The falling standard of English, like any other subject, has its root in the depreciating trend found in education at a national level. We tend to worry more over the pathetic state of the English language, but how other important subjects are being treated is something that is revealed only when students are questioned about them. The extensive borrowing of Hindi lexical items into the Urdu language is something that needs to be highlighted nationally, for it may permanently alter the beliefs of our society.
The students nowadays are surely lacking in primary language skills which disables them to understand much of what the teachers teach. The primary reason for such a pitiable state to evolve is the policy of the state to institutionalize incompetence that allows individuals with no academic background to take charge of the education sector and thus play havoc with the future of the nation. Instead of focusing upon the teaching-learning process, politics of survival and culture of nepotism dominate almost all academic institutions.
Secondly, the increase in student population goes in opposition to the decrease in the budgetary allocations, another by-product of incompetence that allows the government to see it fit to reduce funds for the education sector to meet its budget deficits. The paltry amount, as the writer points out, given to the faculty in the name of salaries is so embarrassingly low that it hardly does anything for the motivation level of the faculty considering the current state where the price hike poses existential threat to many.
How then do we expect the faculty to generate any enthusiasm into the students, a most essential ingredient for enhancing the learning process? The Pakistani society, at large is keen of highlighting others mistakes rather than rewarding an individual for his/her talents and capabilities, thus producing battalions of demotivated and bored students who find no interest in classrooms. This degenerate trend in our education system is something that ought to become the first preference of the government. It is our only hope of a better future, but if things continue in the same manner, we might lose the only hope that we are clinging to for a long time now.
LUBNA UMAR
Islamabad
