Educational Practices in Private Schools in Pakistan

Existing Situation of teaching & learning:

As a student, getting rapped on the knuckles on a wintry morning because you did not form a letter correctly was a routine practice of the teachers at the school which I attended. The teacher entered the room, expecting the students to copy pages of notes from the chalkboard. The student who reproduced these without missing a single punctuation mark, spelling mistake and perfect handwriting got full marks.

In the past forty years not much has changed in the practices of teaching & learning in Pakistan. The tendency to teach by the method of Repetition - Conditioning - stimulus-response Pavlovian and operant conditioning & shaping behavior Skinner - the leading proponents of the Behaviorist styles of teaching continue.

Having no pedagogy which is the art (Art refers to a diverse range of human activities and artifacts )or science an effort to discover, understand, or to understand better, how the physical world work - Pedagogy generally refers to strategies of instruction, or a style of instruction, also sometimes referred to as the correct use of teaching strategies) along with lack of any serious study of theories and practices in education around the world and virtual absence of teacher professional development programs are some of the causes of the decline in teaching & learning in the schools in Pakistan.

With the introduction of the Montessori methods of education in the late 70s in Pakistan, and the world clamoring about Piaget Stage Theory, a slight shift in teaching and learning started occurring in the classrooms in the private schools.
It was thought that an environment where teaching and learning revolved around a combination of teacher directed use of Montessori equipment and structure along with teacher directed music and art activities for the students would free the students from rote learning methods and improve their conceptual understanding of subjects. This practice at the kindergarten and primary level extended to similar applications of teaching & learning at the middle and high school levels as well.

The philosophy of education therefore in the private schools came to stacking the teacher with a curriculum, schemes of studies, textbooks, teacher planners and a list of teaching strategies. The teachers proceed to plan out their teaching & learning objectives around “what do I want my students to know, do and understand of my teaching.� (BSS – Academic Practices & Procedures Manual: p.4, section 1.5)

The teacher talks about reality as if it were motionless, static, compartmentalized, and predictable. Or else she expounds on a topic completely alien to the existential experience of the students. Her task is to "fill" the students with the contents of her narration— contents which are detached from reality, disconnected from the totality that engendered them and could give them significance. Words are emptied of their concreteness and become a hollow and alienating verbosity. The outstanding characteristic of this narrative education, then, is the sonority of words, not their transforming power. "Four times four is sixteen; the capital of Baluchistan is Quetta.� The student records, memorizes, and repeats these phrases without perceiving what four times four really means, or realizing the true significance of "capital" in the affirmation "the capital of Balchistan is Quetta," that is, what Quetta means for Baluchistan and what Baluchistan means for Pakistan.

A story ‘The Parrot’s Training’ written by Rabindranath Tagore illustrates this so well: ONCE UPON A TIME THERE WAS a bird. It was ignorant. It sang all right, but never recited scriptures. It hopped pretty frequently, but lacked manners. Said the Raja to himself: ‘Ignorance is costly in the long run. For fools consume as much food as their betters, and yet give nothing in return.’ He called his nephews to his presence and told them that the bird must have a sound schooling. “The pundit sat down to educate the bird. With proper deliberation he took his pinch of snug: as he said: ‘Textbooks can never be too many for our purpose!’
The nephews brought together an enormous crowd of scribes.
They copied from books, and copied from copies, till the manuscripts were piled up to an unreachable height. Men murmured in amazement. ‘Oh, the tower of culture, egregiously high! The end of it lost in the clouds!’ and the Raja said: ‘It does seem so fearfully like a sound principle of Education!’ Mightily pleased, the Raja was about to remount his elephant, when the fault-finder, from behind some bush, cried out: ‘Maharaja, have you seen the bird?’
‘Indeed, I have not!’ exclaimed the Raja. ‘I completely forgot about the bird.’

