The educational system of Pakistan is based on unequal lines. The medium of education being different in both, public and private sectors is becoming instrumental for divisiveness and distance among various segments of society. This too creates a sort of disparity among people, dividing them into two segments. One segment of society is on the basis of English medium language while the other is on the basis of indigenous languages with Urdu as major share and other local medium language (s) in the follow.
With the advent of a private education system especially in smaller cities and towns from the early 1990s, the government sector’s education system seems to have been absolved of its responsibility to impart education to children. It has now been reduced to only cater to the need of employment of teachers who ultimately perform election duties once between three to five years but not without their partisan role towards one candidate or the other.
Abandoning the responsibility of imparting education by the government has resulted in ever increasing illiteracy rate in the country, as due to the existence of a parallel education system of private schooling no one is held responsible in public sector education system for low enrollment; low attendance and higher drop out ratio of students in the government schools. The white-collar people who could have been opinion makers with a role of watch-dogs over the performance of public sector schools have become oblivious of the existence of this sector as most of them send their children to private schools as sending children to public sector schools has become a stigma in society for well off parents. This has also created a class based education system.
On the other hand private education system has also gone into the hands of mediocre people to make fortunes of this new business. Most of government teachers have been associated with this business. Indeed they are providing places supposedly for education to children yet these places are completely devoid of imparting quality education to children. Untrained persons most of them are females are hired on nominal monthly salaries by the owners of private schools to teach students. These un-trained teachers somehow prove to be successful keepers of children for half of day in the schools to teach them manners and mode of learning but not the real education. The parents face disappointment, even after paying hefty fees for sending their children to private schools, when it comes to the merit and real competition in the practical lives for their children.
All this mismanagement in the education system has converted the nation into a mob and one of biggest illiterate societies in the world. So it is now high time for the governments both at federal and provincial levels to get back the responsibility of imparting education to children under single education system both for haves and haves not through public sector education system disbanding the private schooling and ensuring through a well defined system of check and balance that every child gets education. Only through universal education to children especially those belonging to down-trodden segments, the issues of poverty and other social degradation can be tackled and with them the danger of terrorism looming around can also be fought back and won over in the due course. Else, we will be perished in the process.
USMAN JAVAID,
Islamabad, December 8.