WHAT if we built a nation where education meant memorizing without questioning, where infrastructure was a luxury not a right and where civic sense was optional but still asked, “Why is extremism rising?” What if we taught children to compete, not to collaborate? To win, not to wonder? To obey, not to think? And then we wondered why they grew up either indifferent or radicalized? What if we never built libraries, but flooded the streets with tuition centers? What if we never taught ethics, but drilled formulas and dates into young minds until they forgot how to feel?
And then we ask, where did this mindset come from? It came from us. Take a drive down Islamabad highway. Observe the motorcyclist weaving through the fastest lane, helmetless and lawless. We shake our heads and say “no discipline.” But who built this culture of shortcuts? It’s us. We dump garbage outside our homes, then complain about municipal failure. We break walls to expand driveways, then lament the loss of public space. We smoke in hospitals, bribe in offices, honk in silence zones and still ask, why is society broken? The paradox is not just in policy. It is in us.
We call it education. But is it? Cramming textbooks without context, competing for grades, not growth.Learning to please, not to question. We are producing toppers who can recite Newton’s laws but cannot name a single social law that they follow. We reward obedience, punish curiosity, and then wonder why innovation is missing. What if we taught empathy before equations? Debate before dictation? What if we allowed failure, embraced questions and celebrated differences?
Due to my experience in humanitarian work, I believe that extremism does not emerge from a vacuum. It festers in absence of opportunity, of dignity and of dialogue. When a child grows up in a slum with no school, no park, and no hope, what ideology can we expect to fill that void? When a young adult is told that their worth lies in marks and not meaning, what identity do you expect them to cling to? When a society rewards silence and punishes dissent, what kind of leaders do you expect it to produce?
We speak of climate change as if it is a foreign threat, but what if the crises is not just ecological but educational? What if we taught children to recycle but never taught them why rivers matter? What if we planted trees for photo ops but chopped them down for parking lots? Floods displaced thousands of people in the last couple of years, yet we still build on riverbeds. Climate change is not just about carbon. It is about choices. And we keep choosing convenience over conscience. The irony? We demand climate justice from global powers while ignoring the garbage burning in our own backyards.
It is easy to blame the government, the West, the media or the curriculum, but the harder truth is, we are complicit. We hire tutors but never teach kindness, build homes but ignore sidewalks, call youth misguided but never ask their needs. We say the system is broken yet bribe the traffic police, demand women lead yet silence them at family dinners, demand rights but forget responsibilities. We are the paradox, the irony. Change begins when we redefine success as wisdom, build schools of compassion, and ask not “why is society broken?” but “how have I contributed to the cracks?”
—The writer is contributing columnist, based in Islamabad.
