EDucate! - Education

MR: What intellectual inheritance or wealth did our country receive after partition?

YJ: On a state level the intellectual content of civil society in Pakistan was derived from our ideology. Our founding fathers claimed that it was an ideological state and it was a unique experience in the sense that it was carved purely on the basis of religion. In terms of practical politics there was a defensive alignment between various vested interests. There was also a defensive regrouping of major vested interests starting with the landed aristocracy in this country and the industrial elite, which developed thereafter. There were those ignominious 22 families of the 60s representing the industrial elite. The third powerful group was the sectarian and military oligarchy. After dispassionate analysis from a real political angle, these powerful interest groups came to dominate the political grouping in Pakistan much to the consternation of the thinking segments of civil society. Since our discussion is on the educational paradigm, one can't say that the educational planners or educational managers existed in a vacuum from the rest of civil society. They are a part of the social system. What we find is that planning started soon after the inception of Pakistan. We had the first plan in the 50s and subsequently everyone paid lip service to educational planning. So one had this constraint of the political scenario existing and exercising a mitigating influence on our ideologues on education. As Ghalib said:

Qatray mein dajla dikhai na dey aur juzve mein kul
Khel ladhkoun’ ka hooa, dida-e-bina na hooa

Seeing a part of the perspective of the whole, qatray may dajla dikhai na dey or juzve may kul. You have to keep in view the totality of everything. So in the first few years after Pakistan came into being there was hardly any realization amongst the main policy makers.

MR: Why was that realization not there?

YJ: As I said, because of constraints. The decisive influences were elitist in nature. They worked to the exclusion of the interest of the masses.

MR: Yes, but that was not supposed to be. So in a way what you are saying is our ideology was not strong enough to lead us towards a culturally and religiously grounded society?

YJ: Yes, this what I am saying. Though our ideals were lofty, the ideals of the founding father were lofty and were supposed to be based on social justice and merit. These were designed to ensure distributive justice and equality of opportunities. But when it came to real politics, vested interest had a stifling influence on educational planning. What I mean is that in their hidden agenda, the politicians were not sincere in their objectives. They knew that ultimately the spread of literacy is the spread of social discontent, the spread of social discontent means a change in status quo, change in status quo means change in power. As you mentioned education means empowerment of the people. Where is empowerment?

MR: But it is not only the politicians and feudal or elite. What we have seen is a process of indoctrination in the name of education. Moreover, it is created to be a submissive activity; it is not a liberatory activity. In my opinion, our education system, in totality, inherited the colonial model of education which was created to oppress and undermine cultural and social knowledge and to undermine the inherent human ability to be free. We did nothing to change this. Instead we submitted to that model. We further strategised it and have continued with that exploitation.

YJ: You have taken a giant leap towards your generation. Let me be bit evolutionary. Following the feudal hold, the industrial aristocracy came up. In addition to these influences on our society, there were external factors such as colonialism and imperialism. Neo-colonialism and neo-imperialism affected the fabric of our society. From a feudal society we transformed ourselves into an industrial society. The industrial revolution had begun and so there was an awakening that education is an investment in human resource development. UNESCO said that at least 4% of GNP should be spent on education. This was the period of strong feudal rule. In Pakistan, during the 60s, we were spending only 1.2% of GNP on education. These are UNESCO's figures. Iran was spending 2.4% of their GNP. That was pre-revolutionary Iran of the 60s during the Shah's regime. Turkey was spending 3.6% and it was cited as a role model, while we were spending only 1.2%. During the 70s, 80s and 90s we had big educational plans. I have always said that all educational planning suffered from three major fault lines. Firstly, we have been too utopian in our outlook. The utopianism can partly be derived from the textbook. The ideologies were divorced from ground realities and these were not going to translate into reality. The second fault line in educational planning was that they were centripetal in character as against centrifugal. Centripetal means that although education was a provincial subject with provincial autonomy, there was always a hidden agenda of this 'white elephant' known as the Federal Ministry of Education. I don't know what they were doing over there. The third fault line of our educational planning has been that we are imbalanced in our inter-sectional allocations. By inter-sectional I mean the primary, secondary, higher secondary and university level. These are the four major recognised segments of education. Although we had some pragmatic forces at work, yet political will was lacking. Everyone has said that they have given priority to education as it is an investment in human resource development but at the same time we were not willing to provide adequate funds for the various sectors of education. The universities located in the urban areas of the country enjoyed the support of urban lobbies. Having cosmetic value they were able to get more funds by making the right noises in the right quarters. Therefore, primary education suffered. When we talk about the educational proliferation in Pakistan, we talk about educational proliferation of the people of Pakistan. The interest of Pakistan means the interest of the people of Pakistan not the elites, not the urban vocal upper middle class or the landed aristocracy or the sons and daughters of the industrial elite or the wards of the oligarchy. The result is that today everybody says that there are two extremes of education in Pakistan. One for the privileged, the other for the under-privileged. One for the elite and the other for the non-elite. The public schools that taught in the English medium were catering to the defence forces. This is one extreme, totally diverse from the collective life of the people of Pakistan. The other extreme was for the under-privileged, the rural masses, the slum dwellers of the urban areas where you have Urdu medium. I am not denigrating Urdu medium in any way, but I will shortly come to why both have their relevant importance in today's world. So a schism was created consciously. Foresight and political will was never a hallmark of our educational planners.

