Education Problem In

Pakistan
“Those who know cannot be like the ones who do not know.
Of course, knowledge and ignorance are like light
and darkness which can never be alike.”
Holy Quran

Education is the most important factor which plays a leading role in human
development. It promotes a productive and informed citizenry and creates
opportunities for the socially and economically underprivileged sections of society.
Numerous empirical studies conducted by social scientists have established a
strong correlation between education and national development.

In the present era of competition, survival has increasingly become daunting

challenge. Only those nations and individuals can successfully meet the challenges
who Studies have shown that such competence and skills are more readily acquired
if students get an opportunity to try out and develop their abilities by becoming
involved in practical work.

“There is no doubt that the future of our State will and must
greatly
depend on the type of education we give to our children and
the way in
which we bring them up as future citizens of Pakistan”
Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad All Jinnah
All Pakistan Education Conference
November 30 December 02, 1947
Karachi

Pakistan has been placed at the 144th position out of 175 countries in terms of the
Human Development Index. In other words, Pakistan ranks among the 30 bottom
countries of the world. Like others, in Pakistan too every effort has been made for
the quantitative expansion of formal school education with the assumption that it
will contribute to increase the literacy rate. This assumption has not held true
during the last five decades and the country is still far away from universal mass
literacy.

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 Education Problem In
Pakistan
Definitions of Literacy in Different Census
Years of Pakistan
1951 One who can read a clear print in any language.
1. One who is able to read with understanding a simple letter in any language
2. One who is able to read and write in some language with understanding
3. One who can read newspaper and write a simple letter

Education in Pakistan is divided into five levels: primary (grades one through five);
middle (grades six through eight); high (grades nine and ten, leading to the
Secondary School Certificate); intermediate (grades eleven and twelve, leading to a
Higher Secondary School Certificate); and university programs leading to graduate
and advanced degrees.

All academic education institutions are the responsibility of the provincial

governments. The federal government mostly assists in curriculum development,
accreditation and some financing of research.

Islamabad has the highest literacy rate in the country at 72.38%, where as Musa
Khel has the lowest at a meager 10.37%

Pre-school
A child may begin his/her schooling at a pre-school at the age of 3. Over the last
few years, many new kindergarten (sometimes called montessori) schools have also
sprung up in Pakistan.

Post-secondary
Students can then proceed to a College or University for Bachelor of Arts (BA) or
Science (BSc) or Commerce/Business Administration (B.Com/BBA) degree courses.

There are two types of Bachelor courses in Pakistan namely

• Pass
• Honors.

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Pass:-
Pass constitutes two years of study and students normally read three
optional subjects (such as Chemistry, Mathematics, Economics, Statistics) in
addition to almost equal number of compulsory subjects (such as English, Pakistan
Studies and Islamic Studies)

Honors:-
Honors are three or four years and students normally specialize in a
chosen field of study such as Biochemistry (BSc Hons. Biochemistry).

It is important to note that Pass Bachelors is now slowly being phased out for
Honors throughout the country. Students may also after earning their HSSC may
study for professional Bachelor degree courses such as engineering (B Engg),
medicine (MBBS), veterinary medicine(DVM) law (LLB), agriculture (B Agric),
architecture (B Arch), nursing (B Nurs) etc. which are of four or five years duration
depending on the degree. Further after passing the diploma of associate
engineer(3-Year study after SSC)can take in admission in B.Tech
engineering.B.Tech(Hon's) degree consists of four years.

Some Masters Degrees also consist of 1.5 years. Then there are PhD Education as
well in selected areas. One has to choose specific field and the suitable university
doing research work in that field. PhD in Pakistan consists of minimum 3-5 years.

Pakistani universities churn out almost 1.2 million skilled graduates annually. The
government has announced a $1 billion spending plan over the next decade to build
6 state-of-the-art science and engineering universities. The scheme would be
overseen by the Higher Education Commission.

Problem of our education system :-

It is asserted with great regret by
persons of almost every shade of opinion that our educational system has not
undergone any change with the change brought about by political independence. It
bears no imprint of freedom and appears to be as listless and academic as it used
to be during the days of slavery. Our universities still remain anchored to the
pattern that had been introduced a century ago by our British rulers to serve their

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administrative needs. The imperfection of that pattern are now keenly felt and there
is a universal cry for introducing a radical change in the educational system - a
change that will touch not merely the methods and curricular but the very objective
and ideology of education, in accordance with the needs of the new social,
economical and political set-up in the country.

