EDUCATION

BY: NASSER YOUSAF

DISRESPECTING EDUCATION

Sabaq da madrasseh wai

Da para da paise wai

Pa Janat ke be zay na v

Pa dozakh ke ba ghope wahi

(One who studies worldly education, does so to make money; he will have no place in heaven, and will keep rotting in hell)

One could literally picture Abul Ghaffar Khan smiling sardonically while reciting the above verses to his listeners. He appeared to enjoy repeating it often to his admirers to whom he was and still remains Bacha Khan. There was then resistance to the promotion of education from the clergy in the erstwhile Frontier.

Many years after his going away, the mullah's taunt has come to hit us with an unexplained ferocious truth to it. 

Education appears to be going haywire. One gets to know this from the billboards and posters hung from the poles in the medians of the roads. A kind of craziness is in evidence at all conspicuous points in the country.

Education is now about quantity, not quality. The end most certainly is materialistic, if one were to make an inference from the means being employed to acquire education.

The owner of a very popular schooling network in Peshawar recently approached a lady working in another school to join his newly opened branch as a principal. The gentleman's schools are popular because students enrolled therein get guaranteed outstanding scores.

'But I don't know how to attract students to your new branch because I am not familiar with any such practice,' the bewildered lady asked. 

'You need not stress yourself on that count because parents would come running to me if I put up my school's name even on an empty plot of land,' the thoroughly amused owner replied complacently.

We now have the advantage of seeing many things which were earlier hidden from our view. A picture splashed on the ubiquitous social media shows a long queue of men waiting outside a window.  'These are some of the thousands of the candidates applying for the posts of peons in the education department in KP,' the caption reads.

The caption goes on to add that some of these candidates were PhD degrees-holders while scores of others had done their masters in different subjects. 

Why would someone with a PhD degree want to serve as a peon in any department? To be somewhat charitable to the hundreds of apparently frustrated applicants, one could somehow give a leeway to the other applicants including those with masters in various subjects

But one would keep asking why the PhDs? Didn't going all the tiresome way up to earning a PhD help in any sense?  Why couldn't the privilege of studying for a PhD nourish the candidates with stupendous ideas and creating in them a newest sense of self-respect? 

Why is Pakistan's Higher Education Commission HEC silent on the subject?

One could safely say that behind HEC's silence is the Commission's own lack or total absence of self-esteem. A PhD in Pakistan is approved and financed by HEC at the expense of the taxpayers. Hence, it is HEC that must be held accountable for the disrespect being shown to the highest degree in any discipline.

Strange, no institution is asking HEC about the award of thousands of PhDs over the years and the nil improvements brought about as a result thereof. For instance, no new invention in agriculture, trade, industry, medicine, architecture, finance, language, and indeed the desired impact on our economy has been witnessed so far. 

People in Pakistan aim to attain a PhD for very trivial reasons. Some do so to add an additional increment to their salaries in the public sector departments. More often than not, it is the same in the pursuit of a masters degree.

A former head of the Department of English in the Peshawar University was intelligently cognizant of the many trivial reasons. In the Viva Voce test, the smart chairman would easily bring round the candidate to admitting the reason for going for a masters degree.

We have taught the world precious little in medicine by way of new techniques, procedures or some little cures for common colds. But going by the sheer numbers of medical specialists, one would assume as if we have revolutionised the medical field.

Immediately, after getting their MBBS degrees, medical students go straight for their FCPS, FRCS etcetera. It would appear that the examiners do not require some minimum experience by way of criteria before allowing a candidate to take the specialisation examinations. 

Money makes the mare go. Education in our country might not have endowed us with brilliant or extraordinary ideas but it has certainly helped a great many people earn incredible riches. Some such people, notably in KP, could be seen emerging as wheelers-dealers in the political arena.

It was the word 'system' that let open the gates to money in the education sector. Pakistanis were first introduced to the idea of 'school system,' by the corporate entities of Punjab and Sindh. Ever since then, it's a no-holds-barred trafficking in education for the ambitious ones.

There are very few educationists running schools and colleges. Abbottabad and Peshawar have just a few honest educationists as against the hundreds of school networks in these two big cities of the province.

The less scrupulous in the field know the way to success better through their contacts and connections in the examination boards. The results obtained as a result of such manipulative practices are then displayed on massive billboards for all to see.

This discussion could be endless. It is in fact a saga. Nobody appears to be getting educated in the truest sense. Materialism has seeped into the very roots of the system.

The bureaucratic machinery overseeing education is the least educated of all. There are layers upon layers of offices and officers looking after this and that aspect of education but all to no avail.

The examination system is simply non existent. It is not the case just in schools and colleges but also at the professional levels.

Our public service commissions are manned by people with connections and absolutely very little by way of any credible works or publications to their credit. Perhaps same is true of HEC.

The way to overhauling must begin from the beginning. Any government wishing to do the job has first got to focus on the teachers' training. The examiners must first be examined before they are allowed to examine others.

The mindset has to be reset. Doctors must not be allowed to announce themselves on billboards. Educational institutions and tuition academies ought to be restrained from indulging in outrageous publicity.

The award of exaggeratedly high scores to the students in the matriculation examinations and the higher secondary schools is not serving the cause of education. Ground realities tell a different story when the same students step into the practical life. 

The situation in KP in particular is alarming. The gentleman looking after the ministry of finance in the province is from Karachi. The gentleman tasked to look after the ministry of environment was running a shop before he joined politics. His department was subsequently changed after he made himself a laughing stock in the media through his very poor knowledge of forestry. 

The less said about the people in charge of education, the better. The gentleman looking after the department of health is doing so from the US as the de facto head. One would wish, like us poor folks, he knew firsthand what dreadful state were our public and private hospitals in. Human life is, unfortunately, a merchandise now.

An unsavoury joke must conclude this discussion.'You know I wrote exactly the same answer to all five questions in one of my papers of international relations and I got through,' a friend once said while making fun of our examination system. The guy got a masters degree in international relations from the Peshawar University.