatile and uncertain future. It is against this background that the detailed reform of the system must be considered.

Swedish higher education has been a unified system since 1977. Compared to most other European systems there is a strong sense of a united mission and shared purposes. But important expectations remain, most notably health colleges which have been left outside this unified system and music, drama and other art colleges, which have remained semi-detached.

A more important exception, however, is the division of the system into reSearch (in Swedish) and teaching institutions, the universities, and colleges which only provide undergraduate education. The former have better qualified teachers and more of them. As a result they can offer a richer and more varied undergraduate experience. Also, because reSearch (in Swedish) budgets have increased faster than teaching budgets, universities are much better funded.

Another exception to the unity of Swedish higher education is that even within the universities important divisions remain between the traditional faculties and the newer professional schools incorporated after 1977. Here are signs that the equilibrium of the system is now being threatened by demands from colleges for fairer treatment or even full university status. Sweden may need to be faced with a difficult choice - either to create a fully integrated system or to make explicit its present stratification.

The relationship between reSearch (in Swedish) and teaching is crucial to undergraduate education for two reasons - first, there is a world wide trend to spend more on reSearch (in Swedish) and less on teaching, so there is a risk that undergraduate education will be starved of resources; and secondly, teaching needs to be informed and refreshed by reSearch (in Swedish).

In Sweden there is unusually strong bias to reSearch (in Swedish) and against teaching. Almost two-thirds of the system's budget is for reSearch (in Swedish), and universities during the 1980's became reSearch (in Swedish) institutions also engaged in undergraduate education rather than the other way round. Also reSearch (in Swedish) and teaching are more strictly segregated in Sweden than in many other countries, therefore making it more difficult for the former to inform the latter. Many students complain that their teachers are not sufficiently involved in reSearch (in Swedish) and that undergraduate education suffers.

There is a three-way split in the Swedish system. First, universities are pushed too far towards reSearch (in Swedish), and colleges have to concentrate too narrowly on teaching (although some have been successful in attracting external reSearch (in Swedish) grants). If the latter were funded to carry out reSearch (in Swedish), their budgets would more than double. Secondly, within universities there is a division between faculty boards, which manage reSearch (in Swedish), and study course committees, which handle the bulk of undergraduate education. The department gets squeezed in the middle.

Finally, the academic profession is split into professors and other reSearch (in Swedish)ers, and lecturers responsible for teaching. Although many professors do teach and most lecturers are involved in reSearch (in Swedish), the division impoverishes undergraduate education. Professors should be academic leaders, and lecturers need more time to engage in scholarship, if not front course reSearch (in Swedish).

Although most students are following study courses, there is a strong prejudice against them. Courses are seen as too narrow, too vocational and too inflexible. They are also accused of fostering passive learning and an anti-reSearch (in Swedish) culture. The solution, say the critics of courses, is to allow students to follow single courses, a return to the pre 1977 pattern.

Many of these criticisms are unfair. Firstly, many students still do follow single courses, especially in the traditional arts and sciences and in universities. Secondly, no one denies that professional education has to be organised in courses. Thirdly many courses, especially in universities and larger collages, give students a good choice of elective courses. Fourthly, many courses far from being anti-intellectual, coher far superiorly to that of single courses. The best approach is to reduce the sharp distinction between courses and single courses. The former should be more loosely constructed with more electives and better transfer arrangements; the latter should be organised as flexible units within a lager undergraduate programme, especially with the reintroduction of the BA degree.

The quality of undergraduate teaching is impossible to assess by truly objective measures. But personal observation and the widespread concern about undergraduate education suggest that standards are already high. There is consensus that active learning should be preferred to passive teaching; that students should be guided towards intellectual autonomy as well as becoming highly trained experts; and that critical skills should be encouraged. But there is less agreement about what needs to be done to achieve these objectives.