Turning back, he asked the pundits about the method they followed in instructing the bird. It was shown to him. He was immensely impressed. The method was so stupendous that the bird looked ridiculously unimportant in comparison. The Raja was satisfied that there was no flaw in the arrangements. As for any complaint from the bird itself, that simply could not be expected. Its throat was so completely choked with the leaves from the books that it could neither whistle nor whisper.

Narration (with the teacher as narrator) leads the students to memorize mechanically the narrated content. Worse yet, it turns them into "containers," into "receptacles" to be "filled" by the teacher. The more completely she fills the receptacles, the better a teacher she is. The more meekly the receptacles permit themselves to be filled, the better students they are.

Education has thus becomes an act of depositing, in which the students are the depositories and the teacher is the depositor. Instead of communicating, the teacher issues communiqués and makes deposits which the students patiently receive, memorize, and repeat.

With the estimated average age of the class, the teacher automatically proceeds to base the assessments and evaluations on materials taught during the academic year.
Neat packages of 5 years are pushed into class 1 and so on.
It is becoming very clear that the last century model of factory-schooling is not only dysfunctional but is also destructive against the vast diversity of processes, knowledge systems and contexts in which human learning and growth takes place. Pupils have to be encouraged to develop their own independent and creative thinking processes. The curriculums will have to be structured to help students develop a sense of competence, responsibility and purpose, to foster an understanding of ethical principles, and to build a sense of social responsibility.

The more students work at storing the deposits entrusted to them, the less they develop the critical consciousness which would result from their intervention in the world as transformers of that world. The more completely they accept the passive role imposed on them, the more they tend simply to adapt to the world as it is and to the fragmented view of reality deposited in them.


A holistic approach to education in a learning community:

Paulo Friere in his ‘Pedagogy of the Oppressed’ states: Indeed, the interests of the oppressors lie in "changing the consciousness of the oppressed, not the situation which oppresses them'' (1);’ for the more the oppressed can be led to adapt to that situation, the more easily they can be dominated.

Friere goes on to explain that in problem-posing education, people develop their power to perceive critically the way they exist in the world with which and in which they find themselves; they come to see the world not as a static reality, but as a reality in process, in transformation. Although the dialectical relations of women and men with the world exist independently of how these relations are perceived (or whether or not they are perceived at all), it is also true that the form of action they adopt is to a large extent a function of how they perceive themselves in the world. Hence, the teacher-student and the students-teachers reflect simultaneously on themselves and the world without dichotomizing this reflection from action, and thus establish an authentic form of thought and action.
Problem-posing education regards dialogue as indispensable to the act of cognition which unveils reality. In the midst of the discussion, a peasant said: "Now I see that without man there is no world." When the educator responded: "Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that all the men on earth were to die, but that the earth itself remained, together with trees, birds, animals, rivers, seas, the stars. . . wouldn’t all this be a world?" "Oh no," the peasant replied emphatically. "There would be no one to say: ‘This is a world’."

Progressive educators are seeking to create an educational environment wherein children can see that the hands-on work they do has some bearing on society. They have rejected discipline, authority, regimentation, and traditional pedagogical techniques and emphasize warmth, spontaneity, and the joy of learning. They believe in learning by doing, arguing that genuine delight, rather than drudgery, should be the by-product of manual work. They favor linking the home and school, and viewing both as integral parts of a larger community.

Once on a trip to Australia when I was accompanied by my three year old daughter and I had other tasks to attend to during the day, it was decided that she be put in a pre school close to the house. As a mother, I was anxious for my daughter how she will manage in the school as she could only speak and understand the native language Urdu. To my delight she had picked words like “I wanna�, “bathroom� and “water� etc during the first day and after that she seemed a happy comfortable child who was busy interacting with her teachers and peers alike. I realized that an environment which provided total immersion offered an opportunity to my child to pick the syntax (grammar, sentence structure and language rules) of the English language a totally different language to her native language. This also brought the realization that the rules of grammar are universal. According to Chomsky, the presence of Universal Grammar in the brains of children allows them to deduce the structure of their native languages from "mere exposure".

