Run for your life, educationists
An old proverb goes, “A foolish man hates instruction but the wise seeks guidance”. The quote is aimed at individuals but what happens when those individuals are living together in large numbers and form a nation? Such, I believe, is the condition of our country were novelty and progression are perhaps the most detested ideologies.
Very recently, news flashed about Dr Bernadette L Dean fleeing from Pakistan because of death threats. For those of you who do not know Dr Dean is, let me introduce her. She has a PhD from University of Alberta in Canada and has served as Principal of St Joseph’s College for Women, Principal of Kinnaird College for Women and as Professor at the Aga Khan University. What caused trouble, however, was her role as a member of the Advisory Committee for Curriculum and Textbooks Reforms. In her own words, she was accused of “being a foreigner woman who has single-handedly made changes to the curriculum and textbooks that made them secular and called her an enemy of Islam”. The keyword here is ‘change’. She tried to introduce something new and update the curriculum (which, by the way, was co-authored by several other local authors too before being finalised). In turn she started receiving threats for a month after which she made the decision to run for her life. She probably regrets wasting years for a nation that threatens to take her life. Is what she gets in return for her efforts? It’s not always what you sow that you reap, I suppose.
This is not the first time that foreigner educationists have been targeted here. A month back, US academic Debra Lobo who was working as Assistant Professor of Community Health at Jinnah Medical and Dental College was attacked by four gunmen. Her crime too was that she left her country and had a heart to educate Pakistan hoping to change the literacy statistics. I fail to see any ulterior motives for foreign academics for coming here to Pakistan. They leave their safe havens and fly to a land which is deemed the second most dangerous place in the world. Statistics suggest that the US has a literacy rate of 99 per cent whereas Pakistan stands at a 54.4 per cent (this too is an amplified round off considering the criteria for classifying an individual as literate). This should point towards which country needs education more and why academics would feel the need to pour in. Sadly, as a nation, we do not respect academics much and seldom acknowledge those who fly in to our country for its betterment. We are instead a skeptic nation and are all conspiracy theorists trying to unleash the hidden motives behind their generous acts.
Forget foreign academics, I have seen local academics suffer at the hands of their own people too. Take, for example, Professor Pervez Hoodbhoy, a Pakistani nuclear physicist, essayist, national security analyst and a professor of physics. He too had to face harsh criticism from the nation obsessed with old ideas. His ideas, like any new ideas, were discarded without a second thought and probably led to him receiving threats too. Same was the case with Mrs Nasreen Shah, the principal of LGS-55 Main who assumed that Pakistan was ready to accept knowledge. She was sadly mistaken as her efforts to introduce ‘Comparative Religion’ had severe backlash and eventually she had to drop the idea. Such is the fate of any academic who wishes to introduce change.
In my personal teaching experience I too have had to deal with supervisors who were rigid enough not to accept any creative ideas. New courses were shunned upfront and so were any efforts to introduce fresh teaching methodologies. Instead, the teachers are asked to blindly comply with the seniors. I am sure such is the plight of young academics in Pakistan. They are discouraged from bringing innovation just at the beginning of their careers lest they end up becoming great assets for the nation like Dr Hoodbouy. So stick to the old ideologies and you are safe in your job but if you try to introduce novelty, you shall have to suffer. To all the innovation and change loving local academics, young or old, new or experienced, here is my piece of advice – Stop investing your time, energy and ideas into the nation that hates knowledge and instruction and instead just run for your lives. Run for the greener pastures that await you on the other part of the globe because Pakistanis are unwilling to accept change.