A Step in the Right Direction

Government of Pakistan has decided to allocate 7 percent of GDP for the education sector. This is a giant leap in the history of educational spending in Pakistan whereby this crucial investment into the nation building could never exceeded 2 percent. Another step to be reckoned is the merger of FA/FSc into high school. Very correct decision. Because of the college lines drawn after grade 10 would discourage most of the students specially in the rural areas to proceed with next level of highr education. Now at least every student would be studying 12 grades because post matriculation every year spent in the education brings big change in the development of intellect and knowledge of the students. If these steps would have been taken earlier I can certainly say that our society wouldn’t have been that soft and susceptible to the extremism and radicalization. I am not sure what other major steps government is about to take but certainly I would favour maximum facilities should be provided to the knowledge seekers.

The curriculum also needs some fine tuning and specially the subject of Pakistan studies should be expunged of rhetoric and slogan based knowledge about Pakistan. This is where most of the hard core extremist elements drive their inspiration from and false notions of aggrandizement and invincibility of Pakistan provides fodder for getting into unrealism and ends up in spawning utopian dreams. What we need is that every student should be trained to become a practical person who must have the perception and understanding of the world around us, its realities, demands and challenges of the time. The tunnelistic vision of the policy makers in the past has spouted a bread of graduates who even wouldn’t be able to tell the names of few countries in the Far East. These graduates though literate from the standards of literacy benchmarks but may not be aware of even Pakistani history except their mastery on the subject of ‘Ideology of Pakistan’ and September War of 1965. Even the mention of East Pakistan is treated in such a way that they can hardly tell whether that geography was ever a part of Pakistan! The intellectual dishonesties and political malignment touched to the levels that the students couldn’t tell whether there was ever anybody who might have done some good after creation of Pakistan except Quaid-e-Azam and Iqbal. It was because of the reasons that every new park, building or any new public construction would only get names like Jinnah Hall, Allama Iqbal Road, Jinnah Avenue and so on. It happened because the correct history was never imparted to the students and nobody would question whether there was anybody after Quaid-e-Azam who ran Pakistan, good or bad that is another question but straight facts must be presented. With unbiased knowledge we shouldn’t think that something will happen to the integrity of Pakistan rather truth and knowledge based on plain facts is the most realistic way to build a more confident nation.