The Next Generation
By Dr Ghulam M Haniff
St Cloud, Minnesota
Pakistanis rarely talk about the “next generation,” or the “coming generation” even though that next generation is already here. Pakistan is a strange land in that regard where nobody is given the responsibility for the future. Young people grow up physically without the commensurate mental maturity with their future roles hanging in the balance.
If there be any preparation for the future, it is haphazard at best, and reaches less than half of the people who are school-attending age. Pakistan’s school age population is estimated to be around 35 million but only 17 million are in schools at the age of 14. After that age there is a deluge of dropouts.
Those individuals in position of power, while smug in their exercise of authority, believe that they will remain in those slots forever. Their attitude is one of stifling competition from any source, potential rivals in the present or the future.
The suffering masses of the land, whether the working classes, the farmers who till the soil or the landless peasants, have a lot to say on the issue of education but only to each other. They are rarely listened to by the politicians who hold the lower half of the population in contempt. On the topic of making their children literate the politicians go through the motions of listening but in reality they don’t. They are not interested in making someone else’s children literate, only their own.
On the whole lower classes have no leverage over the decision-makers to compel them to spend money for education such as building schools, training teachers, purchasing instructional materials and appointing supervisors. Even today, it is not unusual to see teaching being done under a tree or in a grass shack under a roof but no walls.
Pakistan is the sixth largest country in the world but it stands at 161st in terms of literacy ranking, with 160 countries ahead of it. It is in league with several countries in Africa such as Malawi and Chad but ahead of Afghanistan and Yemen.
Many expatriates in this country also have that attitude of contempt for the lower half and hardly ever speak up in their defense. They are the ones who glorify Faiz Ahmed Faiz or Sadat Manto unlike the lower half of Pakistan who have never heard of these literati. The literacy rate in Pakistan is estimated to be at 58 percent. Close to half still cannot read even though we are well into the 21st century.
Much of the funds are spent on the military, though the most essential variable in defense of the country is the ability to read and write. Those who cannot think rapidly enough make very poor soldiers. We have seen the performance of the Pakistani soldiers in a number of places and everywhere they hug the bottom.
In its various wars with India the Pakistani soldiers, if not defeated, have come outright close to it. In most wars Pakistanis cannot do the right thing at the right time.
Pakistani governing elites send their children to be educated abroad at the best institution. Money for them is not a problem. Almost at every graduation I meet Pakistani parents and they seem to very well-off even though they are from the lower tier of the business class.
Most people know that Asif Ali Zardari educated his son Bilawal at Oxford from where he graduated few years ago. Education, for Zardari is not a priority, and he would much rather not talk about the elementary or the middle schools.
In most developed countries, and some of the developing ones as well, the focus of education has been to open up opportunities for the downtrodden. But in Pakistan very little opportunities are made available for those left at the bottom. Along the western border region, from Pamir to the Arabian Sea, the existence of schools is regarded as a novelty.
In the FATA areas the only schools that exist are those which teach the reading of Qur’anic Arabic through memorization. After three years schooling is over the students lack marketable skills. On the sidelines he may learn banditry and wind-up as a dacoit. Some may wind up as imams for token remuneration. When Greg Mortensen first stumbled into this area he was shocked beyond belief that schooling did not exist in civilized communities. He immediately set to work and raised sufficient funds to build seven schools. He made an enormous contribution to the Pakistani border region.
The enterprise he initiated was widely copied by a number philanthropic organizations now working in various parts of the country. Some of these are not well known but have contributed a lot in building a system of education in the nation.
One such organization called Human Development Foundation (HDF), reportedly started at the initiative of expatriate Pakistanis, has become well known and well established. It is one of the well known institutions of its kind in the country. Another, equally successful is known as Development-In-Literacy (DIL). It was started through the efforts of retired government officials in Pakistan and continues to penetrate some of the more remote villages in Pakistan.
Pakistan’s educational infrastructure is a patchwork, a collection of public and private efforts at various levels. It has yet to develop an educational system though patchwork serves the purpose for the time being.
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