What are they Teaching in Pakistani Schools Today?

Dear Dr. Hoodbhoy

Thank you for highlighting the real root of Pakistan`s problem when every one of us is bantering over comparatively pathetic issues like burqa, Bakra Eid and PAF being better than IAF. I`m now at the age of 21 and although I`m currently living in UK, I had the pleasure of staying in Pakistan for 7 years from the age of 4 till 11. I have tasted the teacher`s beating on many occasions due to my rebellious nature (I was only trying to correct my teacher`s spelling) and a big ego (I always refused to cry). Nothing has frustrated me more than the educational system of Pakistan.

Our school was a public school, nothing extraordinary, and 80% of it was a dry dusty land. During the summer holidays, my teacher, Mazhar Saahib, would order us to COPY the Maths book 12 times, COPY the English book 20 times, COPY the Maasharti Aloom 18 times and so forth. At the age of 9 I wondered, why doesn`t he give all of his students a project to make the dusty playground fertile and green or why doesn`t he tell us to develop something which would help our studies. During the summer of 1988, I spent my whole summer trying to develop ideas that would make our student life more educational and interesting. No doubt those ideas were childish but nevertheless they seemed important to me then.

12/09/1988, when I took a whole book full of ideas to my teacher and told him that this was my homework for summer, he ripped up the book and slapped me on my face. That was the first time I cried and I realised then that these weeds, the teachers, elders, mullahs, politicians, even our parents, they all had to die before anything good could, can and will come out of Pakistan because that was the only way this slave, primordial, colonial mentality of Ba Ba Blacksheep would undergo extinction. Needless to say, I have spoken to the young Pakistani generation and their whole attitude is very much different from their progenitors.

If I may make another point; due to the lack of sex education/contraception, the previous generations of illiterate adults have screwed themselves dry, each harbouring a village of 17 children. Now that those adults are becoming old and will die out in the next 10-12 years, they will leave behind a tremendous population of young blood that has nothing to do. We complain about Pakistan being a turmoiled state. We haven`t seen anything yet. True anarchy is yet to follow.

Once again, thank you.

Omar Phoenix

(First a note of protest to the dear Chowk Staff:

Yaaro kiyouN weekend kharaab kartay hou? Sanjeeda baatain srif weekdays maiN ho to behtar hay.)


I hate to say this but in this article Pervez Hoodbhoy never mentioned once the greatest calamity for the ills of government sponsored education in Pakistan. Yes the K word. The disproportionately bloated defense spending has created hollow governmental structures everywhere. Education being one of them.

It is indeed ironic that all trails probing local catastrophes lead in the direction of our dubious foreign policy. And its enforcer.

We can identify and debate the visible symptoms in the system and suggest cures as he (P.H.) has done so well here. But unless the root cause is attacked, all else will result in cosmetic surgery only. Time, effort and money wasted curing the symptoms while the unattacked cancer is spreading merrily throughout the body.

The meagre resources of the state have to be nurtured and spent NOW for the FUTURE. Not wasted to preserve the mythical boundaries and boundry-keepers that may not exist tomorrow.

No wonder our literacy rate has gone down in the last 53 years. Another dubious distinction.

sadly,

temporal