Pakistan’s Ugly Duckling

First published in Focal Point Magazine Issue 3: http://www.enterfocalpoint.com/focalpoint/?p=388

The Ugly Duckling” is a literary fairy tale by Danish poet and author Hans Christian Andersen first published in 1843. The story tells of a homely little bird born in a barnyard who suffers abuse and neglect. But, much to his delight (and to the surprise of others), he matures into a beautiful swan, the most beautiful bird of all. The story is beloved around the world as a tale about personal transformation for the better despite challenges.

Have we been treating our educational system with the same abuse and neglect? If we don’t start proper nurturing of education and continue to leave it out in the cold, it will eventually collapse or it may fly away and bloom elsewhere as told in the story. And you may note, many of our bright minds do just that by going abroad and succeeding when they are direly needed here. But this is a story is of hope, perseverance and a strong message.

Education is the heart and life blood of development. Without it, Pakistan will remain an impoverished and a weak third world country. If education is not allowed to prevail, the problems in Pakistan will reach at a stage which will make this country very vulnerable; if it has not already. It is very important to focus and provide education to the masses as it is the only way to uplift poverty and uplift economic indicators in the country.

Statistically, Pakistan has made a reasonable march since independence in many fields including education. Less than 1 million students were enrolled in schools at the time of independence, astonishingly, today 12 million school-age children are enrolled. But there are another 12 million children who are working out of necessity. Many times, this puts their lives in danger and causes them to miss quality education. As a matter of fact, full enrollment at primary education is still not a reality, but a very distant dream – and to curtail child labor is also just that.

The recent census of China and India show that Pakistan is substantially behind the two larger Asian powerhouses in education. China’s literacy rate is nearing 90% and India has reached above 65%. Pakistan is still around 50 percent. This surely means our progress has not been up to the mark. Moreover, the statistics in India and China surely embarrass us vehemently, as our performance should have been better as we had lesser population. Also, we were not as big as China and India in terms of geographical area; therefore, we should have had more resources to be invested per capita.

Let’s shift our focus over to the provinces and see the standards. Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (formerly known as NWFP), Baluchistan and Sindh were very much behind in terms of everything at the time of independence in 1947. By now many universities have opened in these three provinces but sadly, the female literacy rate is still less than 30% in these provinces. The resources in Punjab were surely enough to make the province achieve the 100% target, but feudal, bureaucratic and political forces did not put resources to effective use. Efforts from Pervaiz Elahi, ‘Parha Likha Punjab’ did not work out as there was a lack of commitment from the stakeholders while the MMA government’s effort in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa managed to increase just 1% of literacy rate in a period of 5 years.

The new setup which took over after the demise of the dictatorship had a huge task to spread and strengthen education. Unfortunately, the performance is nothing the incumbent leaders can be proud of. There were several reasons for their failure in this field. Firstly and foremostly, the focus of the country have been foreign relations, War on Terror, and maintaining a policy of reconciliation with the allies and opposition parties. Focus on these issues has literally left the current government without time and resources to invest on education. Furthermore, the natural and man-made disasters, in the shape of floods and displacements, became the last straw on the camel’s back.

Secondly, like previous governments, the current one has not been able to put the resources to work aptly. Education in Pakistan is overseen by Ministry of Education of Government of Pakistan. The academic institutions are the responsibility of the provincial governments whereas the federal government mostly assists in curriculum development, accreditation and some financing of research. The provincial governments have failed miserably in upgrading the system to accommodate more students and the central government has not been successful in enhancing the curriculum, accreditation, research and in passing on their achievements to be implemented by the provincial governments.

The root cause for this lack of achievement – public expenditure on education lies on the fringes of 2% of GDP only. However, the government recently approved the new national education policy, which stipulates that education expenditure will be increased to 7% of GDP, an idea that was first suggested by the Punjab government. The most important questions are: Is the current force hired to implement the policy capable to pull of the activities written down in the new national education policy? Is the dedication to bring a positive change present in those who have the reigns on the horses? One should be optimistic, but after the exit of old cabinet, no full fledge minister has been selected to lead the education sector from the government. In its current state, the old leader Mir Hazar Khan Bijrani, a full fledge minister, was asked to resign due to the unpopularity of the cabinet. Now, Ghulam Farid Kathia has been chosen as Minister of State for this ministry.

Turnkey solutions have to be formulated and implemented in order to generate positive results. Firstly, awareness campaigns should be initiated so that the public, especially from the rural areas, should send both their sons and daughters to schools rather than to work, so that they and their children gain in the future due to this timely investment. Secondly, the root causes for the spread of evil activities in the society and production of ideologically corrupt mindsets is due to the lack of education only. People with vested interests target the illiterate for defaming Islam, the society and the culture. Because of this, such enemies are at large. This is allowed to gain success in the society because people do not have the capability to distinguish between right and wrong; the capability which defines the essence of education.

Additionally, lack of education has not spared any sector but has majorly affected the fiscal and economic sector. As the general public is usually not qualified, they are unable to run businesses appropriately and compete within and outside the country. During the time of a crisis, they are forced to shut down, eventually, because they lack the ability to identify the reasons for their loss; this causes them to lose hope instead of the will of trying to improve tactics which can benefit their lives and businesses. In today’s global world, education is a pre-requisite to get empowered. Without it, we will not be able to promote our industries, products and services.

Another debacle which hits us quite often is that the definition of literacy gets changed in our country at the will of the planners so that the figures can be molested with ease. This activity is carried out in order to show that the current or previous regimes made landmark achievements in the field of education. For example, they say someone who can read and write is literate. At times they say a person who has reached 5th grade standard is a literate. Once, it was also believed that a person who could calculate is also a literate  so everyone who knows 2+2=4 is literate, yes this is how silly it can be!

There are many organizations  from government to semi governement to non profit to businesses  which are trying to provide qualitative improvement in education to bring a social change which takes the community towards enormous success in the future. Beaconhouse Education System, Punjab Educational Endowment Fund, Taaleem Foundation and many more self motivated organizations and individuals have adopted the task to improve the quality of education from Islamabad  which enjoys a 87% literacy rate  to Kohlu which has one of the lowest literacy rates in the country  just 20%.

Education has been treated as the ugly duckling by the stakeholders – from the government to the general public. Even after six decades we haven’t realized that the religion adopted by this country emphasizes most on gaining knowledge. In fact the first revelation to Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) encouraged him to read. But, the treatment it has received over the years surely signifies that this ugly duckling will transform into a beautiful and graceful swan soon. Achieving 100 % literacy is not a reality but a dream, and only those nations succeed who dare to dream. To transform this dream into reality, we have to take actions for a uniformed qualitative educational system provided by state to churn out the future leaders of Pakistan.