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Archives
Category Archives: Education
Invisible little workers
By Zubeida Mustafa
JUNE 12 was Day against Child Labour. It is a shame that we still have to observe such a day. But we must if we have to make our society less insensitive towards children.
On this occasion, Sparc, which has been struggling since 1992 for the protection of the rights of the child in Pakistan, launched a weeklong campaign focusing on child domestic labour. It demands a ban on it. This is a laudable move though the strategy needs to be well-thought-out.
As is the case in Pakistan, anomalies abound. First of all, we do not even have reliable data. How many children are there in the labour force? The government has not conducted a survey to collect information since 1996 when it stated that three million children were working in the country. Today various agencies give much higher numbers which range between 10 and 12 million (the International Labour Organisation and Unicef, the UN children’s agency). Continue reading
Bomb or bread?
By Zubeida Mustafa
ON May 28, an email was circulating on the web from Dr Shershah Syed, whose services to women’s reproductive health are widely acclaimed.
Doctor Sahib wrote, “Today we are celebrating the atom bomb day when we are a country where millions of children are not going to school — where millions of kids start their morning without food and will work in factories.…”
How true. While chasing the bomb, we have destroyed our people. What Dr Shershah can add is that this is also a country where one cannot escape the heart-wrenching sight of little rag-pickers rummaging through the garbage for food leftovers to ease their hunger pangs. Their emaciated bodies taunt our bomb-makers with misplaced priorities. Defence spending is expected to increase in the budget to be presented later this month. At this rate, though, there will be no one left to protect. The data given out by the health authorities of the prevalence of malnutrition and stunting in Pakistan are not exaggerated. Continue reading
Language in learning
By Zubeida Mustafa
THE Children’s Literature Festival is the best thing that could have happened to the children of Pakistan. Six festivals have already been organised since November 2011 — the latest having been held in Islamabad last week.
It was a pleasure to see thousands of children assemble at the Pak-China Friendship Centre in Islamabad surrounded by gaiety, music and storytelling and, above all, books of all genres for young readers. The atmosphere was one of merrymaking. But the underlying mission was a very serious one. The objective of the organisers was captured in the words splashed all over the backdrops in the auditorium and the conference rooms —“Unlocking the power of reading”.
That is what the literary festival has undertaken to accomplish. It is too early to expect a visible change in the reading habits of children. If the tradition continues and the event reaches a large number of people in due course, it is hoped that it will make an impact. Continue reading
The perfect mismatch
By Zubeida Mustafa
Shan went to school for 10 years, and his mother, a domestic worker, spent thousands and thousands to pay for his schooling (Rs500 per month in the last two years). He had dreams and wanted to “work in an office on a computer”.
Last year Shan’s mother informed me that Shan had found a job as a janitor in a residential apartment block. “What about his studies?” I asked. She didn’t know because she had no idea if he had managed to clear his matric examination. I suspected that he hadn’t because I knew he had failed in the ninth class. It was then that I realised how little he knew. The little tutoring I arranged for him obviously didn’t help. Continue reading
Language and thinking
By Zubeida Mustafa
EDUCATION is a much talked about issue in today’s Pakistan. Unfortunately it provokes little serious thinking and even less action. I keep hoping that this talk will turn into action sooner than later. Until that happens we need to continue talking to keep the matter alive.
At the Karachi Literature Festival recently the session on education which brought a number of top-ranking educationists together was, therefore, a positive move. As could have been expected, the speakers could only touch the tip of the iceberg.
One issue that came up in the course of the discussion that followed was that of critical thinking. Dr Pervez Hoodbhoy, a very articulate example of a critical thinker, was spot on when he said that no school was teaching its students how to think — be it an elitist expensive institution or a low-fee community school. Continue reading
In letter and spirit
By Zubeida Mustafa
Activism is action for change. And if change is to result in progress and not chaos, the process must have leadership. In Pakistan most changes that have been experienced in the lives of women have been driven by activists or in other cases they have evolved from socio-economic compulsions. By its very nature, activism has been a risky game because it seeks change that undermines the power of the upholders of the status quo. In the case of women, activism has called for greater courage because it has an impact on society as a whole and not just a narrow section.
Take the Women’s Action Forum. It was born in the Zia era which is widely acknowledged as being the period when the most anti-women laws in Pakistan’s history were enacted in the name of Islamisation. Where would have we been today had the 17 founder members of the Women’s Action Forum not reacted to the harsh judgment handed down under the Hudood Ordinances in 1981?
Hence the decade of the 1980s may be called Continue reading
Lighting the torch
By Zubeida Mustafa
ACCORDING to the Annual Status of Education Report 2012, only 37 per cent of three-to-five-year-old children are enrolled in pre-schools in rural Pakistan. The enrolment is slightly higher in the urban areas (55 per cent).
This is a serious problem that has profound implications for the goal of ‘education for all’.
Having neglected the education sector for decades, the state is now faced with a huge backlog of out-of-school children the majority of whom have parents with no or little schooling themselves. This, plus poverty, has aggravated the crisis in education for which innovative solutions are now needed. Continue reading
Parents’ choices of language as the medium of instruction in schools
By Zubeida Mustafa
It is now recognized worldwide that the language used as the medium of instruction in primary schools has a profound impact on the child’s learning process. Everything else being equal, children do better academically when they are taught in a language they already know, that is, their home language. Their comprehension is better, their cognition develops faster and they can communicate more effectively as they have the skills to express themselves. They are certainly more confident.
With all the advantages that education in a child’s mother tongue offers, it is surprising that not much attention has been paid to the issue. No language policy for education has been formulated in Pakistan. Neither has any research in the form of a survey on the ground been done. Continue reading
One who opted for change
By Zubeida Mustafa
“Human beings make their own history. They do not do it in circumstances of their own choosing. Their actions are framed by the economic, social and political structures of their age. But, subject to these constraints — indeed, because of them — human beings face a succession of choices.” — Neil Faulkner
HOWEVER everyone doesn’t look for the choices that one can create for oneself. Fewer still actually exercise these choices. Most just sit back and let the state or society make decisions on their behalf. They are mostly the victims of fatalism — kismet or naseeb as they choose to call it — but the fact is that they have opted for the line of least resistance.
Those who consciously decide to bring about change in their lives become the exceptions. They may not make history by spearheading social change on a grand scale. But these individuals initiate the process of change in the lives of their own family that affect generations to come. These quiet actors do not seize the limelight but their courage must be respected. Continue reading
The MDG failure
By Zubeida Mustafa
IN the context of education in Pakistan, 2012 will be long remembered as the Year of Malala Yusufzai. Nobody can forget that fateful October afternoon when this teenager from Swat, whose love for education is legendary, was shot at point blank range by two armed men. She was on her way home from school. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack. Malala was lucky. She escaped death and is now recovering in a British hospital.
The Millennium Development Goals are a UN initiative. Image Credit: Wikipedia.org
More significant than this act of terrorism was the outcry it evoked. It proved above all that the people of Pakistan – with a few obscurantist exceptions – stood for education for their children. Could they be blamed if the government denied them this right? Continue reading