1. The suggestion that Swedish students are over-taught is, at best, half-true. A greater problem seems to be the comparative lack of seminars in which teachers and students interact. However, there are many interesting experiments in ways to encourage independent study, to use new technology in teaching, and to apply the lessons learnt in distance education to undergraduate education as a whole.
2. The total number of students has remained fairly stable in Sweden during the past decade. but the number of qualified school leavers has increased by almost 50 percent. This has led to growing selectivity. The demand from society and the economy for graduates is likely to exceed the supply capacity of the system, especially in the first decade of the next century. On both counts there is a strong case for increasing the number of student places. Recent changes in student admissions are likely to produce a better fit between applicant and places, because it may be easier to measure future potential rather than past performance; to encourage more school leavers to go straight into higher education; and to create a more clearly defined constituency of mature students. But the system still needs to become more open.
3. There are many complaints about the Swedish pattern of short consecutive courses followed by frequent examinations. It is said to encourage shallow learning and a content-dominated curriculum. Also, most examinations are graded pass/fail and may be too easy to pass. On the whole students support the present pattern while teachers have mixed views. However, there is a trend to longer courses and more complex examinations that test conceptual and summative skills. Many existing examinations are imaginatively designed. A wholesale move to end-of-session examinations graded into classes of pass is not practicable.
4. Evaluation is poorly developed in the Swedish system. Market signals are weak; state sponsored evaluation is limited; and professional evaluation, such as peer-review, regarded with suspicion. However, students are active in evaluating undergraduate education and there are interesting examples of experiments in which student feed-back has been formally incorporated into course structures. Employers are more concerned with quantity than quality, but they support greater internationalisation of undergraduate education and also more emphasis on problem-solving. The state sees its role as quality evaluation, leaving quality management to institutions, but the two are hard to separate and the state has few tools, apart from quantitative performance indicators which it distrusts, to evaluate quality. Finally, in institutions and among teachers there is suspicion of both performance indicators and peer review.
5. There is strong support, especially among students and in smaller colleges, to make teacher training compulsory for lecturers. This demand is difficult to reconcile with the parallel demand that they are more active in reSearch (in Swedish). Also, over-organised pedagogy may inhibit active learning by students. A better approach is a combination of introductory courses for new lectures, in-service training, and more emphasis on "teaching cultures".
6. The recent creation of a council for the renewal of undergraduate education is a significant initiative. Its work is likely to provide a focus for the scattered efforts in universities and collages to raise the status of teaching. The key to change, however, is to see undergraduate education as an intellectual responsibility, not just a pedagogical challenge.
7. Equal opportunities, surprisingly in view of Sweden's record on women's rights, are seen as a significant component in the debate about undergraduate education. Yet the rapid increase in female students is one of the most striking phenomena in all higher education systems. This has led to difficulties and tensions (most notably, by highlighting the under-representation of women among professors and lecturers). But it also opens up hopeful possibilities.
8. Many universities and colleges have established so-called "common core" courses. Some are aimed to introduce students to higher education by emphasising the break with secondary school; others have more ambitious objectives, to emphasise the wholeness of knowledge or to raise difficult philosophical and ethical questions. The latter may mark an important change in Swedish higher education; a turn-back to liberal learning that echoes the wider changes in Swedish and Western society.

The importance of academic education in Islam

The idea that people should pay attention to religious education only is very disturbing. In Islam, a person is only required to acquire that amount of knowledge which will enable him/her to follow Islam. The rest is optional. Allah SWT did not ask everyone to become a scholar. On the point of scholars, there are some who are found in bars. On the other hand, there are people who only know the very basics of Islam and yet they are punctual with their daily prayers and righteous in their conduct. There are some very religious people in the world today who are PhDs.

There are many people who preach that people don’t follow Islam because they don’t read the translation of the Holy Quran and Ahadith, so they don’t know what Islam teaches. The question is, who does not know what Islam teaches? Is there anyone who does not know that a person is required to pray daily, be upright morally, pay zakat, avoid drinking, avoid giving/taking interest etc.

Realizing the importance of an academic education in Islam, a lot of madressas have now added Maths, Science and English along with the religious curriculum. This is because Islam does not teach that a person remain a ‘jahil’. Islam encourages a good, comfortable life.

An academic education is a great blessing of Allah Almighty and a person should be grateful for it.

The importance of money in Islam

Prophets Dawud and Sulaiman (A.S.) were rulers at their time. They were very rich and yet they were prophets. There were also some very rich Ashb-e-Rasool (S.A.W.), the richest of whom was Hazrat Abdur Rahman bin Auf, who was what would be termed a billionaire today. Yet, he was so religious that Prophet Mohammad (S.A.W.) was informed by angel Jibrael that Hazrat Abdur Rahman is a ‘jannati’. This shows that money is not something that is discouraged in Islam. In fact, a person can acquire a lot of good deeds and a place in heaven just on the basis of money. How about going for hajj, umrah, doing sadaqah, helping someone during a financial crisis, building a mosque, spending luxuriously on one’s family and a list of other things that are beneficial for spirituality.

Muslims with long beards, regardless of how religious they are, beg rich Muslims for money. When their family member is in the hospital to when they want to get their daughters married. Keep in mind that begging does not have to be with a bowl on the street. Begging is a heinous sin in Islam and is very detrimental for spirituality. Yet, even religious Muslims beg. Allah SWT has said that He opens the door of need for people who beg. The sin of begging arises due to not having enough money.

