Education and arithmetic

Taking a cue from these famous lines, “If music be the food of love, play on; give me excess of it, that surfeiting”, the bureaucracy in Sindh seems to be engaged in giving excess of it to the people. Not content with the unending reshuffle of officials in the local government, the college education department has now decided to divide colleges of Karachi into three regions.

Whether the decision is good or bad can only be judged by the results it gives. However, the decision has been made without taking in the input from teachers and other staff who are to be directly affected by the new measure. This is evident from the adverse reaction it has evoked from them. They say the decision would increase bureaucratic red tape as they would have to run between various government departments for administrative matters concerning their service. They have questioned the rationale of the decision saying it reflects the government’s skewed sense of priority. Their complaints are valid if seen in the proper perspective.

College teachers and staffers will have to seek permission from the director of the region for transfer from one region to another. This would involve hassles and only harm education. If teachers run around government offices, they will be distracted from imparting education to young pupils. Students lacking proper guidance from teachers will end up with only paper degrees and no real education further adding to the legions of the educated unemployed.

There are 145 government colleges in the city. The sheer number of colleges gives an idea of the thousands of pupils pursuing higher education there, so the decision will affect the future of so many students as well as a considerable number of teachers. Just a hungry mind is not enough for education, it needs an efficient infrastructure. A proper infrastructure for education is missing, and the existing one too is weakening with the passage of time. Reading ‘WAR AND PEACE’ in 20 minutes is ludicrous.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 17^th, 2020.

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