The crowing defect of our existing educational system that requires the immediate
and earnest consideration of all those who are interested in the welfare of the
country, is its excessively passive and mechanical character. The students play no
active role in the attainment of knowledge. His entire education is passive and
mechanical. Things are loaded or his mind which he cannot digest, which he only
crams and therefore they never become his own. They remain floating on his
mental surface a mere matter of idle inquires; they never sink deep to become
entwined in the mental texture, to help to constitute a distinct intellectual and
spiritual personality. Our educational system in the words of Dr. Annie, is just
'cramming the boy's head with a lot of disjointed facts poured into the head as into
a basket, to be emptied out again in the examination room, and the empty basket
carried out again into the world."

This is the reason why a student who succeeds so well in his college examination
fails so miserably in the examination of life. The best product of our examination
system is an owlish looking, boy, a veritable bookworm who knows nothing of the
world beyond the world books. He is physically poor, intellectually blank and morally
insolvent. He has no proper grasps and assimilation, no views and visions of his
own. He is determined to no acts, has no desire to form convictions, arrives at no
conclusions and his will seems to be suspended, asleep, diseased or dead. He
simply covers the window of his mind with the pages of books and the plaster of
book phrases sticks into his mental skin, making it ineffective to all direct touches of
truth. The present system of our education, therefore, makes of the students dumb-
driven cattle rather than enlightened citizens, bookworms rather than creative
thinkers, machines rather than ideal men. Our students, "act ,as performing animals
and animated dolls. Their souls are regimented and their faces are without feature."

Theoretical Nature of the System

Theoretical Nature of the System :-

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The existing system of our
education is predominantly academic and theoretical. It is theoretical as a rule and
practical by chance. As Maulana Azad observed, "There is no adjustment between
the system of our education and the needs of our life. The student is taught lesson
from books but not lessons from life. In other words, he is provided with knowledge,
but not with wisdom. He is obliged to know the history of Greece of 2,000 years
ago, but he knows more about the English Country councils, than about own
municipality of his own town. He is so busy in learning about "great and distant
things that he has little interest in life's little thing around him, he commits to
memory the character - sketch of Hamlet some other imaginary person described in
his book, but he cannot read the character of his own friend or relative. He can
recite the poems of Shelley or the Gazals of Ghalib, but he does not know in what
ways he can server his community or nation. Want of Moral and Cultural Education.

Now, we come to the question of moral and cultural development of our students.
What do our universities do for their character building? Do they strive to make
them honest, upright the truthful? Or, does their function finish only with imparting
to them bits of information? We have to admit sadly that today their function does
finish with imparting them bits of stimulating their imagination and feeding to their
emotional life. They do not inculcate in them a love of virtue and righteousness, a
sense of selfrespect and personal dignity. In the past, a student was taught to be
God-fearing, to love and practice the rules of religion, to obey his parents and
respect his teachers. But today the false glamour of western civilization has led our
students astray and they have forgotten the noble ideals and traditions of their past
culture.

Our schools and colleges still run on those antinational lines that were laid down by
Macualay more than a century ago with a view to perpetuating the hold of British
rule and the domination of western culture. Their courses of study and text books
do not breath the air of freedom hardly feel of being the citizens of Pakistan,
endowed with a rich cultural heritage. In the name of secular education our schools
and colleges have become so colourless and un-Pakistani that their students do not
feel any sense of patriotism. The students of today are governed and guided wholly
by worldly values. They have no passion for the worship of the true, the good and
the beautiful. They have no love of learning for its own sake and even no sense of
respect for the teacher.

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The old pious bond of reverence and gratitude between the teacher and the taught
has been supplemented by unnatural, economic and official relationship. The
teacher is nothing more than a paid servant or the college or the university. The
personal spiritual relationship between the teacher and the taught has disappeared
and consequently acts of in discipline and hooliganism have become deeds of daily
occurrence with our student community. The problem of growing indiscipline among
the students is something which reflects seriously on our educational institutions
and which proves that they have been totally incapable of producing youths of
sound moral calibre, character and culture. Want of Physical Training.

