Education is a vital investment for human and economic development and is influenced by the environment within which it exists. Changes in technology, labour market patterns and general global environment, all require policy responses. Traditions, culture and faith all reflect upon the education system and at the same time are also affected by them. The element of continuity and change remains perpetual and it is up to the society to determine its pace and direction.
We are living in an inquiring and innovation-oriented society. The demand of twenty first century is novelty, creativity, and integration of knowledge at global level, research, critical and analytical thoughts. Rapidly social changes are creating uncertainty and complexity in the society. To prepare the children and youth to cope with the present situation needs to develop analytical and critical thinking, skill and attitude that would make them more flexible and innovative to deal with uncertainty and crises at national and global level.
The greatest need of the hour is to re design curriculum, textbooks, teaching methodology and children’s literature, formal and non-formal educational systems. It has been demonstrated by researcher that active learning (questioning and investigate the nature of topic) develop creativity and stimulate for learning.
Cultural values of the majority of Pakistanis are derived from Islam. Since an education system reflects and strengthens social, cultural and moral values, therefore, Pakistan’s educational interventions have to be based on the core values of religion and faith.
Curriculum plays crucial role in national integration and harmony. Curriculum role as observed in the National Education Policy (1979) should aim enable the learners to learn knowledge, develop conceptual and intellectual skills, attitudes, values and aptitudes conductive to the all round development of their personality and proportionate with the societal, economic and environmental realities at national and international level.
Whitehead (1962) says “culture is the activity of thought, and receptiveness to beauty and humane feeling”. A child is a human being in embryo, a man to be and we are responsible to the future for him. It is considered that a child learns 90 percent of his personality by his nurturing.
It is, perhaps easier to educate a child in beginning than re-educated him when he has already formed. Therefore, books for children are not simply a source of entertainment rather inculcate intelligence and values. In Russia, America and Japan children’s literature is considered a great cultural and educational phenomenon, and creation of books for children is responsibility of the states. The manifest and latent functions of children’s literature is to transmit knowledge, myth, mores, values, folkways, legendry personalities, superstitions and beliefs which are integral part of a culture.
Textbooks are the most widely used as a teaching tool which represent our national culture. Textbooks reveal our national values, culture, and ideology of a nation. A good text book can be a “teacher in print”, and sometime even superior to an average teacher. In fact they are influence towards national integration by sharing common national culture. The selection, organization and presentation of subject matter in textbooks show philosophy, integrity, values and intellectual thoughts of a nation.
Questioning methodology is a powerful tool to built analytical and critical skills in pupils. In the world of knowledge the emphasis has not to be merely mastery to extant the knowledge but on the acquisitions of capacity to think and analyze facts logically and conclude its own. Teachers must adopt such teaching methodology by which students must learn how to discard old ideas and replace them with modify ideas. As Toffler once said “learn how to learn”.
Schools of the future will be designed not only for “learning” but for “thinking”. More and more insistently, today’s schools and colleges are being asked to produce men and women who can think, who can make new scientific discoveries, who can find more adequate solutions to impelling world problems, who cannot be brainwashed, men and women who can adapt to change and maintain sanity in this age of acceleration. This is a creative challenge to education.