Comments on: Dalrymple on India and Pakistan

By: Raza Rumi

Raza Rumi — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 09:48:00 +0000

Another great article by Isa Daudpota in the News – http://tinyurl.com/35tth3 –

I am pasting an extract here:

“In Pakistan, we continue to operate our educational practices on the pattern developed in the 19th century because of the inherent inertia in our large educational system. Our ways of teaching — largely bound to lecturing with a passive student audience — disregards the enormously diverse sources of information that have become available to the modern student through the internet and other electronic sources. Today’s student needs to become a lifetime learner, able to change jobs and careers whether through an internal desire or the demand of the market. The simple training of the past is no longer adequate and new ones cannot be taught in an authoritarian atmosphere of the standard school or institute of higher education.”

By: Reluctant Expatriate

Reluctant Expatriate — Sat, 25 Aug 2007 18:17:00 +0000

One thing we have to learn is to make complicated and difficult problem into a number of small and easy problems. I do not know how to solve difficult problem of democracy and education overall. However, if we start on a small scale and try to help one muslim student or a child get education, we can eventually solve this problem in 25 years.

I hope we can learn to donate time and money. I have found this lacking in me and others of similar background. ATP can ask its readers to sponsor a one room girls school in a village. You educate a girl, it will change a family for generations. Other small act is to sponsor a needy student at your alma mater.

By: Raza Rumi

Raza Rumi — Sat, 25 Aug 2007 17:22:04 +0000

Muabarak – I agree with your comments that the values in our society have become anti-education. However, at the same time there has been a massive growth in the private schools and colleges which not only indicate high demand and value for education but also show that people are willing to pay exorbitant fees for ostensibly high quality education. (So you travel in small towns and see Oxford radiant way school, Quaid Cambridge public school etc etc. – could be another post:))

However, such a growth in school services still excludes the poor or the less affluent sections of our society –

And this leads to the insightful remark by Aqil as to why little philanthropy goes to mainstream education? Perhaps madrassa education has a religious/salvation dimension for the philanthropist.
We surely need philanthropists to contribute more – to ensure quality education that is low cost and accessible.