Rethinking education in Pakistan

If to do were as easy to know that were good to do,

Chapels had been churches, and poor man's cottages princes' palaces.

(Portia, The Merchant of Venice)

Pakistan needs and deserves a major social transformation, one built on the principle that opportunities for every individual should be maximised while aggressive and destructive tendencies are effectively discouraged. Such a transformation will not happen overnight. It will require generational effort. But its foundation must be laid today, and that foundation is education. If education is expected to transform society, then society must also transform the way it thinks about and provides education. That requires a fundamental change in the priorities of the political leadership that has governed this country and which has consistently treated education as a secondary concern. How can Pakistan aspire to become a modern, welfare-oriented democratic state when more than 30 million school-age children remain out of school?

Education should be treated as an end in itself, not merely as a means to an end. There is no dearth of behavioural scientists in our country, and if the quantity and quality of education we provide can be aligned with what these behavioural scientists tell us about human behaviour, character and social development, we may reasonably hope to see a change in the nature and performance of our governments, say twenty years from now. Education is one of the most vital institutions of any society because its influence extends far beyond the acquisition of knowledge and skills. It shapes the kind of individuals and citizens a society produces. The importance of this idea was beautifully captured in the opening line of Dr Asghar Zaidi's article, 'What a week at Oxford taught me about character foundation', published in this newspaper on September 29, 2026. He wrote: "Teaching has gone on in Oxford for nine centuries and it has never confined itself to what a person knows; it has always cared what a person becomes."

The analogy of the duel helps explain how societies change. An old system often survives until people begin to recognise and experience its harmful consequences, thus creating demand for something better. In societies where dueling was once accepted as a legitimate means of settling disputes, the practice continued for as long as its social legitimacy endured. However, changing ideas about law, justice and social order helped replace such practices with more institutionalised forms of dispute resolution. The same principle applies to education. Quality education is perhaps the most important shield a society can develop against incompetence reaching positions of power. The premise is that society must first change the nature and quality of education if education is eventually to change society. Such change requires a government capable of asking the right questions about the kind of society it wants to build, challenging outdated assumptions and developing policies that give education the priority, structure and resources necessary to produce that transformation.

There is a magnetic effect in the way functioning societies draw newly graduated students towards them. Graduates look forward to becoming responsible stakeholders in a society that offers them opportunities to use their knowledge, build their careers and contribute to something larger than themselves. In Pakistan, however, many university graduates look beyond their own society and see political turmoil, governments and opposition locked in an almost perpetual power struggle, and a political environment marked by protests, confrontation and intimidation. They are increasingly encouraged to imagine a more secure and rewarding professional future abroad, and many consequently begin to see emigration not simply as an opportunity but as an escape from an uncertain future at home.

One of the important responsibilities of university education is to develop in students a sense of citizenship, responsibility and commitment to the society in which they live. Yet that commitment becomes difficult to sustain when the society awaiting them outside the university appears to contradict what they have been taught inside it. A simple example used to explain order to students is the difference between a row of books neatly arranged on a shelf and a heap of books scattered across the floor. The former represents order, the latter, disorder. But when students look beyond the university walls, they may see a society that resembles the heap of books more than the orderly shelf.

The law appears inconsistent, and it very often and most relentlessly seems to favour the strong. The prevailing uncertainty and insecurity in the society decreases the incentive of university students to become committed stakeholders in the society outside. Having studied politics and history, university students are also aware of the repeated difficulties Pakistan has faced in securing its economic and security interests. They are taught to value order, accountability and institutional discipline, yet they encounter a political system in which these principles often appear difficult to sustain. The contradiction is difficult to ignore. We educate young people to become responsible citizens, while the society into which they graduate often gives them reasons to look elsewhere.

Pakistan does not lack the knowledge of what needs to be done. What it has lacked is the will to do what it knows to be necessary. If education is to become the instrument of social transformation, it must be treated not as an expenditure to be minimised or a means of producing degrees, but as the foundation on which the character of the nation is built. The real test of our educational system is therefore not simply how many graduates it produces, but what kind of citizens those graduates become and what kind of society is waiting for them when they leave the university. We cannot continue teaching our young people the virtues of order, merit, accountability and responsibility while exposing them to institutions that routinely contradict those very principles. The change we seek may take a generation, but every change begins with a decision. If, as Portia reminds us, doing what is good were as easy as knowing what is good, Pakistan would already have changed. The challenge before us is to finally turn what we know into what we can do.