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Your Child Deserves Better – A Letter to Parents – XX

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Your Child Deserves Better – A Letter to Parents – XX

The reform of school education is fundamental right that requires the involvement of key stakeholders, the parents representing their children, who need to articulate a popular demand for a better and more equitable schooling for all Pakistani children.

Last of a series of articles on education in the form of a multi-installment letter to the parents

By Anjum Altaf

Dear Parent,

In the concluding letter of this series, I would like to summarize the main points I have brought to your attention and my recommendations for what can be done to improve the education your child receives in the early years of school. This period is crucial to lay a sound foundation for the future, both of your child and of the country.

1: I have argued that schooling in Pakistan is broken down and the majority of children are getting a very poor education. In fact, to call it an education is to be charitable. One proof of this is that Pakistan ranks at the bottom of all international assessments of the quality of school education and no contributions in science of any significance have been made by students educated in Pakistan. (Or in sports, for that matter, where, as you might have noted, Pakistan, the fifth most populous country in the world, could not win a single medal at the recently concluded 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo)

2: I have also argued that Pakistani parents are not fully cognizant of how poor the education is that their children are receiving and how little value they are getting for the money they are spending on fees, tuitions, supplies, and transportation related to education. The general perception seems to be that if children are going to school they must be learning something. There is no reason for this to be true. Schools are being treated like childcare centers and as one should know, caregivers can be good, bad, or indifferent. Thus, it is necessary for parents to assess with greater care the quality of education being provided to their children.

3: It is possibly true that parents whose children go to the best schools are aware that the majority is getting a very poor education but do not care because their own children are not affected. I have argued that this is a shortsighted attitude because when a ship sinks, it takes everyone down — just as a pandemic does not discriminate between the rich and the poor. Therefore, to ensure a future for the country, all parents need to join hands to ensure that the standard of school education is improved for everyone irrespective of their income levels.

4: I have argued that it is both naive and futile to hope that governments would do something to improve general education. This is so because the interest of the Pakistani ruling elites is to reproduce themselves and to keep the mass of the population as docile and ignorant as possible without the ability to think for itself, ask questions, or demand accountability. The state wishes to indoctrinate, not educate. The proof of this is that over 40 percent of school-going children are out of school and governments have not done anything about it despite provisions to the contrary in the constitution. There is no other plausible explanation for the disinterest of the state because education is a subject in which everyone wants improvement and there is no opposition to contend with. Despite this, Pakistani governments that inherited a functioning system in 1947, have actually made it worse first by the nationalization of Bhutto, then by the Islamization of Zia, followed by the neglect of succeeding regimes.

5: The recently launched initiative of the Single National Curriculum (SNC) is another one of the populist attempts to appear to do something while not really doing so. In that sense, it is no different from all the national education policies of the past that have had no positive impact on the quality of school education. The SNC is misplaced because it is not the curriculum that is the principal cause of poor education. After all, how different can the curriculum be for teaching mathematics, for example, across different schools and systems? The quality of education differs across schools primarily because of variation in the quality of teachers they employ and the facilities they can afford. Schools charging high fees can employ better teachers by paying them more. Schools for the poor cannot do so. Also, affluent schools can afford science labs and playgrounds; schools for the poor cannot. How can children learn science without a science lab even if the curriculum is the same? How can children be good at sports without a trained coach?

6. This educational inequality cannot be resolved by a single curriculum. It can only be resolved by ensuring that money set aside for school education is allocated equally to every child. Every child has the right to a good education irrespective of the income of his or her parents. This can only be achieved if education ceases to be a commodity traded in the market where those with more money can buy a better product. Every child should have the same start for which early childhood education has to be delivered differently as a public service. A minimum acceptable standard of school education has to be guaranteed to all children.

