WHEN England burnt in the fires lit by rioters and looters earlier this month newspapers in Pakistan gave it wide coverage. Such is the level of interest in the events in the UK which hosts over one million immigrants of Pakistani ancestry. Continue reading When books are spared
Category Archives: Education
Why Shahid cannot read
By Zubeida Mustafa
Shahid, my driver, is not educated. He is not even literate and can barely recognise the alphabets and numbers. On the other hand, Shahid is very intelligent and can connect the wires of my computer correctly; he also maintains the engine of my car pretty well. One day I asked Shahid why he didn’t study when his parents sent him to school in his childhood. With a technological bent of mind, he could have done so well in life.
Continue reading Why Shahid cannot read
Taking the first step: Educating Karachi’s street children
By Zubeida Mustafa
The story of Parveen Lateef and her home school was first published on October 22, 2010. This version includes an update on Lateef and her students. It is as relevant today as it was when it was originally featured. – Ed. Continue reading Taking the first step: Educating Karachi’s street children
Consensus at Harvard
By Zubeida Mustafa
Source: Dawn
OF late, the education sector in Pakistan has come under intense scrutiny abroad. Aid-givers and the so-called partners in the war on terror have belatedly reached the conclusion that at the root of Pakistan’s ills lies the country’s failure to educate its citizens.
Hence the sudden flood of foreign-funded reports and studies on education. It is a different matter that many of their assumptions are Continue reading Consensus at Harvard
Something more on English
An article by Max de Lotbiniere in the Guardian Weekly of 5 July 2011 (www.guardian.co.uk) cites a British Council Report released last month to show that English speakers in Third World countries had a higher earning power — by 25 per cent — than others. The research was conducted in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Cameroon and Rwanda. It also found that the US and UK invested a greater amount of their FDI in countries where English was more prevalent. Continue reading Something more on English