Rana Eijaz Ahmad
The capitalist system has made education a commercial activity. We have more clients instead of students, in the schools, colleges, and universities of the developed world as compared to the developing world. Since the developing world is still passing through resolving it’s horizontal and vertical cleavage. Therefore, the developed world respects the person who has more nuisance value. The developed world’s education system is void of ethical values as it could not groom individuals to tolerate, listen, or bear the opposite opinion. The latest racial and Capitol Hill incidents in the USA and other racial happenings in the UK, Austrailia, and Newzealand clearly show the flaws of their education system. The same countries have big education industries. However, we may not deny the same in Pakistan, but t is evolving and struggling with its basics. No academic institution in the world teaches corruption, killing, harassment, deprivations, and disrespecting others. All these negatives are going on in the best academic institutions in the world. It means the contemporary global education system is completely a failure as far as the grooming of behaviors of individuals is concerned. We believe for financial needs one has to be skillful instead of a person with a piece of paper popularly known as a degree or certificate, which is a license to degrade others directly or indirectly, who don’t have that degree.
The contemporary education system is making us more clever, cunning, and argumentative. Therefore, there is more corruption, un-kindness, and intolerance in society. We need to develop a curriculum, not a syllabus to groom our generation’s thinking process. The contemporary education system resists you to think and encourages you to memorize the given information. The brand of the academic institutions determines the authenticity of the individual, not his skills.
Only basic education regarding reading and writing must be given compulsorily in every country. Higher education has made the world the worst place to live in. With more scientific and technological sophistication world is endangered with wars and degrading the environment. Therefore, better to have a curriculum that grooms us to share the skills that could make our surrounding more meaningful. The new digital gadgets are producing inactivity among the youth. Physical sports are lessening and increasing diseases. We need to be more kind, forgiving, and helpful to others. It is only possible when we stop monopolizing anything.
The prevailing Liberacantilism (a mixture of liberalism and mercantilism) believes in monopoly or duopoly. All make human beings at daggers drawn. The contemporary education system indulges us in a competition that again engages us in the fighting in the name of caste, creed, or status.
We need a system in which people start cooperating and assisting the fellow-person when in difficulty instead of increasing problems for others with bureaucratic glitches. We need to have basic education and development of skills at all levels for earning our bread and butter to live a happy life. Competition is never a healthy element that excites people with cosmetic effects.
A Way Forward
We need to take lead in the world by realizing the world that the contemporary education system is void of wisdom and equity. We need to develop an education system that is based on equity. In materializing this plan, first of all, leadership needs to consider education a priority. It must have the capability to unlearn the traditional methodology of pedagogy to learn an equity-based pedagogic system. There is a possibility to take the following major steps in revamping the contemporary education system.
1- Looking for brains who understand the reality that the contemporary education system needs to be revamped based on equity.
2- Contemporary education system needs to be developed which indulges students in thinking instead of cramming.
3- Reading or thinking of course thinking will make us more prudential in making rational choices.
4- Makes you wise enough to differentiate between right or wrong instead of siding the kin.
5- A school for learning about life.
Based on manners, a value system instead of a nuisance value.
6- No literature but through observation mainly and then write it. No copy-paste or referring to the others.
7- It will create a uniform education system. Anyone can go to any school and college in the whole country. All are having the same curriculum. No need to force anybody to take admission only in the academic institutions which are of great ranking.
8- Everyone needs not to go for higher studies, but only those who want to think and contemplate advanced concepts. It will give us sincere and honest leadership.
9- Everyone has to work for two years after intermediate.
10- Meanwhile one must decide to go for higher education or not.
11- We need to make our youth responsible not irresponsible. It is only possible if we take care of them.
The largest Pakistani youth in the world is inept if it remains misdirected. We need to take it seriously, how to use the weapon of youth positively for sustaining our economic system. We need to get ourselves out of the slave mindset and make it mandatory for all to learn all Pakistani languages. It will achieve national integration. Who knows all the languages of the country must be given more respect instead of anyone who speaks English fluently. Wisdom lies in thinking not in speaking English. In Pakistan, unfortunately, most people speak English to intimidate others. Pakistan has to give way to its source of knowledge, the Quran for grooming of behaviors instead of courses taught in academic institutions. People are made compulsory to learn Arabic to understand the Quran. It will help them to be a human being instead of Muslim being. There is no need for translation classes of the Quran in academic institutions. If with translation people would have been getting nice, most of the Ulema may not be corrupt in the world. Understanding Arabic as a language makes everyone to understand what is the message of Allah when He says, “killing a human being (not a Muslim)is like killing the whole humanity and saving a human being is like saving the whole humanity.”
— The writer is Host Director Confucius Institute Department of Political Science, University of the Punjab Lahore. He can be reached at [email protected]
