Education in Pakistan
By Jim Moody
Washington , DC
As someone who cares deeply about the people I met in Pakistan years ago in my Peace Corps service and renewed by frequent visits since, I want to remind us all how the huge potential in the youth there remains mostly untapped due to the grossly inadequate education their government provides them.
Having also traveled in India (and still teaching both Pakistani and Indian university students here in the US) it always strikes me how similar are the people of the two countries in basic values, talent, cultural norms and outlook on life.
Yet the two governments are very different in one key dimension -education of young people, one of the most important and fundamental obligations of any self-respecting government.
In Pakistan, only 40% of young people are even in school at all, and the tales of “ghost schools”, no-show teachers, inadequate sanitation, lack of access, poor funding, etc, are rife. Pakistan has the lowest education statistics of any country in the entire region except Afghanistan. Children in most of Africa now have a better chance of obtaining a basic education than in Pakistan.
Yet a Pak official recently told me that the cost of “militarily containing India” required this lack of funding for schools. (!).
Pakistan ’s future is literally at stake as the entire SE Asian region advances. Yet there seems to be little political pressure by its educated and elite citizens on government to meet its responsibility that every child receive basic education.
All of us want Pakistan to become a thriving society with its children having a chance to better their lives thru acquiring knowledge and lifelong learning skills. But the question is: Will social class and location continue to mainly determine a child’s entire future regardless of his or her basic talent and ability to learn? Or will Pakistan move to the universal education standard that most of its neighbors have adopted?
These questions hit me hard as I read the attached paper on US economic relationships with India. Especially this early quote: “ India is (becoming) one of the most important and promising emerging markets in the world. The IMF predicts India’s GDP will grow at an annual rate of more than 8% through 2015”. Then it adds, “With an ever-expanding consumer market of 1.2 billion individuals, India represents a tremendous opportunity for US firms to expand their output of goods and services”. Most US companies have no preference between counties and will trade with whichever country has the best products and human skills -- and thus a thriving middle class.
Except for population size, each of the changes accelerating in India could also be happening in Pakistan. But not without a revolutionary change in attitude about the absolute obligation of any modern state to educate its children. A child in Pakistan certainly deserves a chance in life equal to that of a child in India. The 40% number must start moving upward and soon.
It seems to me that the Pakistan-American Diaspora have a special obligation to strongly make this point. Especially having the advantage of both (1) an unquestioned positive motive towards Pakistan and (2) direct knowledge of the huge advantages of education as a universal right and government meeting is obligation towards every child. I hope you will exercise that special leverage you have on this issue.
(Jim Moody did ten years in Congress (’83 – 93) representing the 5 th District of Wisconsin, Vice President of IFAD (International Fund for Agricultural Development) of the UN. First Peace Corps director in Pakistan. Six years in the State of Wisconsin Legislature; Member, AFHD (American Committee for Human Development). Director, InterAction, a coalition of US NGOs working overseas in development, relief and refugee protection, Professor of Economics, University of Wisconsin, PhD in Economics from UC, Berkeley).
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