Education should be a vision rather than a mission

“Education is known as a basic right to accelerate the socio-economic development in the whole. Virtually, every serious commentator agrees that major reforms within the Third World education is long overdue,” says Former Director General of UNICEF, Richard Jolly. Education for all is universally accepted as a basic right to accelerate the socio-economic development and promote national integration and individual dignity. Indeed education is the most vital investment for any programme of national development in any country. When appropriate opportunities are made available to channel the natural endowment in a creative, productive and useful way, the youth are definitely capable of doing miracles. Education is a social instrument through which man can guide his destiny and shape future. By education we mean three things: first, mental, spiritual and social education; secondly, physical education that includes military training and third Technical or professional education. Education at basic level can be categorised into two elementary development phase, Primary and secondary. Let’s have a look at the present state of affairs in the country that our education system has not undergone with major changes. Our colleges, schools, and universities still remain anchored to the pattern that had been introduced a century ago by what British government had introduced to serve their administrative and other needs. There is a need of radical change in the education system. A change requires not only in method and curricula but also the aims and objectives of the education within the frame of social, economic and political setup of the country. Our educational system does not create an educated mind to play an active role in the attainment of knowledge. Things are loaded on child’s mind which he/she can no longer digest. Our educational system in the word of Dr.Annie is just’ cramming the boys head with a lot of disjointed facts poured into the head as into a basket to be emptied out again in the examination room, and empty basket carried out again into the world”. This is the reason of a student who succeeds well in his college examination fails miserably in the examination of life. We have produced a generation who are book-worms -who knows nothing of the world beyond the world of books. Students have covered the windows of his mind with pages of the books. The present educational system has no role to enlighten the citizens and produce creative thinkers. The existing system is more theoretical far from the application level. As Maulana Azad observed there is” no adjustments between the system of our education and the need of our life”. The students are taught lessons from books but not lessons from life. In other words, one is provided with information but not the wisdom of education. The costly education system is also a big hurdle in the educational development for a competitive student belongs to lower middle class. Our system of education is expensive and education for poor students in private universities and some governmental institutions have become like an unmet dream. In nutshell, our education system requires an urgent and radical change to develop an effective educational system providing quality education at primary level. An initiative also to be taken for making a comprehensive national scheme for the holistic development and inculcating in the learner’s mind a sense of cooperation, to honour dignity of labour and the value of constructive work. It should also stimulate students’ intellect and imagination for a vision of an intelligent citizen and ideal servant of society rather a bookworm and job hunters. The writer, Shagufta Sarwar, a resident of Chitral, is a student at the Government Frontier College for Women, Peshawar.]]>