The possible existence of a Critical Period for language acquisition is another Nativist argument. Critical periods are time frames during which environmental exposure is needed to stimulate an innate trait.

Universal grammar is a theory of linguistics postulating principles of grammar shared by all languages, thought to be innate to humans (linguistic nativism). It attempts to explain language acquisition in general, not describe specific languages. Universal grammar proposes a set of rules intended to explain language acquisition (For fifty years, linguists Noam Chomsky and the late Eric Lenneberg have argued for the hypothesis that children have innate, language-specific abilities that facilitate and constrain language learning) in child development (Child development refers to the biological and psychological changes that occur in human beings between birth and the end of adolescence, as the individual progresses from dependency to increasing autonomy. Because these developmental changes may be strongly influenced by genetic factors and events during prenatal life, genetics and prenatal development are usually included as part of the study of child development). The infant’s brain grows at an amazing rate during development.
At times during brain development, 250,000 neurons are added every minute! At birth, almost all the neurons that the brain will ever have are present. However, the brain continues to grow for a few years after birth. By the age of 2 years old, the brain is about 80% of the adult size. New insights into brain development affirm what many parents and caregivers have known for years, 1) good prenatal care, 2) warm and loving attachments between young children and adults, and 3) positive stimulation from the time of birth, really do make a difference in children's development for a lifetime. Human development hinges on the interplay between nature and nurture. The impact of environmental factors on the young child's brain development is dramatic and specific, not merely influencing the general direction of development, but actually affecting how the intricate circuitry of the human brain is "wired." How humans develop and learn depends critically and continually on the interplay between an individual's genetic endowments, nutrition, surroundings, care, stimulation, and teaching that are provided or withheld.

Nativists do not believe in Piaget’s stages of Development which are compartmentalized, linear and short-term. They believe in the progressive development of human beings. While Piagetians puts all the aspects of development under the same sequence of progression vis-a-vis age, the LAD (language acquisition device) as proposed by the Nativists does not indicate as such. LAD is present by birth but children start speaking short sentences between ages 2-3.
This shows that language development is not a one go event rather it is a progressive process. For example progression in language development vis-a-vis age is not the same as the progressive development in the ability for logical mathematical thinking vis-a-vis age. Therefore we as human beings do not have the same sequence /rate of development for all of our faculties/organs vis-a-vis age. Abstraction in language is acquired much earlier than abstract thinking in other areas. So innateness of language acquisition does not refer to something stored in us. Innateness is operational in the presence of human environment. As soon as the human baby starts interacting with his or her environment, innateness helps in planting the right kind of seeds at the right place. Innateness gives an insight to the baby to monitor the growth of the language plant by trimming down the irrelevant structures and by nurturing the relevant aspects. Another analogy could be that of a switch board.
Innateness means that nature has given us a circuit board for language development with all possible language plugs and sockets and a set of instructions on how to put the right plugs in the right sockets as per the language of the environment. When a human baby starts interacting with the environment, innateness helps him/her in putting the right plugs in the right sockets to complete the circuit for learning the language of the environment.

