What do Ali Moeen Nawazish, Ibrahim Shahid and Syed Zohaib Asad have in common? That they did us proud? Or that they were a tad obsessed with the number of grades (rather than the quality of knowledge they received)? To each their own – and kudos to these three young men for their achievements – but perhaps these boys are merely representing the old middle-class anxiety: jump for the stars, and if you fail, jump again.
Its not as if I want to belittle these young men’s achievements; having grown up in a family of similar anxieties, I understand the pressure of having to deliver as many as A’s as possible in the hope that it will secure a better future. My own father worked three jobs to put my younger brother and me to private schools. Back in our days, getting 8 or 9 A’s in O’Levels was the real deal and 5 or 6 in A’Levels would be considered success. The elite schools of Karachi would then cherry-pick these handful of students from across the city – good results never did anyone’s prestige or reputation any harm, and that too in a fiercely competitive industry.
This industry part, the one of capitalism rather than of diligent application, is at the heart of the problem. Regardless of which syndicate tests these students take, we are mass producing a bunch of grade-obsessed kids rather than ones interested in creation. By its very nature, our education system is designed to perpetuate and further create a society divided into classes. The rich go to elite schools, the middle-classes to average ones, and the poor… well, education has been turned into a luxury for them. It is this middle-class that is the subject of my focus; for the same class finds itself sub-divided in terms of the Cambridge (or London) system and the Matriculation system. The former is deemed to be a guarantor of success, the latter not so much. Barring a few notable exceptions, schools following the matriculation system have increasingly bowed down to the throes of politicking in the boards, exam papers and admission card fiascos, and a general mismanagement of academic affairs.
The perception that schools following the Cambridge system will be more transparent is understandable, despite its underlying assumptions being flawed to a certain extent. But essentially, a large middle-class finds itself competing for the limited lucrative opportunities bequeathed to it by the elite. Ali Moeen Nawazish’s 21 As in A’Levels, Ibrahim Shahid’s 23 A’s and Zohaib Asad’s 28 A grades in O’Levels are manifestations of that middle-class pride finding some expression. As the saying in Urdu goes, the problem with the middle-class is that it dreams of an elite lifestyle but its resources are comparable to the lower classes.
This is also the same class that finds some sort of empowerment in Imran Khan, or even Anna Hazare’s movement, of derailing democratic procedures, in favour of a more direct expression of having their demands recognised and accepted. This is also the same class that prioritises boys’ higher education to girls: boys from middle-class families usually end up in the Cambridge system and girls in the Matriculation. We consciously create these divisions among genders; no wonder that middle-class anxieties intensify when girls outshine boys at academics.
Some days ago, my dear friend Abbas Nasir, former editor of Dawn, excitedly tweeted about his daughter’s IGSCE results. She hadn’t received over 20 A’s, just a mere 6 A’s. But for a change, the young woman fell in love with her subjects and did not lust after the number of A grades. Even better, her success was her father’s success – something not many patriarchs hold as a guiding principle in Pakistan. Kudos to both Abbas’ daughter and her parents for bringing some normalcy to our world of anxieties and tensions.
The writer is Deputy City Editor, Pakistan Today, Karachi. In Twitterverse, he goes by @ASYusuf.