On an educational approach.

Every time I meet a person who is condemning the Pakistan education system, i nod my head in agreement.  Then I come back and start tutoring a 12th grader or a university student who graduated in Canada or US with an IB, A levels or the usual US-Canadian school system. There are some very annoying moments during these time periods when I am forced to realize that Pakistan education system is not all that bad. Before this statement creates a tantrum among the readers, let me clarify myself. I don’t think there is anything wrong with the curriculum, or lets say there wasn’t anything wrong with the curriculum in 2002 at least. So far as the examination and testing goes, I am in complete agreement with the general notion.I say this especially about the curriculum in the fields of Mathematics for engineering and science majors, as well as Physics and languages. The first day I entered the calculus class in university, i realized this was the wrong place to be; I knew everything that was going on in 1st year's Differential Calculus (minus the theory part for Cauchy theorems) and I certainly knew everything that went on Deferential calculus for engineers as there was no theory in it. Worst than that, I knew everything that went on next semester in Integral calculus; the result was me sitting bored in the class hardly paying attention. One of the beauties of these two courses is that they ban the use of any calculator in them, for obvious reasons. This sends waves of terror throughout the class; however it doesn’t seem bad at all to people like me as we are not used to being allowed calculators in school anyway. We make our brains work at times. The result is the greatest number of failing students in these courses; courses which are quiet easy if you have done them before in school.  The coursework that is used for science and Math classes back in Pakistan is quiet extensive and what I term as ‘hard’.

 In mathematics they cover everything like set theory, algebra, differential and integral calculus, analytical geometry, discrete math, statistics, group theory, probability theory and much more. Similarly for physics the curriculums starts at Newtonian Mechanics and kinematics, including stuff like industrial physics, electrostatics, electronics, fluid mechanics and so on till grade 10 with much more interesting modules such as thermo,  modern physics, nuclear physics and sound and waves left for 11 and 12 grade with more extensive discussion of the previous ones. I never took chemistry beyond grade 10 but whatever I learnt in those 2 years has enabled me to tutor 1styear chem. Majors in here as well (at least for organic chem and inorganic chem.). The computer courses, while not at all to my liking, were still quiet practical. Same went for biology,Hence the science curriculum is not exactly a problem in Pakistan, it is extensive, up-to-date and useful plus it makes you think.  On the other hand, there is something amiss in all this which is reflected in the fact that we have tons of graduates who don’t know squat about any of these things. Where does the education system actually go wrong? The answer probably, lies in the methodology adopted for teaching as well as testing the students which encourages cramming.Some of the reasons most students fail to learn anything would be

• The only thing that matters are the pre boards and the board exams. You can sit on your ass all year long and do nothing, yet cram everything towards the end in 2 weeks and get a decent grade. This does not make you learn anything for the long haul. Short term memory stores everything written in the book and as easily forgets about it.
• The way board examinations work actually encouraged regurgitation of what’s written in the book much more than actual knowledge and understanding. I do not think writing a 2 page essay on a Geiger-Muller counter makes you learn anything, solving for the half life and radioactivity of uranium block does. The emphasis should be on the application and problem solving side of the issue and not on the regurgitating side. Unfortunately this is the case for all sciences except math in most cases.
• The other biggest problem would be the total laziness of the teachers, both in the schools and then at the board level. I mean no disrespect, but coming to think about it, the effort that is actually put into making students ‘learn’ rather than topping the board is zilch. Same goes for the effort that goes into designing the questions. I could never understand why the board would pick questions and numerical from the chapter exercises of the books and put them exactly the same way in the exams. I have solved the same damned integral 5 times; I would practically know it by heart during the exam. Make new questions that make students use their mind and not their writing speed or cramming power.
• Same would go for the practical examinations and viva. The idea of having a practical experiment which tries to explain the theory learnt is amazing and downright great. What’s not great is the fact that due to sheer repetition, everything is just copied off previous year’s student notebooks. If the teachers go an extra mile by posting pre-lab exercises and post-lab exercises that check the level of understanding of students, this wouldn’t be a problem. The viva examiners should also try to ask different questions, questions that don’t come from the back of the exam book. My worst viva was the one where the examiner asked me to define ‘torque’. I was jolted and to some extent insulted, who asks an 11^th grader to define  torque. On the other hand, my best viva was the one where examiner went all over the place asking so many different questions, even the ones that were not supposed to be known by a 10^th grader. I felt good after the viva, it made me learn as I looked up everything I did not know and be proud of what I  did know and managed to answer.

There are a few problems with the arts curriculum however, not the languages mostly but for others the curriculum sucks big time. Even for languages, some stuff is somewhat useless. I mean talk about reading Goodbye Mr Chips in 12^th grade as a novel; it would be more like a pathetic excuse for a novel. What happened to stuff like Pride and Prejudice (I am an Austen junkie) and Old Man and the Sea or something of that kind? But language courses are still okay, the worse of its kind would be the most boring subject called Pakistan Studies. Now I am a Pakistani and I love my country, but I don’t want to remember and cram Jinnah’s 14 points every year starting in grade 7. Why don’t we introduce history, culture, geography and so on? Why are we stuck at what Nehru said and what Gandhi said and what Jinnah said. I mean really, at this stage do we care more than just having it as a history we might know about? Why are we never taught about the governmental structure existing in our own country, of the judicial system of our country, of the problems that Pakistan is facing, of the foreign policy of the country?   The school system tries its best to make us all pre-partition groupies. I have nothing against the struggle for Pakistan, I couldn’t!! But to teach it year after year is just tedious and useless. Make a point of what we stand for and move on, no one cares when Simon Commission came to India and what they did.

On the other hand, what most students need is a little improvement of their general knowledge beyond all this. Teach them some things about world history; I have met some 17 year olds who don’t know what holocaust is! That’s just tragic. Teach them something about world geography and demographics. In short, teach them about what kind of world they live in and where in it do they belong as a nation and individuals. I personally think that arts courses and especially like these are an excellent opportunity to make humans and citizens out of the students attending schools. Unfortunately, the education system does not avail this opportunity.  Another big joke is the Islamiat period that we all have. I have never seen something as ineffective; it just doesn’t do anything at all to teach morals or religion to the students. All it does is to make them afraid of translating Arabic!  They go on and on teaching 3 surahs throughout the school, oh well maybe 7! What is amusing is that no one ever questions if the students reading those surahs actually have ever read Quran or even know how to read it. Students are required to cram all the moral lessons to regurgitate them on the exams but no one asks them if they even know how to offer prayers. Whereas we are always taught that school is the place where the real upbringing of the child takes place, why doesn’t anyone at school bother to teach us the basics of islam? Starting from reading Quran and namaz.

Yet another thing which is more amusing than anything, is the fact that the only province where urdu is compulsory i.e. the academic urdu and not the easy kind (hehe) is Punjab. While I am all for it and I wish other provinces could do the same, I cannot fathom why Punjab is the only province where the students are not taught their mother tongue i.e. Punjabi. Sindh, Balochistan and NWFP all have Sindhi, Balochi and Pashto as part of curriculum. Is it because of the close relationship of Punjabi and urdu or merely because there are too many dialects and versions of Punjabi language to make it unified? I guess I would never know now!!!