EYOND the coal fields of Sindh and mineral wealth in Balochistan, ours is a country of shortages. Its most precious resource is said to be its population of over 170 million people.
They are endowed with all kinds of talent, some of which is already at work, but much of it is hidden, like diamonds underground, waiting to be taken out, cleaned, cut and polished.
In other words, these people have to be educated and kept in good health. The requisites of health are not complicated, but we have to figure out what kind of education they are to have.
Governments in Pakistan have tended to allocate only about two per cent of the country’s GDP each to education and health. Experts believe these allocations should be doubled now and eventually increased to eight or even 10 per cent of the GDP. The present government appears to have no intention of making these increases. If and when a government does come along which is willing to accord a higher priority to education and health, where should the increases go? As mentioned above, the requisites of good health are well known. Safe drinking water, reasonably nutritious food, personal hygiene and timely access to physicians and medication in times of illness should keep a person in good health. Education, on the other hand, is a very different category. It is not right to ask what kind of health we want. But it is entirely proper to ask what kind of education we want for our people.
Official spokesmen claim that a little over 50 per cent of our people are literate. It is likely that most of them can do no more than write their names. In my reckoning a person said to be literate should be able to write letters, read announcements posted on notice-boards, and read the newspapers. This level of ability will probably require six to eight years of schooling.
If a young fellow wants to grasp the basics of one or more languages, maths, physical and biological sciences and the humanities, he should go on to high school. This is also the time when he must decide what he wants to do in life and how to prepare for it.
Some of these young people know that they want to become doctors, engineers, lawyers, or some other kind of professional. They will seek admission to appropriate educational institutions. Then there are those who have not made a career choice. Yet they are not ready to take a job for which their high school education qualifies them. They may end up in a college of liberal arts to get a Bachelor’s degree. Even if they have taken more courses in a certain field of study than in others, the likelihood is that they will come out as ‘generalists’ and not as specialists. That, according to one school of thought, should be the objective of higher education.
Lord Macaulay, in the middle of the 19th century, advanced the proposition that the purpose of higher education should be to improve a young person’s mind. It does not matter what he has formally studied. If he has done exceptionally well in Sanskrit, it means that he can do just as well in other areas. He will be a competent official in the department of finance at one time and equally competent as an officer in the department of education two years later. He has become a generalist.
Macaulay’s doctrine governed the appointment of individuals to the administrative class of the home civil service in Britain, to the Indian civil service, and after independence to the civil service of Pakistan, now known as the district management group.
We hear of massive unemployment among college-educated persons in Pakistan. They have not been trained in any specific craft or line of work; they are ‘generalists’. Our colleges produce thousands of them a year to join the ranks of the unemployed. This has to change. Young people who have completed high school should not be considered entitled, as if a right, to pursue a college education. Where, then, are they to go?
The high school education they have received should stand them in good stead even if they went back to the occupations in which their families had been engaged for generations. Let us say one of them went back to being a farmer. He would be open to innovations and willing to experiment with new techniques. He would be more productive than his father and grandfather had ever been.
An alternative for him would probably be to learn a trade or craft: become an electrician, plumber, carpenter, painter, or cook. He would make a lot more money in any of these occupations than he could as a clerk in a government or business establishment.For jobs like these to open in large enough numbers the economy has to expand and diversify. It must come up with many more large and small manufacturing enterprises, repair shops and service stations. This is one of the main ways in which our precious human resource of over 170 million persons — the majority of whom are young people in their teens and early 20s — can work to enable Pakistan to fulfil its potential and reach greatness.
Some observers object to the existing multiplicity of education systems in the country such as English medium vs Urdu medium, public vs private, a two-year college diploma vs O-level and A-level certificates. They want one uniform system for all students with the same curriculum, examinations, and the required standards of attainment. This is not likely to happen in the foreseeable future and I am not sure that it is even desirable.
Diversity in the schemes of education available to young people exists in many countries. There are schools for the children of the wealthy and those for others whose ability to pay is modest or marginal. If the distinction is not based on the parents’ financial status, it is based on the student’s relative merit. An exceptionally accomplished candidate will go to Harvard, Yale, Oxford or Cambridge virtually free of cost to him or his sponsors. This, in my view, is both sensible and just.
The writer is professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts.
anwarsyed@cox.net
