Category Archives: Children and Youth

O the rankings again

Children and Youth, Economy, Education, Information

By Zubeida Mustafa

THE Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings released last week offers some food for thought — that is, if we do not dismiss this annual exercise as a Jewish conspiracy. For Pakistan the bad news is that none of our universities figure in the first 400 institutions of higher education ranked globally. Pakistan failed to make it even to the top 100 Asian institutions.

Using carefully selected criteria, THE ranks universities across the globe according to their “core missions — teaching, research, knowledge transfer and international outlook.” As can be expected, American and European universities have the highest ranking — the California Institute of Technology, Harvard University and the University of Oxford are the top three. Asia also boasts of 20 universities that are part of this prestigious global list — the University of Tokyo was judged as the best in the continent, and China, Korea and Singapore are making remarkable headway. Continue reading O the rankings again →

Polio emergency

Children and Youth, Development and Poverty, Health, New

By Zubeida Mustafa

A FIRM stand by WHO has jerked the Pakistan government into action. Since Sunday all travellers going abroad are required to take polio drops. Last month WHO’s director general had declared the international spread of polio a “public health emergency of international concern” warranting “temporary recommendations for coordinated international efforts”.

Since Pakistan was named as one of the three ‘polio-exporting countries’ the matter made banner headlines in the media at home. Ironically, the prospects of a country with an inordinately large number of crippled children had not caused much alarm. Continue reading Polio emergency →

Motivating the teacher

Children and Youth, Development and Poverty, Education, Human Rights, New

By Zubeida Mustafa

A NUMBER of reports on education in Pakistan confirm what has been long suspected. Without improving the quality of our teachers, quality education for all will remain a pipe dream. Howsoever much their economic status may be boosted, it will have no impact on education for children from the low socio-economic classes if teachers are not taught how to teach and what to teach.

Many well-meaning, no-profit NGOs that are entering the school sector are learning this the hard way through experience and after much experimentation. The Garage School in Karachi that was opened by Shabina in her garage in 1999 to teach the children of the underprivileged the three Rs is a case in point. It is in the process of launching a teachers’ training project to upgrade its teachers. Continue reading Motivating the teacher →

Bridging the abyss

Children and Youth, Education, Human Rights, New, War and Peace

By Zubeida Mustafa

DESCRIBING his experience of blindness, Prof John Hull of Birmingham University and author of On Sight and Insight, says that people see blindness as an attribute. Hull, who lost his vision more than 30 years ago, thinks differently. According to him, the blind have their world as the sighted have theirs. But those who can see exclude the blind from the world of the sighted. The two worlds do not meet. Hull has a strong yearning to “overcome the abyss which divides the blind from the sighted”.

This fact is something not everyone understands. Those who do are inclusive and work to bridge this gap. One such institution that is exemplary in this context is the Almaktoom Centre in Islamabad. Since 1982 this school has been enrolling children with visual disability to provide them education to enable them to become self-reliant adults. Continue reading Bridging the abyss →