In a foreign country, where you are a minority, perhaps you learn the true value of your origins. I always treasured being from Pakistan, but going to college in the United States gave me the unique opportunity to personally represent my country in various events.
I did not expect the average American to know much about Pakistan, but I was surprised at the image most locals had. If the person I was speaking to was not a political science or geography major, he or she would most commonly assume Pakistan to be a land which was mostly desert, and inhabited by poor, uneducated people. My ability to speak the English language was a major shock to many, as was the knowledge that parts of Pakistan are covered in snow permanently and that nearly all American fast food chains are present in all the major cities.
The average American did not know about Pakistan and the average Pakistani at all. And why should he? But then it suddenly struck me, that maybe I didn’t know who the average Pakistani was either.
I was right. For some reason the average Pakistani in my mind was like me and my friends; students, trained to speak English from a very young age, educated in the British system of GCE O and A Levels. We took pride in our culture and arts but our dressing sense was western, so was our music, TV shows, movies and even our favorite places to eat. What all of us had in common was that our parents could afford, or were willing to pay the large amount of tuition that the schools we went to asked for.
The reality however is that today 50% of over 170 million Pakistanis are in poverty. Given that figure, it is safe to say that the vast majority of Pakistan’s youth cannot afford the school that I went to. Because of his or her family’s financial status, the student would have to go to a public school of much lower standard. The public schools are much cheaper, but for the most part, do not teach the English language well, nor do they give education of an acceptable enough standard to be comparable to private schools.
Education is a basic human right, and quality of it should not depend on one’s ability to pay. For no fault of their own students depending on their parent’s financial status can turn into completely different people in Pakistan. Public schools and private schools have entirely different syllabi. The expensive private schools follow the British education reform’s General Certificate of Education (GCE), while the rest of education in Pakistan that is overseen by the government is divided into five levels; primary (grades one through five); middle (grades six through eight); high (grades nine and ten, leading to the ‘matric’ or Secondary School Certificate or SSC) ; intermediate (grades eleven and twelve, leading to a Higher Secondary (School) Certificate or HSC); and university programs leading to undergraduate and graduate degrees.
The problem with government schools is that funding for infrastructure and education is so low that the standard has become appalling. The books are outdated, teachers are underpaid, and classrooms are falling apart. As a result High school or SSC graduates from public schools have a very different understanding of the world and modern philosophies compared to students from private schools.
Better quality education opens one’s mind, and it can be argued that it makes one more liberal. This is because you are exposed to various schools of thought and therefore might be more tolerant of certain things. You become more open minded as you are out in the open to different philosophies of morals, ethics, life and religion. I have distant cousins who I meet often who have not had the fortune of going to a good school like me and it’s amazing how different we are. They are understandably more conservative, but some of their views about things like religion are in my opinion very strict and at times, frighteningly violent.
No comments:
Post a Comment