We all know that all biological life on the planet is designed for specific environments. There are certain conditions which are absolutely essential for the survival (water for fish, air for everyone etc) and then there are others which are needed to realize the full biological potential (animals in captivity vs. animals in the wild, their abilities seem to vary dramatically) and therefore a natural, uncontrolled and an organic environment are the best for the realization of their innate capacities.
Generally an uncontrolled environment is perceived as a chaotic, unorganized and an unplanned environment. An uncontrolled environment refers to an environment where the learners are given the space to act freely such as freedom to share their honest opinions, freedom to experience and freedom for expression. In order to provide a free learning environment planning of lesson plans should not include how to control, but how to provide freedom of learning.
Constructivists do not believe in innateness. They argue that human beings start developing all the abilities when they come in contact with the environment. Here the environment is seen as an active agent to dictate our brain what to develop and how to develop. Moreover, Constructivists like the Behaviorists believe that the natural abilities can (and should) be manipulated to meet the desired goals. This blatant control is justified as being good for children since they don’t possess any “innate� capacities and “depend� completely on what is “provided� to them. Controlling the environment void of space and nourishment only sharpens deep dependencies and a permanent lack of self-belief and confidence. Going by the Nativists argument the child’s innateness is regarded as “central� to the environment which is “created�. Thus an environment is not a static phenomena predetermined by the adults, but a very dynamic and interactive in which the innate potential of children plays a leading role in defining activities and learning within the “environment�.



Development of programs associated with holistic approach:

“The artist is not a special kind of man but every man is a special kind of artist.� Ananda Coomaraswamy, 1956.
Manish Jain in his article on ‘Reclaiming and regenerating our creativities’ states: Regenerating creativity is not just about playing various mind games marketed by creativity gurus like Edward DeBono. At a certain point, these all become meaningless gimmicks, which tend to serve only narrow selfish interests while expanding the control of the ready-made world. What is required instead is a critical look at certain myths that drain our creative energies and a deeper understanding of how these are manifested in our institutional and person.

Are we willing to break away from the compartmentalized, linear and short-term ‘rational’ frameworks that dominate most of our modern decision-making processes and development efforts?

Today’s school environments of teaching & learning in most of the private schools consists of the knowledge/information as prescribed text books for 8 to 9 subjects, divided over a number of 35 to 40periods in a week. Each period of approximately 40 minutes is allocated according to the importance attached to each subject. The languages (English & Urdu) take the major portion of the timetable of the day. After a period of work, e.g. a unit for two weeks, the learner sits for a test, the teacher marks the test and assigns a score.

The process for summative assessment provides information on the product's efficacy (its ability to do what it was designed to do. For example, did the learners learn what they were supposed to learn after using the instructional module? In a sense, it does not bother to assess "how they did," but more importantly, by looking at how the learners performed, it provides information as to whether the product teaches what it is supposed to teach provided to the students. Schools therefore keep churning out students to continue with a fragmented view of reality deposited and stored in them.

The need to depart from vertically oriented curriculum whose goal is the creation of students with fixed skills and knowledge is absolutely necessary.

Curriculums need to be redesigned on a horizontal plane where the goal is to give students the broad collection of skills and learning experience they need to thrive in a globally competitive conceptual age. Intuitive, flexible and mutually strengthening sets of courses would allow students to craft his or her distinctive feature. For example the learning area of any language, be it English, Science or Mathematics is a field which is intimately concerned with making meaning through interaction with and reflection on texts, language, people and the world.

Developing proficiency in a language enables students to become critical, imaginative and reflective thinkers, effective communicators and active, lifelong learners. By engaging with, analyzing and composing a diverse range of texts, students develop increasing control over the cultural, social and technical dimensions of language. Today’s language classroom should reflect the changing nature, contexts and uses of texts in an increasingly globalized world. Language is a vehicle people use to receive, interpret, respond to and create texts. Text (math, social studies, science etc) is any communication involving language that can be written; read and spoken. It can be visual, aural, performance or multimodal.

Many trends such as communication technology, brain based learning, life long learning, cost of educational facilities, environmental concerns and others to be discovered suggest the scope of planning educational environments is expanding. In the recent past, educational facility planning was confined to the preparation of "educational specifications" a listing of space-by-space attributes for the proposed facility. Three things for an effective education environment to operate systematically are community environment, learning environment and physical environment. The community environment addresses civic design, program planning and partnership development. The learning environment focuses on interpersonal relationships, learning activities and learning time. The physical environment examines the relationships of building to inhabitants, building to site and building to the greater environment. Therefore, the overall planning process must be "driven" by strategic thinking and, a strategic plan jointly developed by all stakeholders.

