- Why our education does not improve lives
By Rameez Ali Mahesar
Needless to say, education has been described a great deal. But in a nutshell, it can improve lifestyles. Now, the question is; are we living a quality life? In my reckoning, the rejoinder to this question is; “no”. The element of business has been insinuated in the education sector of Pakistan.
Today’s education has made people self-centred, business-oriented and job-seekers as they await to get their degrees. Institutions have been growing briskly in the country but the performance of the sector is on the decline. Increasing the number of institutions, to some extent, is not bad but focusing only on business to mint money is really a big pain in the neck of education.
What is business-oriented education now offering us? To find out, just ask students why they are studying? The answer to your question will indubitably be given by the majority of them; we are getting education to land the job that can enable us to wield power or at least so that we can spend life as elite class people. Who has told them this stupid answer? It is, to that end, because of business-oriented educational institutions. They study in the business-oriented setting, so they are getting brainwashed. The bitter truth is that education is nowhere in business, but business is found in the field of education. How unfortunate!
“We are studying to improve our life style and living standard, to learn socialisation, to become freedom fighters, to know our rights and to become good citizens of our country”; answers of this kind will be in few in number. Until the former opinion in terms of answer to this question is curbed, awaiting the development to come is something impossible. Here are two discrepant rejoinders you will receive in the line of aforesaid question. Let’s sparkle the discussion.
the business-oriented mind must be merged with the ideology of the help-oriented one. In simple terms, education, no doubt, should be business-oriented but it must back the education and health sectors to make the lives of people prosperous. Then, it can be labelled development
To gauge the literacy rate in terms of assessing the development in the country we are living in is nothing but stupidity. The development of a country, in that, does not depend only on education. History is riddled with such multitudinous examples.
Great Britain ruled a fifth of the world even there was relatively little mass education in it. So to say, education plays a minor role in the development of a nation in the global system. Development has nothing to do with education. Regretfully, we await development by focusing our whole attention on education, in the hope that it will bring prosperity to our country.
By assessment, one writer says in an article; “Education is the not solution”, as compared to 1947, there is much more education at present without any good matching achievements. He further exemplifies the Malaysia and Indonesia with similar levels of education to Pakistan have surpassed it.
The problem lies in how individually the purpose of education is described, understood and perceived. “The harm to the country is being inflicted by the majority of the educated masses. The travesty is; the proportion of uneducated masses is blamed for the sins the educated rulers do,” says Altaf Anjum.
Why are the institutions increasing even in the very small towns of the country– pointedly in Sindh? Simply, the answer is to make money. Students from the beginning of school to university level are taught indirectly by the authorities or owners, that they are highly educated so that’s why they are doing business to mint money the most. Thus, at the outset, the students are given ideas of driving the business of making profit as they receive degrees. In doing this, neither is there a stab taken at bringing quality in the education, nor is the actual meaning of education taught to students so that they can improve their lives.
The major portion of the students believes in education as a tool of driving business. That is not a bad belief, but to deliver education solely as a business to make profit is completely wrong. As Iqbal S Sachdeva in his book Public Relations – Principles and Practices writes; “the business of a business is not only doing business but to also make the lives of the people more enjoyable and worth living”. So, they should not only make the profit but to contribute some proportion from their earnings to the education and health sectors”. To that end, the business-oriented mind must be merged with the ideology of the help-oriented one. In simple terms, education, no doubt, should be business-oriented but it must back the education and health sectors to make the lives of people prosperous. Then, it can be labelled development.
The writer can be contacted at [email protected]
