Educational decline rarely begins with students; it often begins quietly at the lectern. Teachers’ practices have a powerful trickle-down effect. What we prioritise, students internalise. What we neglect, they abandon. Over the years, many of us have transitioned from thoughtfully curated recommended readings to hurried PowerPoint presentations devoid of mindfulness. Predictably, our students have responded in kind.
There was a time when a recommended book list was not a ceremonial attachment to a syllabus but an intellectual invitation. Students were expected to wrestle with texts, annotate margins and engage in sustained reading. Books demanded patience, reflection and depth. In contrast, slides demand attention in fragments. Bullet points replace arguments; summaries replace struggles with complexity. When we reduced learning to slides, students reduced studying to screenshots.
The issue is not technology itself. PowerPoint can be an effective pedagogical tool. The problem arises when it becomes a substitute for intellectual engagement rather than a supplement to it. Slides often encourage compression without comprehension. They create an illusion of coverage without ensuring understanding. When teachers stop modelling deep reading and critical engagement, students conclude that surface familiarity is sufficient.
Compounding this shift is our collective fixation on “Teaching for Testing.” Assessment has become the destination rather than a checkpoint along the journey. We design lectures around anticipated exam questions, craft assignments to mirror test formats and measure success through grades alone. In doing so, we narrow education’s broader purposes: cultivating curiosity, ethical reasoning, creativity and resilience. Students quickly learn the rules of this system. If the test is the goal, memorisation becomes strategy, not understanding.
The trickle-down effect is unmistakable. When teachers emphasise convenience, students prefer shortcuts. When we model intellectual seriousness, students rise to meet it. Education is not merely the transmission of examinable content; it is the shaping of minds and dispositions. If we desire reflective, thoughtful graduates, we must first embody those qualities in our own practice.
Reclaiming broad-based educational purposes requires intentional change: reintroducing rigorous reading, fostering discussion beyond slides and designing assessments that reward insight rather than recall. The culture of learning flows from the teacher downward. If we change the source, the stream may yet run deeper.
Dr Jam Imtiaz Ahmed
Dr Intikhab Ulfat
Karachi