People who don’t have enough money take loans to buy a house, car, get their children into university etc. Then they commit the sin of paying interest on the loan. This sin is also a result of not having enough money.

How many people turn to crimes like theft due to lack of money. How many go and gamble for money. How manyPublish Post start smoking due to the stress of not having enough money. How many fall into other sins and problems due to lack of money.

Switch off your A/C for a whole day and see how much you feel like worshiping. Imagine those people who can’t afford one. How much will they feel like worshiping in the sweltering heat?

Only when a person has food in his stomach does he/she feel like worshiping. How much will a person on an empty stomach feel like worshiping?

Money is a gift from Allah SWT and a person should be thankful for it. At the same time it is important that money is spent in causes that are beneficial for spirituality.

Importance of education in economic development

Education, a strong correlation with economic development
Education is considered to have a strong correlation with social and economic development. In contemporary times when the focus is on the 'knowledge economy' the role of education becomes all the more important in the development of human capital.

After all, a society of literate and skilled citizens has more chances of development at the economic and social levels.

Education can reduce poverty and social injustice by providing the underprivileged resources and opportunities for upward social mobility and social inclusion. Yet, until the National Education Policy (NEP) 2009 was unveiled, the budgetary allocation for education in Pakistan was on the decline.

The lack of political commitment of the state has resulted in multiple educational systems which are inherently discriminatory and biased in nature. A large number of students are unable to attend schools. According to the Education For All Global Monitoring Report (2007), almost 6.5 million children in Pakistan do not go to school. Countries like India, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Ghana, Niger, Kenya and Mali are placed in relatively better positions. The only country that has a worse situation than Pakistan's is Nigeria, with more than eight million children out of school.

A large number of students who make it to schools, however, drop out by class five. According to NEP, about 72 per cent make it to grade five which means a dropout rate of 28 per cent. This significant figure further brings down the chunk of the population that makes it to school.

Such a large number of students outside school means that they are deprived of the opportunity to learn and acquire skills for playing a meaningful role in society. Social exclusion is a great loss at the individual and societal levels. Most of these out-of-school children experience poverty and unemployment and some get involved in criminal activities as well. Constitutionally, the provision of basic education to citizens is the state's responsibility. Is the state carrying out its responsibility? The state needs to analyse the reasons be hind the number of out-of-school children. They come from poor families and cannot afford the luxury of education despite their desire for it.

The real issue of educational apartheid comes to the surface only after joining a school. Enrolling in a school does not ensure the provision of quality education. There is one question which is central to quality: what kind of school is it? The answer to this question may include the state of the building, faculty, management, curriculum, textbooks, examination system and medium of instruction as well as the socio-economic background of the children.

The reference to socio-economic background is crucial as schools - like social classes - are stratified in terms of social status. So social exclusion is not only at the access level but also at the quality level. The widening difference between private and public schools is responsible for the gaping chasm between resources and opportunities given to the poor and the rich. Children from elite schools have enhanced chances of employment and social integration whereas children from public schools, no matter how bright they are, are disadvantaged in terms of getting exposure to quality education.

The famous slogan 'education for all' needs to be revisited. Is it sufficient to enrol every child in school? The continuance of disparity and exclusion goes on depending on the quality of the school. Thus the slogan needs to focus on 'quality education for all'. It is the quality aspect which is missing in disadvantaged schools. Instead of taking some constructive measures to improve the conditions the state is taking the easy route of offering private schools as an alternative.

Government officials publicly give statements that public schools have failed and the only alternative left is private schools. I do not intend to underplay the significant role private schools can play in the uplift of the educational system in Pakistan. My only contention is that they are there to complement the system and should not be presented as an alternative to public education.

Education has failed miserably to reduce poverty gaps, social injustice and oppression. The education policy suggests that "the educational system of Pakistan is accused of strengthening the existing inequitable social structure as very few people from public-sector educational institutions could move up the ladder of social mobility".

What action plan has been given in the new education policy to ensure that this won't happen in the future? Simply referring to a problem does not mean that it has been taken care of. The education policy should have given a clear and concrete blueprint to combat social exclusion, inequality and social injustice. The existing discriminatory educational systems are not only perpetuating the socio-economic gaps between the haves and have-nots, they are also responsible for further widening these gaps.

