Education: An Abysmal Situation

I want to respond to your idea of ``yellow schools`` I am married to one of your Pakistani Yellow school graduates. She is working in the States as a highly qualified physician. Her brother also a graduate of a yellow school has an MBA. Now as far as ``luck`` is concerned I don`t buy it. Over and over again I have met very qualified professionals from Pakistan who attended NOT the private schools but the ``yellow schools`` and now live and work in The States. As a matter of fact if I were to conduct an informal survey the spoiled brats of private schools can`t make it in the competitive environment abroad.

When it comes to education, hard work and dedication is way more important then money or luck or the right schools.

Re: # 23
This is an uncivilized way to ignore othes point of view.
What else can i say!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Anybody in favor of Arabic is an idiot and should be shot.

You are quite right.
But students also love to join political parties because they also get a number of benefits like getting extra marks(unofficially), escaping from failures, indulging in a number of activites which are prohibited for neutral students. Above all these students have something which everyone longs for, POWER. They can do anything to anyone and no one asks, because they are political workers.
So to uproot politics, we will have to deprive them of these previlages.
Nobody will join a party, if he is not getting ``special facilities.``

bbabu

A vast majority of debate in Islamic communities can be summarized as follows -

X is Islamic.
X is not Islamic.

The Koran says Y.
The koran does not say Y.


Under such circumstances, it is imperative that people study the Koran in its original language. A deep mastery of Arabic is required; that too, before a person reaches 18 years of age. That can happen only if Arabic instruction is begun in earnest in elementary school and is strictly enforced for the next 13 years of a person`s education.

nqsh #19

`` Whats with this arabic issue? I just dont get it why so many people here have objections only on learning arabic ? If a community wants to study a particular language for what so ever reasons, why dont the rest just learn to respect that.
You shoudnt have problems regarding opinions of people from other faiths, if your a true secular. Are you? ``

There is no problem in learning Arabic if you want to improve your chances of a job in the Middle East or if you want to became a learned Islamic scholar. It is bad public policy to mandate Arabic as a compulsory language over Urdu or English.

Whats with this arabic issue? I just dont get it why so many people here have objections only on learning arabic ? If a community wants to study a particular language for what so ever reasons, why dont the rest just learn to respect that.
You shoudnt have problems regarding opinions of people from other faiths, if your a true secular. Are you?

noori you said:
[1. All political parties should be forced to say goodbye to their student wings and all political activities inside the educational institutions should be EFFECTIVELY banned. The students should be told that serious actions whould be taken against them if they indulge in political activities. ]
To tell you something really good, this particular issue, which had been plaguing youth specially in metropolitan cities, has been resolved to some extent, for the last six to seven years. At least I can say for my university, which is one of the major unis in Pakistan. In the past , there had been a very strong hold of Jamiat here too, like many other universities in the rest of the country. Students dint had regular classes or exams, so instead of completing a regular course in 4 years, it took students five, even seven years at times, to gradute college. But things have literally turned the other way round, since the millitary govt. At present, not only the political activities of students have been effectively banned, with panelties, but also our sessions are being regulated very efficiently, and there are even some which are gonna complete before time.

And the rest of your suggestions, well your quite right. But the thing is they never ask ``us`` the students , the youth, when formulating thier never-revised education policies. After all who knows best , than the ones effected by their cramped systems. thats a dilema. But we shouldnt stop raising our voices.

Sapoori and yahyanoori are right. Since all of one`s life`s decisions must be made in accordance with an Arabic book, it is not wise to let others translate the book for you. Mastering Arabic must be made compulsory, and the first order of business.

In response to comments I received

Hi ladies and gentlemen

I appreciate your comments. At the moment I can only say that in advising Arabic to include in the curriculum I intend to suggest a way to uproot Mullah’s claims of ownership on Islam. When a common man will be able to read the religious scriptures with understanding he will no longer need the Mullah to explain the religion for him, which the Mullah does happily, but according to his own motives. This will help in eradication of extremism as the person truly understanding the spirit can never go wrong, as Islam is the religion of peace.

As per the cost, if a nation can provide million-dollar cars to the so-called nation’s representatives in the assembly, billions of dollars to the white elephants of defence, it can surely provide some money to provide quality teachers and teaching facilities.

As far as dreaming and wishing is concern, I am one of those people who believe in well wishing and seeing the glass half-full. There is no tax on it (up to now) and some day I believe, my dreams will come true.