MR: What is your understanding of political will?

YJ: In concrete terms, it means that the legislature did not express or assert itself. This should have been made mandatory under the constitution. We first had a constitution in 1956, then another constitution in 1962 given by a military ruler, and then the 1973 constitution which was supposed to be people-oriented. But none of these three constitutions mention that there will be a unified and integrated national education system. Education is the foundation of a state. 2,500 years ago Socrates, Plato and Aristotle said that the state is a university. Our Holy Prophet (PBUH) said that "the ink of a scholar is more sacred than the blood of a martyr". He said that "acquire knowledge even if you have to go to China". The Holy Quran opens with the word Iqra (read). The first Sura (verse) was "iqra biismi rabiqal lazi khalaq" (Read in the name thy Lord Who created you). So even if you place ideological perspectives in our heritage, we have defaulted from these goals, making it mandatory upon the state to develop educational modules for the respective constituents of the state. The provinces should have had modules suited to their requirements and to the emerging context. But this did not happen. While I was working in Lahore as Deputy Secretary in the Education Department, we had people working under a unified command. They drew very good plans on paper. But again there was no political will to push for allocation of more funds for education or letting the educational plan evolve itself. In the 80s there was some sort of an ideological perversion, which we are still witnessing on the entire political horizon. During the 80s, we had the ideological blockheads to control our educational destiny and the irony is that one found a third stream developing - the dini madarasas (religious schools) and what you see today is the backlash of those dini madarasas threatening the very foundation of the country. President Musharaf has declared that our aim now must be to integrate these dini madarasas in the education system.

MR: Which some say are the worst forms of indoctrination.

YJ: Yes! This is the worst form of indoctrination. Taking people back to the realms of obscurantism and dogmatic perversion. In fact, retarding all intellectual growth. We are finding its repercussions in our politics and in the international arena to the extent that Pakistan is becoming a pariah state. So this is the third stream.

Aik bakhiya udhaira, aik siya yoon oomar basar kab hoti hay

Faiz said patch work here, patch work there, is not the answer. Dr. Atta ur Rehman, the Federal Minister of Science and Technology has said that the computer scientists of the Silicon Valley should come back and we will pay them well. We are setting up these institutes for them to return to and paying luring packages; giving good money. Our academic institutions have become retail outlets like KFC, McDonalds and Pizza Hut etc. Someone said the other day that there are two universities in Islamabad, one is the Allama Iqbal Open University and the other is Quaid-e-Azam Close University! Now in these new, so called private universities anyone can become the chancellor. You will be surprised if I tell you from personal information that there are people who are whitening their black money by opening universities, by acquiring charters in clandestine manners. There were 39 applications for ordinances pending before the Sindh legislature, before it was dissolved and post-haste 17 universities were given recognition! I mention about AIOU and some other universities in Sindh, who are granting B.Ed. and M.Ed. degrees; I can assure you that these degrees are simply pieces of paper. No training has been imparted, so much so that some candidates when questioned, confessed that they had acquired these degrees through dubious means. The masters in education, could not distinguish between syllabus and curriculum, they could not distinguish between formal and non-formal education and distance education. These are elementary things. It is time to go back to the basics - the grass root level and develop a module as Professor Anita Ghulam Ali (Minister of Education) has been saying. Here is a person who is very performance oriented and has been an educator all her life. She is one of the most prominent spokespersons for the student community in Karachi; she has been on both the sides - the student community and the teaching community. The four major players in any education system are the educational managers, the teachers, the students and finally the educationists who draft curricula.

