Around ten years back, the daughter
of a relative returned to Pakistan after obtaining degrees in science and
mathematics and teaching abroad for a couple of years. She applied to the
school she had studied in for a job and was immediately hired for a princely
amount. She applied to another elite school and was offered thirty percent
more. So she again asked the principal of the first school if they could match
the offer of the other school. They agreed immediately. Naturally, she asked
why salaries of experienced teachers were higher than those of business
graduates and engineers, they told her that there was a serious shortage of
science and math teachers in the country.
When I was in school in
the 1950s, science and mathematics were the most unpopular subjects. Despite
the caning and humiliation meted out to bad students, it was with the greatest
difficulty that they were able to get passing marks in these subjects. When
schools and colleges were nationalized, teaching standards deteriorated
further.
There was a time when
even government schools produced very good students who sometimes topped in the
matric exams. After the indiscriminate nationalization of private schools the
quality of education fell and now you come across people who don’t know how many
zeroes there are in a million or billion. Another result of the poor education
standard in the country is the country’s information minister claiming that the
cost of fuel for a helicopter ride is only Rs. 55 per kilometer. Or Imran Khan
saying that in China there are trains which run at the speed of light. And
whenever I say something like “250 million years ago, most living things died
due to volcanic eruptions, or 65 million years back there was a mass extinction
due to a comet striking the earth”, they wonder if they should take me to the
nearest psychiatrist. Like most scientifically illiterate people, they believe
that the age of the earth cannot be more than six thousand years.
Even in elite schools,
the emphasis is on rote learning. Kids are told to memorize math and physics
problems before tests. I once taught my grandson an easier way to solve
geometry and trigonometry problems, he got a zero because his teacher had told
him to memorize them the way she had dictated them to him.
We used to read a lot in
our teens. My father would buy two morning and three evening newspapers,
besides subscribing to Time, Life magazine and the Readers Digest as well as
buying many novels and books every month. If only our leaders had not given up
reading, we’d never have heard statements like Jesus not being mentioned in
history books or trains in China travelling at the speed of light. Or that
vicious killers like Hitler would not have failed if they had taken U-turns.
Before the advent of TV
(1968-69), reading occupied most of our time. I know that most of our ministers
don’t even have time to read newspapers, they only rely on their yes-men to
tell them that everything is fine, the people are very happy, so they don’t
know the torture the common man has to go through due to their failed policies.
In our culture, it’s
enough to have a bachelor’s degree to be called educated. The really educated
person continues to learn right up to the day he dies. If degree holders don’t
read a single book after graduation, they cannot be called educated. Most
so-called literate people I know would rather do anything than read a book.
With smart phone usage increasing, most people like to watch frivolous video
clips sent to them by their illiterate friends and relatives.
So I’m afraid I don’t
see any improvement in the situation in the near future. More than anything
else, we need to make our people realize that education is necessary for
survival. To conquer a nation, you don’t have to kill its people; you only have
to make them stop reading so they will stop thinking and will accept as true
whatever an illiterate cleric or politician tells them. Today’s Pakistan is
already a country of slaves, a land where people are like sheep waiting to be
led to the slaughterhouse.
Published in Daily Times, February 10th 2019.
https://dailytimes.com.pk/353082/pakistanis-are-virtually-illiterate-because-they-dont-read/
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