By Zubeida Mustafa
LAST Monday was International Mother Language Day. In Pakistan some seminars were held but they had no impact on the national discourse. Few in this country consider language a significant element of life. Nor are they interested. The day should have been an occasion for celebrations and some solemn soul-searching to remind us of the many tragic moments in our language and political history. We have wiped them out from our collective memory.
Continue reading Language DayBy Zubeida Mustafa
PAKISTAN’S education is in the doldrums. The more the crisis deepens the more anxious do our policymakers and education stakeholders get. The outcome? They make formal education more rigid and complex, thus driving away children from the process of learning. This intensifies the crisis and the vicious cycle goes on.
Continue reading Fun of learningReviewed By Faisal Bari
Reforming School Education in Pakistan and the Language Dilemma
By Zubeida Mustafa
ISBN: 978-9692102346
330pp.
We have a broken system of education in our country; not many will dispute that. An estimated 22 million youngsters are out of school, even though Article 25A of Pakistan’s Constitution states that the state should provide every child between the ages of five and 16 “free and compulsory” education. We don’t even have universal enrolment at the primary level. Only six to eight percent of enrolled children reach university level.
Continue reading TEACHING IN TONGUESBy Zubeida Mustafa
OUR society seems to have been obsessed for long with the idea of matrimony. Mercifully, the growing trend towards female education has to an extent weakened this obsession — but not in communities still deprived of the benefits of education and enlightenment.
In these underprivileged classes, which constitute the majority, it is a common practice for mothers to start planning their child’s marriage soon after birth. They informally decide who will be whose life partner. Termed ‘baat pukki karna’, the arrangement is irrevocable. The girl’s mother even starts collecting her daughter’s jahez. Obscurantist parents even consider it a sin if the child is not married before puberty.
Continue reading Child marriagesBy Zubeida Mustafa
THE current issue of the Journal of the Pakistan Medical Association carries a supplement sponsored by Pathfinder and titled ‘Keeping the FP promise alive’. This will no doubt be a formidable challenge. A look at the family planning data contained in the supplement gives rise to a sense of hopelessness about the promise ever being kept. In 2012, Pakistan had promised at the family planning conference in London to double the contraceptive prevalence rate to 55 per cent by 2020.We are nowhere close to it.
Continue reading Broken promises