The woeful state of education

When asked to answer for the woefully low literacy rate of Pakistan, the political elite often shifts the blame to parents, arguing that they don’t understand the importance of sending their children to school. This is, of course, a myth perpetuated to make the privileged of the country feel better about themselves. The real problem lies in the atrocious state of public schools in the country.

I knew that government-run schools have great flaws in the quality of education they provide, but this low-quality education was an abstract idea to me until I had first-hand experience with a student currently enrolled in one such school. My driver’s son is a student of second grade in a primary school located near Tariq Road, Karachi. Despite studying there for a couple of years, and despite his notebooks being filled with scribbling, he is unable to read or write in English beyond the basic alphabet. I found this surprising because his English notebook has plenty of exercises that use concepts like sentence-building, singular/plural and opposites. When I asked him about this, he said that his teacher just writes down the day’s work on the blackboard and asks the students to copy it without explaining it at all. For most students of his class, what they are writing is total gibberish. The situation is better, but not by much, in subjects like Urdu. He can read and write basic Urdu, but most of the work he is asked to do is nothing beyond copying entire passages from his textbook word for word, over and over again, or memorising the same questions and answers, and regurgitating them onto his notebook repeatedly.

If a student of second grade is not even taught to read and write properly, he is barely getting literate, let alone educated. There is no accountability of teachers and no overseeing body that investigates whether the students enrolled in public schools are learning anything at all. The syllabus is lifeless and monotonous, and students are not motivated to learn anything new. While Sindh’s education ministers are busy deciding whether the National Curriculum Council — a body that will set minimum standards for education in country— will have too much power, the children of Sindh are defying odds every day and going to school, only to be denied a worthwhile education.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 20^th, 2014.