7: Once the modality of delivering early childhood education is sorted out and made equitable and acceptable, attention can shift to issues of pedagogy. The first among these is that during the early years of school children should be taught in the language they understand. Anything else is second-best and hurts the cognitive development of a child. This does not mean that regional or foreign languages should not be taught; they should, but in an intelligently sequenced manner on which there is a lot of research and guidance available. Here is what the renowned linguist Noam Chomsky has said: “There’s no doubt that instruction is more successful in the native language, and there are obviously also important reasons to gain fluency in an international language. [It] should be possible to balance these needs.” Note that in this regard, the SNC for Grades 1 to 5 is a complete mishmash: Nothing is being taught in the native language, half the subjects are being taught in Urdu, and the other half in English. This, despite all the chest-beating about how the use of English as the medium of instruction has ‘enslaved’ us.

8: I have also recommended, drawing on best global practices, that the first year of school should be free of textbooks and examinations. Children should learn to think and express themselves entirely through play and experiential activities. Children can learn more in this mode than from textbooks. They will also enjoy themselves more and develop a love for learning. This is the year when teachers identify what excites children and how different children learn most effectively. These discoveries need to be used in later years to optimize the latent potential of children. All children cannot be taught in one way which has become the norm in mass education that follows the model of raising farm animals.

9. In the early years of education, there should be no content that children are required to memorize especially if the concepts are abstract and incapable of being physically or visually experienced. Education needs to be a process of discovery not one of indoctrination. Real education is a process in which children break the shackles that constrain their thinking. It is not memorizing what other people have deemed to be right for them. One should learn from experience that for our rulers their own interest is more dear than the welfare of poor children. How else can one explain the neglect of public education for over 70 years? Or of the non-provision of clean water and safe sanitation which is the primary cause of childhood mortality? Or of the indifference to nutrition that has resulted in the world’s highest rates of stunting and wasting in children?

10. I have reiterated the message that parents need to make efforts to assess the quality of education their children are receiving in return for the hard-earned money that is being spent on them. They should ask if they are getting value for the money they are investing in the future of their children. People are much more vigilant when buying ordinary goods and services from the market. Why are they so complacent where the future of their children is involved? I have suggested some simple ways in which parents at the neighborhood level can get together to assess the track record of schools which their children attend or will attend. This can become the start of a public demand for a significant improvement in education without which their children will face diminishing prospects in the job market, a dynamic which will ultimately impact the future of the country by pushing it further into social anarchy. It cannot be denied that prospects for the young have shrunk since the school system was modified during the Zia era and skills required for a modern labor market were shunned in favor of a moral education. Since then, thousands of poor youth have undertaken huge risks to their lives to find survival abroad and, ironically, even the elites, are encouraging their children to seek foreign citizenship. There cannot be a clearer warning sign that the ship of state is headed for rocky waters.

I conclude this series of letters by repeating my belief, based on many years of experience in the field of education, that the reform of school education is not a technical problem that can be outsourced to experts. Nor will it be bestowed on the citizenry as a charitable gift by uncaring rulers. Nor will it transpire as a divine miracle. It is essentially an issue of fundamental rights that requires the involvement of the key stakeholders, the parents representing their children, who need to articulate a popular demand for a better and more equitable schooling for all Pakistani children.

I have brought these issues to your attention in the hope that together we can advance the agenda for a better and fairer education for all Pakistani children. I have learnt much in thinking through these issues and attempting to present them to parents in a simple manner. There is much more to be done requiring a lot more discussion and collaboration. To facilitate that interaction I have created a Facebook group — Parents for a Better Education. I hope you will join the group and participate in the effort by contributing your thoughts, views, and ideas.

Sincerely,

Dr. Anjum Altaf

(Concludes)

[author title=”Anjum Altaf ” image=”https://sindhcourier.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Anjum-Altaf.jpg”]Former Dean, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS)[/author]

For previous letters, click on:  Letter 1Letter 2Letter 3Letter 4Letter 5Letter 6Letter 7Letter 8Letter 9 , Letter 10 Letter 11Letter 12Letter 13Letter 14Letter 15Letter 16Letter 17, , Letter 18, Letter 19