‘Education key to sustainable human development’

Investment in the education sector is the key to sustainable human development. This was stated by speakers at a seminar titled ‘Education and Human Development’ organised by the Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI) on Monday. Knowledge-Based Welfare Society (KBS) President Dr Shaukat Farooq spoke at the occasion while SDPI Senior Research Associate Arif Naveed moderated the proceedings.
Dr Farooq said: “Sustainable human and economic development can only be achieved by investing in the education sector. Poverty and ignorance are our biggest problems that have led to the lack of national identity that can only be reclaimed by making quality education uniform and free for all.” He said Pakistan must immediately increase its education budget from 1.5 to 5 percent of the GDP.
He added that the West had progressed and developed as a result of social and industrial advancement, with education playing a central role in the process. He stated that these countries made education compulsory about a hundred years ago which led to their economic development. Discussing reforms and improvement in the education sector, Dr Farooq suggested that teachers’ training and establishing a network of vocational centers were necessary for educating and training the masses. Earlier he had also presented a petition urging the government to provide free and quality basic education at par with international standards. He also asked the people to ask the political candidates about their educational agenda before casting votes in the forthcoming parliamentary elections. Arif Naveed said education fostered human development by promoting democracy. He added that education should enhance students’ critical abilities and build their reflective capacities.
He stated that inculcating social justice concerns through education was also critical in promoting democracy but a deeper look needed to be taken into the public schooling system curricula and textbooks. He said these texts emphasised upon religio-nationalism and stated that national and religious identities were threatened. He also cited a recent SDPI study which highlighted that education was promoting religious discrimination through its negative portrayal of religious diversity and the pejorative attitudes of teachers. Such an education system, he said, seriously threatened pluralist values, hence compromising the prospects for democracy. He said Pakistan needed to overhaul its education system by writing better textbooks and promoting educational techniques that enhance the analytical, critical and reflective capacities of the students.