Rush for Education
By Dr Ghulam M Haniff
St. Cloud, Minnesota
Since the end of the Second World War the world community has been in a rush to acquire more and more education. Countries like India, China, South Korea, Finland and others embarked on a crash course of making their citizen as educated as possible. Only a few countries were left behind and among them in sizeable numbers were the Muslim ones. Several decades later some of the most illiterate countries in the world are of the Islamic persuasion and include such nations as Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen and others.
These countries are always placed at the bottom whenever an international comparison is made, be that in reading and writing, competition, achievement in various subjects, innovation and a multitude of other areas where brain is applied. Two large Muslim countries in South Asia, Pakistan and Bangladesh, also come close though they have a little more progress to show which accounts for their little headway. Both the countries have made some mark on international media, that is, reporting news and analyzing them.
However, the two countries in question have a long way to go before both can be said to have made substantial progress in that area. The country that has zoomed ahead is of course China with a landing on the moon in outer space to its credit. With the exception of India no new country has joined that race and probably is unlikely to do so in the short term.
Apparently, they place very little value on learning, education and producing new products by the sole use of the mind. No Muslim country has as yet attained hundred percent literacy even though some of them are very small in population.
The three most academically inclined countries in this area would be China, India and South Korea. These three have sent large number of students to study in the United States and account for 49 percent of foreign students who have come for studies. The total number of students who arrived here in 2012-2013 aggregated 819,644; the three highest components of that number included China, India and South Korea. They alone accounted for half of all the international students. The Chinese contingent aggregated over 200,000, the Indians slightly under 200,000 and the South Koreans made up the rest of over 100,000.
These students are in all disciplines with a heavy emphasis on science and technology. Many of these graduates after studying for some time and take a job with one the technological firms. Such companies usually become international firms and their products are traded in the international markets. These students have founded a number of companies and their wares are sold all over the world. It is said that the firms founded by international entrepreneurship are usually from these three countries.
In the year 2012-2013, only 5,000 students came from Pakistan and there were no patterns to their field of studies. These were mostly mediocre students and none of them became innovative entrepreneurial founders of companies. The students from Pakistan got jobs after finishing their schooling in two or three years and stayed on without regard to their homeland. It is a tragedy that so few students traveled from Pakistan to study in the United States. Somebody must speak up for the country so that it may build a class of people with the ability to do research and produce items that can compete in the world market. Given that India has more than 100,000 students at the moment, it is likely that their vast pool of professional people would carry the future on their shoulders. In the end it would be a ratio of 10 to 1 leading to a disaster for the people of Pakistan.
Most countries are in a rush to become versatile in education. As for Pakistan it seems to be standing still, seemingly having nowhere to go and lacking a sense of direction. Its two friends are Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia, both mired in medieval culture and still waiting for modernity. Neither the people of Saudi Arabia nor of Afghanistan are in a hurry to copy what would be the modern world in terms of teaching, entrepreneurship, advancing theories and developing new products.
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