Fix the system: Revitalising the ‘ustad’ status

For these educationists, change has to come from within the system.


Our Correspondent December 31, 2014

KARACHI: “How do you say school in Urdu?” asked Brazilian trainer Christopher Thomas, who is still in the habit of asking the reciprocal of every English word in Urdu since he first came to Pakistan.

Participants at the roundtable discussion on education mumbled in uncertainty when Thomas, sporting a Sindhi ajrak with his stone-washed blue jeans and shirt, tossed the question at them. The event was hosted by the Charter for Compassion (CfC) Pakistan in collaboration with the Eqbal Ahmed Centre for Public Education at the Marriott hotel on Tuesday.



“It is actually madrassa - house of learning - but you prefer to say school, which is essentially a European construct,” continued the trainer who is associated with the Family Educational Services Foundation, an educational organisation active in Pakistan since 1984. “Does this mean that no learning was taking place in the subcontinent before the British arrived?”

For him, learning was definitely taking place, but under the respectable ‘ustads’ - a term that exhibited a way stronger relationship of endearment with the students. “The expressions of a long-ingrained culture were replaced both in role and character and now, teachers are perceived as those who had no better options in life - kuch nahi aata tou teacher ban gaye.”

While he debated how the ‘culture of the ustads’ could be rescued from the industrial European constructs that we kind of copied and pasted into our system, Dr Muhammad Memon, a professor at Aga Khan University’s Institute of Educational Development, believed that we as a nation are more responsible for the transformation of our own system, where teachers needed to rediscover their status in society to replace the forgone ustads.

“At a time when the educational challenges in the country are huge, a single change that could transform the public education system is shifting the focus from rote learning to activity-based educational tools,” said Dr Memon. “To achieve this goal, we would need to rediscover the ustads who encouraged their students to think, analyse and question. You cannot help but cry over the fact that we fail to find those great teachers anymore.”



Dr Pervez Hoodbhoy, physicist and rights activist, agreed on the point of rote learning as he asserted that it was not sufficient in a knowledge-based world that children should merely memorise their lessons. “The very concept of education seeks to develop the inherent capacities of a child by involving them in discovery,” he said. “Over the course of history, this methodology has produced brilliant minds that have made their mark in the fields of science and technology.”

On a question of how the transformation could happen in a derelict education system such as ours, Dr Shehnaz Wazir Ali, whose career in policy-making and practice in the government and the private sector spans 35 years, said that the change was not going to come from within the system. “My experience shows me that the betterment is certainly not going to come from the government or the bureaucracy,” said Dr Ali. “It has to come from the political leadership but the space for that sort of leadership has been limited.”

For Anita Florijin, project director at the FESF, educationalists should get on a single platform to act as a pressure group for the betterment of the education system.

“The change cannot come from the political system and from those who make the policies; a strong voice from the bottom-up - the educationalists on one platform - has the potential to bring the change.”

Other prominent participants of the discussion were CfC Pakistan president Amin Hashwani, educationalists Dr Almina Pardhan, Hajra Ahmed, Ameena Saiyid, and Abbas Hussain.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 1st, 2014.

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