The writer is director of the Centre for Humanities and Social Sciences at the Lahore School of Economics and author of Rethinking Education in Pakistan. -Shahid Siddiqui

Wendy Brown: Without quality public education, there is no future for democracy

UC Berkeley professor of political science Wendy Brown was among the more than 200 Berkeley faculty members who traveled to Sacramento on March 4. A co-chair of the Berkeley Faculty Association, she gave the following address on the capitol steps during the "Educate the State" rally.

Not long ago, California public education was an international beacon of excellence. Through much of the 20th century, Californians were committed to quality public elementary and secondary schools and an accessible multi-tiered system of higher education — from guaranteed access to community college for every high school graduate, to great research universities and professional schools.

Wendy Brown, professor of political science

After decades of demonstrating that this was possible — that there could be affordable mass access to high-quality education — California begin to unravel its own accomplishment. The 1978 passage of Prop 13 marked the beginning of this unraveling, pitching our elementary and secondary schools into the downward decline that today finds teachers facing overcrowded classrooms, insufficient books and supplies, inadequate compensation and lay-offs, and throwing a spectacularly successful higher education system into the mud.

This devastation of our public education and the rest of our public sector is not the consequence of our state being poor. Certainly we have suffered from the recession, the financial meltdown, the collapse in housing wealth, unemployment and the foreclosure crisis. But California still generates nearly one sixth of U.S. Gross Domestic Product, and were it a nation unto itself, our GDP would place us among the top 10 nations in the world.

California, rich in resources, rich in human talent, rich in industries, and very rich in the rich, can afford a first rate education system. But our quagmired political system (minority rule), anti-tax political culture, upsidedown state budget priorities, and the configuring of higher education itself on the model of a business — these have demoted public education to the status of a failing discount store.

Indeed, there is more at stake here than the loss of a great system of education, than the madness of permitting oil wealth, real estate wealth, Silicon Valley wealth, banking wealth, Hollywood wealth, agribusiness wealth and prisons to grow ever larger while starving our schools. There is more at stake than the madness of cutting the fuel to the economic engine that generated so much innovation and capacity in California during the last century. It is also the case that there can be no democracy without an educated citizenry.

Without quality public education, we the people cannot know, handle, let alone check the powers that govern us. Without quality public education, there can be no substance to the promise of equality and freedom, no possibility of developing and realizing individual capacities, no possibility of children overcoming disadvantage, or of teens reaching for the stars, no possibility of being a people guiding their own destiny or of individuals choosing their own course. Above all, there is no possibility of being a self-governing people, a democracy:

As the world grows more complex and integrated, as the media grows ever more sophisticated and powerful in shaping events and ideas, what maintains democracy is not the technical instruction into which resource-starved schools are rapidly retreating. It is not the reduction of high school to 2 years, college to 3, not vocational training for the many, but the kind of education through which future citizens learn to understand and engage the complexities of this world.

For democracy to survive, let alone thrive, the people must be able to know and analyze the powers organizing our lives. The people must be able to reflect on the perils and possibilities of our time and develop considered views about how to navigate them. The people must be able to analyze written and oral arguments, journalistic accounts, images and sound bytes...distinguishing the reasonable from the sensational, the serious from the simplistic, the well founded from the fatuous.

If such capacities have always been important to democratic citizenship, our increasingly complex world demands them all the more, and quality public education is the keystone to their acquisition. Without quality public education in our future, there is no future for democracy.

Without quality public education in our future, we face a huge divide between the educated and uneducated, corresponding to a divide between the rich and the poor and magnifying the power of the former, the powerlessness of the latter. This is plutocracy, not democracy.

Without quality public education in our future, we face a populace taught only the skills needed for work, ill-equipped to understand or participate in civic and political life. This is corporate oligarchy, not democracy.

Without quality public education in our future, we face a people manipulable through their frustrations, mobilizable through false enemies and false promises. This is the dangerous material of democracy's opposite — despotism if not fascism.

So California's disinvestment in education not only entrenches and deepens inequalities, not only breaks the promise of opportunity for every able student, not only chokes the engine of invention and achievement that built California's 20th century glory. It destroys the fundament of democracy itself-an educated citizenry capable of thoughtful analysis and informed judgment.

California must recommit to first class K-12 education and the California Master Plan for higher education. We must come to our senses, quickly, about preserving the most esteemed public university system in the world. And we must do so not only because education is what lifts people from poverty, equalizes opportunities, reduces crime and violence, builds bright individual and collective futures, but makes democracy real.

Educate the state. Sí se puede.

Wendy Brown
Heller Professor of Political Science
Co-chair of the UC Berkeley Faculty Association