Our students are poor not only intellectual but physically too. Their unsound minds
live in unsound bodies. Hordes of pale, spectre-thin youths meet the eyes at the
portals of colleges and universities. This is so because there is hardly any provision
in our colleges and universities for systematic physical training, games and sports
and such other extra-curricular activities. The want of physical training leads the
students to lose in other ways also. They do not learn the dignity of labour. They
begin to shun labour of every kind, physical or intellectual. They become idle, ease
loving and extravagant. Jinnah deeply mourned this neglect of physical work in our
system of education. He advised the educationists of the country to see that
Pakistan's system of education is so modified that the tremendous manpower of the
nation is fully exploited for the progress and prosperity of the people. The handful of
Japanese is reported to have said that they can "live by the tips of their fingers".
Therein lies a great lesson for the students of Pakistan. The Expensiveness of the
Prevailing System

Considering the general standard of living in the country, it is definite that our
system of education is highly expensive. Even for the upper middle class people
higher education in our country has become a white elephant. The education of a
student at the collegiate level costs the community approximately one thousand
rupees a year. This does not, however, take into amount the cost of maintenance
which is likely to amount to another six hundred rupees a year. University education
is thus drawing heavily upon the national resources of an impoverished
community. A Pastime Luxury

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 Education Problem In
Pakistan
In a way, our education has been a sort of pastime luxury, a form of amusement
like many other modern thing of entertainment such as science has invented for us.
Students go to' schools and colleges more for the sake of amusement than
instruction. Our classrooms have an appearance almost of a cinema hall, well
furnished with chairs and electric fans and the blackboard which can be compared
to a screen on the background of which the teacher stands more or less like an
actor trying to please his audience by his saucy remarks, pleasant stories and a
copious display of antics. He is on the stage and has to play his allotted part very
wisely and wittily. Such actors appear before the huge audience of the students one
after another and if any actor fails even a little in this dramatic performance, the
audience get out of control and raises strange cat calls of all kinds to rectify the
part of the actor, just as it happens in a theatre house. They have no love of
wisdom, no thirst of knowledge, but only a desire to get certificates and diplomas
which may serve them as passport to white collars services. Want of Vocational
training.

The commonest criticism against our educational system, which is not, however,
without justification, is that it does not fit us for earning our bread. Our colleges and
universities are like factories that produce graduates in quick succession just as
machines issues forth Pins and needles one after another on a mass scale. Every
year thousands of graduates are turned out from these factories that wander into
the wide world in their vain efforts to find employment. In life there is no demand
for these university product. The result is that the more our education expands, the
more the ranks of the educated unemployed swell. In the last few years, there is no
doubt; our education has improved greatly but only quantitatively not qualitatively.

But, as an eminent educationist observes, "What the nation requires is not merely
more education, but also better education, and what will ultimately, count in the
progress of the race is not the quantity alone but also quality of our education as
well". At present, our students hold degrees which are pompous in name but poor in
worth. A student holds the degree of M.A. without knowing even a single art, simple
electric switch or repair a watch or a radio set. His degree serves him only for
delight and ornament, not for ability. Much of the misery and frustration among the
educated classes in our country man, therefore, be attributed to this defective
aspect of our education. Our schools and colleges do not impart to their students
any technical vocational instruction. There is no provisions for any training in

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Pakistan
practical manual labour, industry, mechanism, handcraft, trade or a profession. And
this accounts largely for the problems of poverty and unemployment in a country
like ours, which has vast treasure house of natural resources.

Conclusion:-
In view of the foregoing defects and shortages, our system of
education calls for a radical change. One of the first and most stupendous tasks that
face us today is to overhand and reconstruct our educational machinery that the
regeneration of the nation depends. We have to devise as early possible a
comprehensive national scheme of education which seeks to bring about a
complete and harmonious development of all the factors of human personality. Our
ideal pattern of education would be that in which emphasis is shifted from the
development of memory to the enfoldment of personality, from more intellectual
entertainment to sound moral instruction. It would instil in the minds of youth
healthy attitudes of cooperation the dignity of labour, and the values of constructive
work it would stimulate their intellect and imagination for clear views and visions,
and make to them, not mere book worms and job hunters, but intelligent citizens
and ideal that the State Government as well as the managements of private
educational institutions should take early steps to give Pakistani colour to our
schools and colleges and make them living centres of productive activities on the
lines of education as required by the nation.