By Anjum Altaf To figure out how we have to come to consider an upside-down world as right-side up, you could do no better than become a fly-on-the-wall in an upscale architect’s office. You will observe, repeatedly, an upright, highly-educated gentleman accompanied by an equally becoming spouse arrive to go over the design of their dream house to be built on 1,000 square yards in what is deemed the ‘ultimate’ community. (The couple, having purchased the ‘plot’ -- that ubiquitous word -- at the going market price would be unaware that it was the patrimony of a dispossessed peasant from whom it was ‘acquired’ at a firesale price to be flipped over by a highly deserving beneficiary. And even if they did, they would consider it a part of the rightful process of development in which resources are transferred from those who do not know how to use...

By Anjum Altaf The COVID-19 pandemic has hit education hard. Schools and colleges have been closed since March which has resulted in a lot of hand-wringing with both educationists and students deploring the time wasted. Pressure is building up to reopen and the government has announced September 15 as the likely date of resumption.  This decision is based partly on the determination that the pandemic has been controlled in Pakistan but experience from many countries that had thought likewise has shown that such relaxation can be premature. Across the world, educational institutions have opened only to be closed again because of the emergence of infection clusters. This is not surprising because the virus has not been eliminated anywhere. It has been successfully localized in many places but as soon as large scale movement is permitted across locations, it has shown a propensity to cross borders and resurge. With...

By Anjum Altaf As an educationist, I am appalled by the Single National Curriculum. As a Pakistani, I am disappointed but not surprised. I have articulated my reservations in a series of opinions. They have to do with the process (non-transparent and non-participatory, excluding the principal stakeholders) and the pedagogy (old-fashioned, privileging memorization over thinking). But it is equally important to explore why the SNC has taken this particular form. I was discussing the SNC with a successful, well-educated executive and asked if she would put a child she was responsible for, say a grandchild, into a school teaching from the SNC. Absolutely not, she said without a moment’s hesitation and with a shudder of dread. I asked if, in her opinion, any senior bureaucrat in grades 20, 21, or 22 would enrol a grandchild in a SNC school. Absolutely not, she said again. She was less...

By Anjum Altaf Before I list my problems with the Single National Curriculum (SNC), let me accept that its proponents are completely well-intentioned and want the best for our children. But let me also add the caveat, to which all reasonable people would agree, that good intentions by themselves are never sufficient as a justification. Good intentions can also lead to terrible disasters. No one can doubt the good intentions of Mr. Jinnah. Yet his decision to impose a single national language set a tragedy in motion. Such disasters do not distinguish between the secular and the religious. Zia ul Haq was the most Islamic of our rulers as well-intentioned as anyone else. History will be the judge of what his educational interventions have done to this country. The liberal Mr. Musharraf was no doubt well-intentioned when he led the country into Kargil turning it into an...

By Anjum Altaf Frankly, the Single New Curriculum is so absurd that one would have to be a masochist to wade through its details. Trust our governments to come up with ridiculous things that are completely without merit but that consume so much time that could be better spent resolving the real issues of real people. Nevertheless, education is a matter of vital importance and one has to engage if only to prevent our children having done to them in spades what Zia ul Haq did to their parents. That, indirectly, should also tell you where this curriculum is coming from and how brilliant Zia Ul Haq’s children have turned out to be. It would only be a very slight exaggeration to liken this curriculum to a suicide bomb that would be lobbed not just in one school, like the APS, but in all the schools of...

By Anjum Altaf At its most basic, education has two dimensions -- what is taught and how it is taught. Everyone would agree that the most excellent content can be taught very poorly. It is less obvious that good pedagogy can overcome the handicap of indifferent content by enabling students to self-learn, a skill they can use to find content that meets their needs. This reflection should lead to the conclusion that how we teach is more important than what we teach. Even more so in an age when old content dates rapidly and new content is added daily. In such times the only skill that ensures survival is that of self-learning beyond the classroom. We no longer live in times in which students were prepared for careers that lasted lifetimes and for which they required foundational training to which they added incrementally by learning on the job....

By Anjum Altaf The mandate of the Higher Education Commission (HEC) should now be to save higher education in Pakistan but quite asides from the fact that past actions of the HEC are themselves responsible for the present state, I think the tipping point, much like that for climate change, has been crossed. Mir Taqi Mir would have equated the proposition with seeking a cure from the same apothecary’s son responsible for the ailment  Now when I think of either, I can’t help thinking of Fitzgerald’s rendering of Omar Khayyam’s quatrain: The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it. I have said it before and have no reason to change my mind that disastrous as operations like Gibraltar, Searchlight, and Badr were for the wellbeing of...