The story of high targets, low performance

Administration, Archive Edition, Children and Youth, Economy, Education

By Zubeida Mustafa

EDUCATION planning in Pakistan has traditionally been lopsided, with the priorities misplaced. There has been too much emphasis on higher education, while the primary sector has, by and large, been neglected. Consequently, education has been like an inverted pyramid balanced on a narrow base.

The basic weakness in the government’s education policy lies in its reluctance or inability to allocate sufficient funds to this sector. Hence resources have had to be spread thin. Thus in 1982-83 Pakistan spent only 1.5 per cent of its GNP on education. Continue reading The story of high targets, low performance →

Population growth: Official programmes misdirected

Archive Edition, Development and Poverty, Economy, Population

By Zubeida Mustafa

THE KEY factor which will, in the final analysis, determine Pakistan’s economic and social progress in the coming years is the size of the country’s population and the rate at which it grows. In view of the present population explosion in the country, it is difficult to hold out much promise on this count.

The official population planning programme, which will complete two decades of its existence in 1985, has so far made not much of an impact on the demographic scene. The rate of population growth in this country is one of the highest in the world. In 1901 the area now comprising Pakistan had a population of 16 million. This doubled itself in 50 years, the 1951 census recording a population of 33 million. Continue reading Population growth: Official programmes misdirected →

Wrong approach to primary education

Archive Edition, Children and Youth, Education

By Zubeida Mustafa

WHERE is a Pakistani child at the age of 8 12 years being led to provided he is among those 50 percent who go to school? By the time he is eight—the age at which Dr Montessori, one of the greatest educationists of the century, thinks a child is ready to go to junior school — a Pakistani child has already been attending school for three years , even more if he began his studies at a nursery school. His activities have already been restricted by the rigours and discipline of a regular school at a time he should have been free to be active and explore the world for himself.

If he happens to go to a Government or nationalised school, he would in all probability be one of a class of 80 or 90. His teacher would never get to know him during the course of a year and worse still he would not be learning much while being confined to the restrictive environs of the classroom . Continue reading Wrong approach to primary education →

Why are our students not avid readers?

Archive Edition, Books, Children and Youth, Culture and the Arts, Education, Library

By Zubeida Mustafa

SOME students were once asked why they read books — that is books other than their course books. Their answers were quite varied: to kill time; to increase their knowledge; because they were asked to do so by their teacher; to fulfil their social needs; to develop their personalities. Very few said that they read for pleasure. When young people are not reading books voluntarily or because they derive a sense of satisfaction from it, it is not strange that they are not forming life-long reading habits.

Obviously when a person feels under a compulsion or pressure to read, he will abandon is books as soon as he no longer feels the need for them. While a number of young people are reading books as a duty, there are a number of others who are not reading at all, their prescribed texts excepted.

A National Book Council survey conducted in 1981 found that 20 per cent of the students questioned said that they did not like to read. Even those who read, devoted most of the Continue reading Why are our students not avid readers? →

Slow acceptance of a major breakthrough: Computerised calligraphy

Archive Edition, Books, Culture and the Arts, Education, Media, Notable Personalities, Social Issues

By Zubeida Mustafa

IT IS now eighteen months that computerised Urdu nastaliq calligraphy has been in use in the country but it has yet to produce the impact on Urdu printing it could have been expected to. Only one machine is currently being used in Pakistan to bring out an Urdu daily from Lahore.

Why this delay in response? Not that the inventor, Mr Ahmed Mirza Jamil, has not Continue reading Slow acceptance of a major breakthrough: Computerised calligraphy →