“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.”
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.
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.
On the subject of ghost schools, a few months back, Hoodbhoy suggested the use of sattelite monitoring. His article can be read
here
I also like PMA sahibs point about paying for the full education of students who can not afford it.
One strange thing is that Pakistanis spend a lot of money on charity, but not enough of it is directed towards mainstream education. The madrassas are after all, running mainly on donations, so the question is how this amount can be directed towards proper schools.
While All Things Pakistan has remained alive and online, it has been dormant since June 11, 2011 - when, on the blog's 5th anniversary, we decided that it was time to move on. We have been heartened by your messages and the fact that a steady traffic has continued to enjoy the archived content on ATP.
While the blog itself will remain dormant, we are now beginning to add occasional (but infrequent) new material by the original authors of the blog, mostly to archive what they may now publish elsewhere. We will also be updating older posts to make sure that new readers who stumble onto this site still find it useful.
We hope you will continue to find ATP a useful venue to reflect upon and express your Pakistaniat. - Editors
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.”
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.
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.
On the subject of ghost schools, a few months back, Hoodbhoy suggested the use of sattelite monitoring. His article can be read
here
I also like PMA sahibs point about paying for the full education of students who can not afford it.
One strange thing is that Pakistanis spend a lot of money on charity, but not enough of it is directed towards mainstream education. The madrassas are after all, running mainly on donations, so the question is how this amount can be directed towards proper schools.