Regarding the importance of Arabic for Muslims, I will Insahallah come up with a separate derailed article on it. (Just let me get rid of these never ending final year MBBS exams)

Babu will have to reform himself tho :)

We must fix our judiciary. As in, we really need to have a potent judiciary, which should be the most supreme institution in Pakistan. That being stated, I believe that we need more progressive legislation regarding industrialization.

Let the industrialists create industry, which shall create employment. Employment will result in more wealth trickling down to the masses, which shall raise the bar at the end of the day.

I would agree to most people comments here but i have a few suggestions of my own stemming from the article and from the readers` opinions as well

First of all for political development essentially what needs to happen is that there has to be a politicization of the society not of a minority of privileged people. Look towards the 60`s when Pakistan became the first country ever in history to bring down a dictator by people`s power. Look today, despite the benefits of ``trickle down`` growth not reaching the masses but rather inflation drives hitting the common man the most and despite the overarching role of army in the political arena and in the stifling of so called democratic institutions in the ``supreme interest of the nation`` what we have is a lifeless, numb and apolitical audience. What has made us like that.. its because we as students have been told.. no politics its ur duty to study.. but its also our duty to tell the state admin that man u are doing something wrong here and we want change. A comparative across many nations who have come far ahead in terms of political development (look at Europe or the US) have active student wings and political socialization begins from education where there are student democrats and republican. So depoliticization of education is not the solution.

Secondly, in terms of imparting education there are always question of what sort of education are we talking about. Sadly enough, and as the author points out that there has been an orientation towards the west to look for solutions to the miseries created at home (the westernized people are going to effectively ruin the country.. so has decolonization really occured or is there a colonization of the mind) which has led to differential access to education and lack of education for most leading to more inequality and poverty. Thus we need an endogenous and indigenous model to education, and arabic is one way of doing it (though i am not suggesting it be the only way) but for the purpose of the so-called Muslims this country has been created for and also the fact that new problems relating to role of religion, state and society need to be discussed and people need to be educated along those lines and also for the possibility of interpretations and solutions to the novel problems facing pakistan today. And this can be done... as said earlier it can be done and its definitely not a problem of resources but of resource allocation.

Thirdly, whenever we talk about education sadly again in our mind we create biases about who needs it urgently and who can live without it. The matter of adult education has hardly been broached in the article and once again education does not mean building of new formal school structures (another possibility) but of evening classes lead by the very students of the school to educate the adults on what they have read which will not only help the students in their retention of material but will also benefit society at large and the emphasis at large should not be about teaching the word (L is for land) but rather the world (L is for land reform which you wont ever get :() and in this regard i am talking about Paulo Freire`s method of education (From Pedagogy of the Opressed)

Lastly, but more importantly i feel that the process of education has to be complimented by infrastructure development and job creation. Its not that people don`t have proper education but there aren`t enough jobs created within the system and thus most people are shut off from the oppurtunity of employment only to be employed in the more radicalized version of Islam and thus the ``inevitable`` sectarianism strikes home. Most of these elements at large has more to do with bad socio-economic conditions rather than extremism really. Who would say no to weapons and cash when it is providing you with that sort of empowerment that education is supposed to provide you to become a functioning member of society.

In conclusion i would say that most of the problems that are occuring have been mostly systemic (due to the military dictatorship), lack of political development (apoliticisation of institutions and of society at large) and lack of social development (the abysmal amount of money spent on health education and other social indicators)

I would learn English as a foreign language. Mandarin, Arabic, Hindi, Spanish, French ...... in more or less that order

Re: # 11

....adding to it, especially when the majority of human population was in the eastern land, china and india.

#8 by sapuri
...........So, I`m all about studying different languages at free will, but I think we all know in the depths of our minds that without fully grasping Arabic fundamentals, we`ll never get the most of our divine guidance........

Ya Allah! Why in the world Allah did not think of other languages other than Arabic for his divine message? After all there were great classical languages 1400 yeaqrs ago ? Why didn`t select from antiquities. like Chinese, Sanskrit, Greek, Latin etc. Why select only Arabic and keep others in perpetual darkness making it so difficukt to achieve salvation?

#8 by sapuri
...........So, I`m all about studying different languages at free will, but I think we all know in the depths of our minds that without fully grasping Arabic fundamentals, we`ll never get the most of our divine guidance........

Ya Allah! Why in the world Allah did not think of other languages other than Arabic for his divine message? After all there were great classical languages 1400 yeaqrs ago ? Why didn`t select from antiquities. like Chinese, Sanskrit, Greek, Latin etc. Why select only Arabic and keep others in perpetual darkness making it so difficukt to achieve salvation?