MR: What about the people who established themselves as intellectuals outside bureaucracy?

YJ: There have been the odd voices here and there from outside the bureaucracy. I am glad you have discarded the bureaucrat, because the hallmark of a successful bureaucrat is loyalty to the government of the day. Those trying to outshine others were likely to be marginalized. So I am glad you are pardoning us! You are sharing with me this exercise in self-exoneration! But there are people outside who have been saying, for example, Faiz Ahmed Faiz, that a very broad socio-cultural paradigm should have been the power underpinning the entire education system. Likewise, there were others who wrote but again it did not suit the powers that be. There has been a defensive regrouping after every five or ten years throughout the fifty four years of our existence. The coherent philosophy could not come about. So what has been happening for the last 54 years? There has been social discontent and turmoil on the streets - in Karachi, Lahore and elsewhere. But look what happens every time - as Ali Sardar Jafri said before independence when British power was collapsing:

The Government realises that there is discontent, following which, there is defensive regrouping of vested interest. The interest of the people of Pakistan is compromised.

MR: Many people like Noam Chomsky who openly challenge the brutal forces of the world, have continued to write and speak, no matter how restrictive it has been. These people have continued to speak out and do not wait for a forum. They take a stand and do whatever is required of them in order to rise against injustice. Why are we not able to do the same?

YJ: Now let me a bit candid about this. I want to be because you have raised a very important question with this idea. I did say that an education system operates in totality and it cannot be divorced from the hard facts of life. Now look at the political and economic scenario. Internally there are the vested interests; those who control the means of production in this country are linked to the global industrial powers. The result has been the hold of the external multinationals and what has been called globalisation is actually "Mcdonaldisation" and "Coca-colonialism" Within the western societies you find the underprivileged people have started demonstrating violently in Seattle, Washington and Genoa - Italy. They were planning to hold the next conference in Doha but the present war against terrorism has postponed this conference indefinitely. But people say that ultimately the WTO people, the champions of globalization, will end up having their conference on a large aircraft carrier on the sea. The WTO conference on USS Enterprise! Besides the political and economic stronghold of neo-imperialists or the neo-colonialism, the other thing that happened to us and to your generation is the collapse the Soviet Union as a world power. We now have a unipolar system, where we have one sole spokesman for the world. Unipolar system where educational dictatorship has come in a big way and hence we are developing our satellites of western institutions. The pre-September 11 scenario, saw American universities setting up their campuses here. Their directors have been visiting the five star hotels, holding whole day seminars or approaching the British Council or Pakistan American Cultural Centre for holding seminars. What are these seminars? They are exercising salesmanship - selling their product. So where is the education system, where is the ideology? As I mentioned earlier, retail outlets are being opened. How is education serving as philosophising or moralising means in society? Whatever they are going to impart to our youth will serve ultimately for the benefit of those colonial masters or neo-colonial masters or neo-imperial powers. They will not be serving our ends. A very good opportunity that the educationists in this country had was to dove-tail an educational plan with President Musharaf's devolution plan of local government.

MR: The whole concept of a teacher is that of a transformatory intellectual, which is completely non-existent, and they have instead become a big problem within the system.

YJ: They are socially discontented, disenchanted and frustrated people, who sometimes resort to irritation. Karachi University had a tough time when they changed their registrar last month. They hired another registrar from outside and within three days the Karachi University Teachers' Association said that we are not going to work with the registrar. Although the teachers had nothing to do with registrar directly, as this is an administrative position. The registrar is a glorified head clerk. They are not paying attention to the actual issue and instead they are indulging in irrelevant matters.

MR: What are the learning mechanisms in place which can produce teachers of class or moral?

YJ: I think it is only possible through commitment.

MR: Our generation hears stories of the model teachers of the past. What is so wrong now?

