There are a large number of schools, colleges and universities in our country yet our educational system does not provide us with people of true intelligence or intellect even though a huge number of students graduate each year. The role of educational system is to provide equipment and technique to meet various needs of life. It is the development of the power to think and not just an acquisition of information. Educational institutions should shape our attitudes and prepare us for behaving in a certain manner in a defined situation so we can realise our social goals and values prevalent in society.
To transform an individual into a useful member of the society, the educational system should provide social and cultural transmission, rational thinking, personal adjustment, patriotism, character building, understanding the metaphysical nature of religion, social integration, family living, future occupation and minimisation of materialistic pursuits.
The ground realities are that the syllabi and text books are hopelessly outdated. The students find themselves irrelevant to the present needs and future requirements. Students feel that their books and instruction by the teachers will not be useful to them later in life, hence they are unable to implement the bookish knowledge in the real world.
The degree and not the knowledge becomes the goal in our educational institutions, whether public or private. Examinations were meant for education; but now the whole educational process is geared for examination. This system develops neither the character nor discipline; includes neither initiative nor self reliance in our youth.
Education has become a formality, a status symbol and a doubtful investment for future gains. Education has become an industry where teachers are machines and students, the currency notes. Our educational structure hence produces no philosopher, historian, reformer, religious scholar, author, poet, scientist, nor people who can speak and write to change the attitudes of our undisciplined, confused and down-trodden masses.
If a student does not qualify for engineering, medical and civil service, he is not considered a “good” student and his abilities and skills are doubted. Almost all our science students opt for engineering or medicine, with little or no interest in natural sciences while many of our Art students opt for CSS/ PMS to become a part of the British legacy of the civil service.
Was Albert Einstein an engineer or Karl Marx a civil servant? Was Allama Iqbal a commissioner or was William Shakespeare a government official? Did all of them use their education to make a living?
Education has become a formality, a status symbol and a doubtful investment for future gains; industry where teachers are machines and students, the currency notes.
They used their education in its real terms and brought revolutionary changes in society. Das Kapital was Karl Marx’s major work which he spent about 30 years writing and it had such a great and lasting influence on the world. Allama Iqbal was a PhD and could have lived his life in a well off manner by joining civil service under the British government, but he knew too well about the real spirit of education.
That is how our students should use their education. Man has achieved lasting respect due to knowledge and vast study but we need a well defined, cause-oriented and an ideologically concrete educational system. We need specialists. We need strong and authentic philosophers, authors, orators, educated politicians, mathematicians, scientists, PhD religious scholars, not commissioners, to bring a revolutionary change in our people.
A historian is better than a doctor or an assistant director in Pakistan, if he has analytical skills in history and knows how to use historical knowledge to change the people in our country.
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