Causes and Effects of Degeneration of Education in Pakistan

CAUSES AND EFFECTS OF THE
DEGENERATION OF EDUCATION IN PAKISAN
Draft By: Darvesh Karim, CP M.Ed. 2009
Pakistan is a third world country and it is, in the process of development in all aspects. It has been the general understanding that until or unless a country doesn’t have the minimum 40% literacy rate; it cannot come to the track of development and cannot be called as industrial world even having lots of natural resources available in the country. We have many examples like Afghanistan, available in the world that there are countries with lots of natural resources but because of their low literacy rate they cannot be called the developed countries. Luckily, Pakistan’s literacy rate has been calculated as 49.9%[1] which shows the potentiality to develop further, if some meaningful measures are taken. At present Pakistan is facing degeneration in Education sector. There can be many causes but in my opinion there could be four basic factors: irrelevant policy makers, less budget allocation, outdated curriculum and lack of professionally trained teachers.
As an immediate cause for the degeneration in education, the government policies or the policy makers involved in Pakistan are actually not familiar with the needs on the grass root level. The educational policy makers formulate polices for Pakistan, but it is very much amazing to observe that the policy makers themselves don’t trust on their policies as their children never been the part of the institutions where these policies are implemented. In contrary their children get education in other systems like A and O levels or just go abroad to get education. This seems that the educational policy makers of Pakistan formulate the policies to capture the nation to produce the mediocre, who could not be in a position to challenge their status. This has been the practice since long and now it needs to be very much fair with the nation as the generations to come need to be educating according to the world class standards but not for mediocre. P. Hoodbhoy[2] (1998) predicts for this situation;
Because the future lies largely upon educating the generations to come, no failure should be more alarming or dangerous than the failure to educate adequately. It is terrifying thought that, if the present education system remains unchanged, the generations to come will largely be uneducated or worse, miseducated. (p.21)
A contributory cause is insufficient budget allocation. Education never has been the priority of politicians in Pakistan since its birth. Therefore the teaching profession has never been regarded efficiently and truly. Education has been the fourth or fifth priority or element in Pakistan and the budget allocation for education sector has been made unplanned and randomly. Education budget never calculated according to the needs of Pakistani citizens resulting mismanaged infrastructure and education system in Pakistan. This behavior towards education is a contributory cause and imposes deep effects on educational standards in Pakistan. According to P. Hoodbhoy, (1998), “Two thousand years ago, Plato observed that the perfect system of education is necessary to produce the perfect society, but on the other hand, the educational system of any society is limited by the total cultural quality of that society”. So, up till today all the governments formed in Pakistan have never taken initiatives to seriously strengthen and to produce the perfect society by allocating a huge budget and effective plans for the development of education.
The second root cause of substandard education in Pakistan is outdated curriculum. Curriculum plays a vital role in educational development and its revival and reformation is continuously required according to the needs and standards all around keeping in view the modern era, while in Pakistan the curriculum being taught has almost outdated and new invasions, methodologies, latest information and updates and material is very much lacking. Keeping the world class standards of education, the existing curriculum is very much outdated. P. Hoodbhoy (1998) describes it;
By an act of parliament, the curriculum for the entire country is uniform and no deviations are permitted. The legal authority for devising curricula is the Curriculum Wing (CW) of the Federal Ministry of Education. Its decisions cannot be challenged. The role of CW has been a negative and dangerous one. The curricula devised by its ‘experts’ often have the wrong emphases, contain outdated concepts and do not provide for a relevant and useful education. Instead, the CW appears preoccupied with the propagation of ideological doctrines rather than the proper education of children. (p.11)
The root cause of degeneration now has been clearly visible that the manpower or the teachers are not so much trained upto the standard and Pakistan is lacking of professionally trained teacher as in my understanding the myth that every one can teach, now came to an end. It has been observed that only a formal college or university degree doesn’t work for teaching. P. Hoodbhoy; (1998) strengthens my findings;
There can be no education without competent teachers. … looking at the state of government teacher training institutions, he points out that the neglect of the education sector as a whole has been bad enough but the need of quality teacher educators has gone completely unrecognized. (p. 13)
To become a professional teacher one should be fully equipped with the relevant trainings and experiences as in teaching there are many aspects to learn for the effective teaching and learning. Attiullah Abdullah (July, 2005) describes that, “teachers still use traditional ways for teaching reading. They are not familiar with the latest ways and appropriate trends of teaching in ESL/EFL context”. Presently in Pakistan the practice is not so much healthy as the majority of the teachers are not relatively trained although they have the formal degrees but that doesn’t work effectively in teaching. To cope up this issue P. Hoodbhoy (1998) suggests;
The only remedy is massive investment in teacher training by the government. However, government control and administration of teacher training institutions is bound to lead familiar results. Therefore, teacher training should be done, with strong government subsidy, in private institutions. (p.20)
As a result of these causes, the standard of education is degrading day by day and educational standard becomes no worth in the world of competition and merit. Joblessness, poverty, problems in ethical and moral development and mediocre outcome is continuing in Pakistan. Ultimately, the outcome or the manpower is neither much capable to handle the situation in a systematic way nor the curriculum is that worth to guide the young generation towards a meaningful destination.
REFERENCES:
The World Factbook - Pakistan (2007, September 6) Retrieved September 18, 2007, from https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/print/pk.html
Pervez Hoodbhoy. (Eds.). (1998). Education and the Stat. Oxford University Press.
Attiullah Abdullah (July, 2005). Problems of Teaching in Pakistan. Institute for Educational Development, Karachi.

[1] Current status of literacy in Pakistan

[2] Pervez Hoodbhoy, Quaid-e-Azam University, Ialamabad.