YJ: It started in mid 60s. The whole moral fibre of society started collapsing. As I said earlier you cannot expect a teacher to be a missionary while all others are robbers. It is only for 5 hours in a day that the student is within the intellectual grip of the teacher. What happens to the remaining 17 hours? Out of those remaining 17 hours, 8 to 9 hours they are with their parents, 5 to 7 hours they sleep and 2 to 3 three hours they are on the streets. This is the modern day student. In the urban and semi-urban surroundings you have decent or indecent exposure to electronic and print media which is vulgar and it glorifies and legitimizes obscenity, violence, and crime. You cannot undo it in a 5 hour interaction with the teachers after all the pervasive negative influences of 8 to 9 hours a day. Practically speaking, I feel the young NGO network is the best pragmatic answer to our problems, rather than having a few people sitting in glass houses in Islamabad or in the secluded corridors of power in the four provincial capitals, and drawing up plans for Jaccobabad or Umar Kot etc. Therefore, the NGO networking should be strengthened.

MR: These private enterprises, NGO sector as well as private schools, they have a lot of influence on the media. Do you think that the public schooling system has been unnecessarily criticized by the media? Private schools as well as NGOs are literally available at every corner, providing absolutely the same or even lower quality of education and getting away with it. Do not you think that it is an intentional attack on the public sector?

YJ: Yes! They had their vested interest there but in a way I would say, that has put the public schools on guard.

MR: It has not. It has actually created absolute complacency. The NGOs made a lot of public schools dependent on them. Moreover, you simply cannot hold private schools accountable in any way any more. Under this government, Professor Anita Ghulam Ali started to place a basic level of accountability on the private schools, which caused absolute havoc; because they refused to work under any regulation. They don't even provide basic facilities, their teachers are not trained, they are ill-equipped, minting money; taxing the poor and getting away with it. Do not you think that this is public sector bashing which to many is the only sustained solution.

YJ: From their perspective, their counter argument is any regulation you bring in this country opens a door for corruption. What guarantee is there that the education inspector of today would not become money minters of tomorrow? How do you expel this apprehension from the people's mind? Again through education.

MR: But would you not say that they are involved in institutionalised corruption? They are exploiting the fact that the public sector is not performing.

YJ: I agree with you, but the point I want to make is that a monitoring system needs trained people. The nucleus of which is to have excellent teachers' training institutes. The so called curriculum extension wings have been failures. The superior science colleges and comprehensive high schools have been failures. The blame lies with the teachers training.

MR: It is said that from the education minister to the education secretary down to the field education managers, (a) they have little or no knowledge of the complex, dynamic and transformatory field of education - I am referring to the previous government - (b) even if they did, the administrative work was so much that they spent at best 0.1% of their time thinking about the actual course of education. Most of their time is spent on hiring, firing, that is running the "industry", rather than exerting all efforts towards child development.

YJ: Let me very frank. It is a misnomer to say that our education secretary is an education secretary. They are not education secretaries they are education managers. They are not educationists at all. In some countries academic giants occupy these positions - who spend years of their lives in a particular field. Unfortunately, we have inherited a bad legacy. One solution of the problem is to have eminent educationists as education secretaries and additional secretaries. Partly this exercise has been done in a sense that they have an Additional Secretary Education in charge of academic affairs. Officers from CSP cadre were supposed to be in charge of administration and finance. That is why the late Professor Eqbal Ahmed had a dispute with the faculty of the Quaid-e-Azam University that professors should not be involved in administrative affairs. Abolish all these overheads, perks and activities which they have to arrange like "get togethers", hosting feasts for VIPs. Administration should be separated from education.

MR: To conclude, we seem to have come to a point where we can easily say that our social fabric has completely broken down. Education was supposed to play a central role towards rebuilding, which it has not. It has actually contributed to the devastation and further destruction of the social and moral fabric of our society. There is no leadership. There is no commitment. What can be done?

YJ: You are talking about very lofty idealism, very lofty objectives. This is very commendable indeed. The idealism, which would permit body politic to let it survive. Here we find a paradox; deterioration of moral values and yet a drive towards economic development. The government is talking about launching mega projects. The question is who is going to develop and manage these future projects? All our brilliant youth continue to go abroad. Who will be the managers, the business planners, the developers to run the public sector tomorrow and who will sustain this development? And where will this sustainable development come from? So, both from the materialistic and idealistic standpoints, education is on hold. We have to have a group of devoted, committed and motivated people to begin at taluqa or tehsil level, so that we have trained nuclei, a bunch of devoted people of all ages, willing to come forward to take the responsibility. The situation is not so pessimistic. As Iqbal says:

Nahi hay Iqbal na umeed apni kasht-e-viran say
Zara num ho to yeh miti bohat zarkhaiz hay saqi