When common "visioning" occurs between the stakeholders, it makes it possible to deliver cost effective facilities and programs to the school & its community. Every school can develop partnerships with the community. These partnerships serve as "linkages" between the school programs and the community.

"School to Work" programs are often based on apprenticeship opportunities provided by local businesses. Municipal governments and schools often work together to provide parks and recreation areas through joint use of school sites. The imaginative use of partnerships to solve educational facility needs has not been well developed. As a high school develops a medical and biological "house," why not hold classes at the partnering hospital? Could partnerships be established between urban and suburban schools to share fine arts interests, talent and grant funding? Through proper identification of partners, program possibilities and opportunities; school -to-community links will become much stronger. Community civic design attributes, programs and partnerships opportunities can be discovered through a careful inventory of each area. The inventories can be recorded on a series of same scale maps. The maps can then be overlaid and analyzed to determine "areas of opportunities." The areas of opportunities become resources for further evaluation and incorporation in the education environment of teaching & learning.

Relationships central to learning are changing from the formal classroom setting, e.g. chalk board, teacher and 25-30 students, to many learning relationships. Instead of formalized teaching from teacher to student, learning is occurring between student and student, student and teacher, student and parent, teacher and teacher, Internet and learner, etc.

The prospect of each student learning at his/her own pace and areas of interest has changed learning relationships and learning space needs. For example, learning may be occurring at the learner's desk or workstation, in small groups, in large groups, off site at a local business partner's location, on the Internet, at home and in any number of other locations.

School facility planners have thus far focused on the learning environment to the exclusion of other environmental considerations. Relationships, activities, and time define the learning environment. Not many years ago the learning environment would not be described as such, but would be discussed as the "school." Today, the learning environment is described as "anywhere, anyplace, anytime" and instead of teaching directed toward two intelligences, eight intelligences are thought important to learning (Howard Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences). The learning environment can no longer be described by a set of classroom square footage minimums and maximums. In the past, the curriculum was static. Geometry followed Algebra I, Algebra II followed Geometry and Trigonometry.

As educators embrace the "Knowledge" or "Information Age," learning becomes dynamic, interactive, multidisciplinary and problem based. Because of these new dynamics and rapidity of curriculum change, curricula have become an unreliable basis for facility design. Instead, analysis of relationships, activities and time become a better predictor of educational facility/school needs.

While all people have the capacity to learn, the structures in which they have to function are often not conducive to reflection and engagement. Furthermore, people may lack the tools and guiding ideas to make sense of the situations they face. Organizations that are continually expanding their capacity to create their future require a fundamental shift of mind among their members.

According to Peter Senge (1990: 3) learning organizations are: …organizations where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning to see the whole together. The basic rationale for such organizations is that in situations of rapid change only those that are flexible, adaptive and productive will excel. For this to happen, it is argued, organizations need to ‘discover how to tap people’s commitment and capacity to learn at all levels’ (ibid: 4). ‘it’s the capacity to hold a shared picture of the future we seek to create’ (1990: 9).

For a school, systems thinking environment which is a cornerstone of a learning organization, requires decentralizing the role of leadership (power from an upper location to be shifted to another less central place) have a common vision and involve all stakeholders in the working of the organizations so as to enhance the capacity of all people to work productively toward common goals. Similarly spaces where tools and guiding ideas can be generated need to be created. People from areas of expertise consisting of skills, attitudes & knowledge of learning areas such as languages (English, native language – Urdu, Arabic/Islamiat), math, science, social studies, arts & aesthetics, music & movement etc should sit together to work on sets of levels of quality or excellence (standards). This can empower participants to determine a common vision of creating a symbiotic environment which nurtures the learned (teacher) & the learner (student) to work around activities that develops intellectual competence, critical consciousness and high moral values.