If you want to measure a nation’s decline, look at its teachers. If you want a bigger shock, step inside its schools. In Pakistan, the fortune of millions has been swept under classroom dust, yet we still scratch our heads, wondering why the train of progress left the station without us. The answer is simple: when you push education to the back seat, don’t be surprised if time itself overtakes you.
“Education in Pakistan is treated like a disposable tissue at budget tables.”
Other nations treat education like worship and are now building hotels in outer space. Meanwhile, we are still busy forcing children to memorize page numbers. Our proudest academic skill is producing students who can recite “explanations of excerpts” with the speed of a parrot but cannot ask a single original question. Creativity here is not encouraged; it is executed.
Education in Pakistan is the only sector that budget meetings treat like a disposable tissue. Hospitals, roads, and even water coolers carry giant portraits of politicians, but no billboard is big enough to hide the decay in our schools. Universities proudly churn out “research” that could make a photocopier blush. The seeds are stolen, the water is copied and pasted, and the fertilizer is Facebook posts. The result is not knowledge but a bumper crop of deception.
The real tragedy struck when public schools were outsourced. The Punjab Education Foundation handed them over as if they were spare plots or roadside tea stalls. Many license-holders had only one qualification: the date printed on their degree. Some even shrugged and said, “This isn’t for us. Let someone else do it. Just keep sending us the money.” Education was not managed, it was traded, like fruit carts rented out for the season.
“We are raising graduates who can memorize but cannot think.”
And when these licenses collapse, who will answer? The children robbed of learning? The parents left helpless? Or the bureaucrats who stamp “merit” while sipping tea over the file? An entire generation is being mortgaged in this blind business of schooling. The result will be graduates holding fake degrees who go on to turn the country itself into a fake.
Yet the solution was never complicated. Every village already has educated young people. If entrusted, they would have known the children, understood the community, and kept the schools alive. Instead, we imported absentee “education vendors” who neither show up, nor stay, nor teach. And when they do teach, the children can read the words but have no idea what they mean. It is education by subtitles, without sound.
The cure is obvious: trust communities. Let each union council run its own schools through a local board, accountable to parents and teachers. If outsourcing is necessary, at least check real ability. Ask simple questions: What have you taught? Where? Which curriculum? Do you know STEM, or only Urdu verbs?
But here, paper is king. The thicker the file, the more “qualified” the candidate. And so schools today produce more reports than ideas, more colorful charts than curiosity, and more degrees than understanding.
“Public schools were handed out like fruit carts for rent.”
Education is not a business franchise. It is a sacred trust. Treat it as commerce, and you sell your future by the kilo. Treat it as a responsibility, and you raise a generation that can stand upright. Progress only knocks at the doors of those who actually know how to open them.
There is still time. We can return to the essence of education: nurturing minds instead of renting classrooms. Otherwise, we will keep producing graduates who are blind to meaning, trained only to memorize. And while the rest of the world places its children on Mars, ours will still be chanting faithfully: “Remember page number so-and-so.”
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author. They do not represent the views, beliefs, or policies of the Stratheia.
