Pakistan: A picture of failed education

The Malala Fund for Girls’ Right to Education, for which billions of dollars are to be raised, should be taken as Unesco’s desperate bid to ensure that girls are not left out of any country’s drive to achieve the second Millennium Development Goal (MDG) – namely, achieving universal primary education.
Of all the eight MDGs this is the objective the Pakistani authorities think they can achieve. But there is no denying the fact that girls are still lagging behind boys in primary enrolment. Their enrolment has suffered a further setback as a result of extremists’ attacks on their schools in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Fata.
Hopes that the state’s assumption of responsibility to achieve the goal of universal primary education would expedite realisation of MDG No 2 have not materialised.
Two and a half years after the addition of Article 25A to the constitution, under the 18th Amendment, the provincial governments seem to be struggling to establish implementation mechanisms.
If these mechanisms can be put in place in the next fiscal year it may still be possible to ensure that all Pakistan’s children, girls included, can attend schools by 2015. At the same time, some progress towards reducing the dropout rate should be possible. The urgency of effective initiatives in this regard became plain when Unesco declared that 30 per cent of Pakistanis were suffering from education poverty as they had had no more than two years of schooling.
Just as important as universalising primary education is the need to bring courses in harmony with people’s needs. What is being offered to children is often sham education. This education does nothing to aid the development of children as rational human beings and as productive members of society; it is raising a crop of morons at best and callous murderers at worst.
This theme, in various forms, has been in people’s discourse in this region for more than a century.
The demand for universal primary education as a fundamental right has a long history on the subcontinent. It was raised during the freedom struggle against British rule, under which Lord Macaulay’s education policy was introduced to churn out docile clerks to serve the colonial rulers.
By the time of Independence, Muslim leaders in the subcontinent had concluded that science education must be given priority. Later on, vocational training also began to be emphasised. Unfortunately, Pakistan has failed to guarantee its children proper instruction in modern sciences, and the devastation caused by the deliberate degradation of humanities is visible to everyone.
Education will be meaningless if it does not give children the tools to demolish the cult of violence and intolerance. The foundations of such education have obviously to be laid at primary-school level.
Studies show that the curriculum in public schools, instead of emphasising equality of human beings, sanctifies divisions based on religion, gender and social status. Instead of peace, amity and tolerance it promotes hatred, violence and intolerance.
This is a prescription for making conflicts within our society permanent. With such a disastrous curriculum, Pakistan will never be able to scale the heights of knowledge, nor will it be able to raise a generation that can hold its head high among counterparts in civilised nations. A drastic curriculum reform must accompany the campaign to achieve the goal of universal primary education for girls as well as boys.
A critical issue in debate these days is the place of religious texts in school studies. Attempts to review the selection of Quranic texts in these textbooks are always ferociously resisted. That a Muslim community should want its children to learn something about their faith is understandable, but there is need for a dispassionate inquiry into whether such studies should be optional or compulsory.
At the same time, children should begin to learn in primary classes the basic features of their geography, the fact that their state comprises units that are equal with one another, the essentials of civic responsibility and the bonds that hold the human family together. The slogan “education for all” must be changed to “meaningful and quality education for all”. Translating this motto into practice is the obligation Pakistan assumed a week ago when its minister for education signed an agreement with the head of Unesco.
The first task should be the reconstruction and recommissioning of the schools in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Fata that have been destroyed or damaged by extremists, and mobilisation of the local communities for standing by Malala’s side instead of meekly surrendering to militants’ threats.