By Zubeida Mustafa
MORE than 91 years ago a child was born to an enlightened and highly literary family. He himself grew up to make a worthy contribution to society as a public intellectual. Apart from his inherited love for Urdu literature, he also loved the profession he had chosen to enter, namely, law.
By Zubeida Mustafa
WILL Ali Akbar Hashmi’s hard-hitting speech in the National Assembly on Independence Day cause our parliamentarians to rethink education in Pakistan? Hashmi is a student who shed light on the plight of out-of-school children living in poverty.
Continue reading Why de-school?By Zubeida Mustafa
IN South Asia’s patriarchal societies, writings by women giving their perspective on sociopolitical issues in the early 20th century are not easily available. Diaries are even rarer. Happily, we now have a valuable addition to this genre. It is a diary introducing us to the views of a 24-year-old woman from Hyderabad Deccan, who went to England for further studies. It was my privilege to have a trained preforming artist, Shama Askari, read it out to me.
Continue reading Home thoughtsBy Zubeida Mustafa
A HEFTY sum of over a trillion rupees has been earmarked for education collectively in the federal and provincial budgets for 2021-2022 that were announced in June. This amount has been growing over the years. But this massive financial investment in human resources has not produced the impact that could have rationally been expected on the learning outcomes of children in Pakistan. This has been confirmed year after year by Aser (Annual Status of Education Report).
Continue reading How we learnBy Zubeida Mustafa
RECENTLY I received a call from Ali Mohammad Goth (in Jahoo Tehsil, population 40,033) in Awaran, Balochistan. Jahoo Tehsil has only two high schools for girls. Scores of students from one of these schools had demanded books to read. This message was conveyed to me by their headmistress Ms Sabar-un-Nisa, courtesy Shabir Rakhshani, the education activist of Awaran. This made me jump up.
Continue reading Reading trends