Parvez Jamil
IMAGINE how our educational experts fantasize in the name of modernizing education, making it contemporary and compatible with world standard. These fantastic models of education may be very good for the “opulent, the elite, the gentry and the upper strata” which do not even form a fraction of our total population. But a four-year Bachelor’s degree for a poor student, labouring from dawn to dusk, earning and feeding eight mouths, caring and sharing for ailing parents and little siblings, studying night-long in candle light without electricity, toiling long for a four year graduation for a peanuts of a return is an example of education so agonizing for the masses.
While educational bosses put up with two-year BA, BSc, and B.Com for the commoners and encourage the cost effective two year Associate Degree in vocational disciplines in a number of institutions, the hype and hysteria created regarding fanciful BBA and BS programs and the rat race to business schools leading to an enchanting and exhilarating vibes of the corporate sector overshadow the common two-year Bachelor’s and Associate degrees and seal the fate of the majority of education-seekers who cannot even dream what to talk of affording the sky-rocketing cost of business management schools.
The point is not undermining the value of four-year Bachelor’s degree which has been rightly advocated by our educational authorities to make education compatible with international standards. The point is that this long and exorbitant education is beyond the means of the common man which the sole bread earner of a poor family cannot afford for children of four or five. The point is such a practical test of understanding, imagination and commitment from our educational authorities, PhD prodigies and educational messiahs in making existing two-year BA, BSc and BCom more inventive and innovative, more creative and comprehensive, more intensive and rigorous to make it for a commoner a well-earned, justified, affordable and utilized Bachelor’s degree.
First, if education remains a complicated fashion for kids with needless, confusing and mounting books, copies and paraphernalia, it shall continue to produce stereotype products untutored, untrained and unprepared for life excellence. The point to ponder for our educational intelligentsia is to be courageous enough to break away from unnecessary, overburdening and overtaxing practices and devising a simpler, meaningful and rewarding system for students, teachers and parents.
Secondly, as deep-rooted traditional and so-called modern practices need a lot of vision to modify, it will be in the fitness of things to promote a primary curriculum according to our objective conditions and contemporary needs. It means simple, interesting and activity-based three subjects, three books and three copies: A harmonious blend of positive, pertinent and practical concepts in three subjects: Morals and ethics; general knowledge; maths and science with IT as a tool of study. Later at the secondary level this combination of courses may be added with aptitude assessed and oriented vocational or professional training in various fields or trades. Thirdly, while it depends on the sense of direction and level of commitment of our educational intelligentsia to devise such a bold, innovative and rewarding curriculum for our primary assets, it is a challenging task for our educational managers to formulate, organize and promote an appealing package of graceful and purposeful education for the young nation at affordable cost — a matter of scientific economizing and cutting down on non-development expenditure.
It is where education becomes appealing, affordable and accommodating, according to the objective conditions of our own society and in close consonance with current and contemporary trends in industrial, economic and technological transformation. It is when fashionable study options replace with aptitude-oriented and rewarding knowledge and bursting school bags transform into simpler and inspiring package of cost-effective, graceful and purposeful education…It is a question of creativity, ingenuity and discovery on the part of our educational managers and messiahs, PhD prodigies and experts, specialists and those at the helm of affairs of education.
—The writer specializes as a teaching faculty in educational and media management.
