A Failed Education

#28 by khurram

I agree with your solution of maximum privatization. Nationalization of colleges was tried in the 70s under the assumption that government will provide cheaper, affordable education for the masses. What we saw instead was politicization of campuses, sifarish culture in college admissions and embezzlement of education funds.

Private sector can afford higher salaries and also enforce strict educational standards.

To help poor students, government should instead create a national scholar fund. However, this fund should be merit-based to ensure that people don`t get money simply because they are Sindhi, Punjabi, Seraiki, etc, etc.

HisExcellency: Teaching is something that is near and dear to my heart. Everytime I get some free time, I try to opt for a part time teaching position at local universities, teaching an odd course or two. If I get some time, I will try to teach a bit at Pakistani uinversities, also.

I think the biggest problem in Pakistan`s universities is faculty. The students are there and good. The buildings are there, though not too good. Syllabus is outdated, but still enough to get by. But faculty is all abroad.

LUMS apparently pays 2 lakh to 5 lakh per month to each professor, according to someone I talked with. The Deans get higher than 5 lakh with superb benefits. It has an excellent faculty. Aga Khan has a superb faculty. They must be paying a fortune.

I had a discussion with an Indian friend on how India was able to keep its faculty, at much lower salaries than LUMS. He basically stated that India graduated so many Ph.Ds that some just stayed behind due to reasons other than money.

I have a good idea of the salaries in the IT profession, in all areas, since I hire contractors a lot. IT Ph.Ds are worth their weight in gold, in the world. They can go to any country they want. I really don`t know how Pakistan can bring back its Ph.Ds, without paying them LUMS type salaries. One has to admire people like Hoodbhoy who stay behind in Pakistan and world for govt. universities like Quaid-e-Azam.

I have a colleague, who is a Major in the Army Engineering (or Signals) corps, and a professor at NUST. He was the youngest in our batch to do a Ph.D from USA. A truly brilliant guy. Two more of my close colleagues are Ph.Ds in PAF, and working in Kahuta. And another two or three are doing their Ph.Ds as we speak. The military has a lot of difficulties keeping its Ph.Ds also. The guy at NUST is allowed to work in the private sector also, much like military doctors are allowed to work in the private sector.

I think Pakistan can attract Ph.Ds, if there is a demand in the private sector for them. Much like there is a demand for Medical doctors. Pakistani doctors can make a lot of money in the private sector, and they teach, hence medical colleges don`t seem to have too many problems with faculty, from what I have seen.

The Air Marshal writes:

``I have seen far too many American students flunk college classes I taught, because they were too busy carrying out, “independent thinking.” While my Indian and Pakistani students whizzed through through those classes.``


Maybe that was because YOU were teaching it, and you preferred `rote` learning instead of `Independent thinking`... after all you definitely seem to lack in the department of `independent thinking` or `thinking` at all... probably due to the `military training` you are so proud of.

Here is some advice from Semipreciousme that you could use:

``no more regurgitating parroted crap where the more you write, the higher you score``

Dear Hate-monger a.k.a P-mishra2

Those are the few names I could recall ... and my friend Alephnull (who is an Indian btw)...
The problem is we made the mistake of answering you ... How many names of Indian professors do you know off the top of your head oh Genius?

Like I said you are the equivalent of our air marshal. Look at how you are trying to waste our time in a pathetic useless debate when we can be talking about the educational system.


-Manto

re:#54 by HisExcellency
``The minimal attention paid to Partition by Indian textbooks is intentional, not coincidental.``
That may be so but there is no hatred or deceit involved. There is a reason for it, though.

Partition was a bloody chapter in the history of the subcontinent mainly because of the blood shed involved. The repatriation of the population should have been smooth and bloodless but that did not happen. There is no reason for the school history books to keep revisiting these horrors, which are inevitable when we talk about partition or events leading to partition. Pakistan is not much talked about in history books becaues really speaking Pak leaders who were fighting for their own country did not cover themselves with glory whereas most Indians are proud of the struggle that variour Indian leaders went thr` to gain independence. This was a bitter struggle, with various facets, some from abroad (eg Bhikaji Cama`s clarion call from US soil, Dadhabhai Naoroji talking about the Indian rights from UK soil, Azad Hind Fauj of S.C. Bose etc) but mostly led by the mass movement of Gandhiji and Co. Nehru spent more than 5000 days of his life in various British jails. Average Indian participated in this movement and this established Indianness in him/her. Pakis may be proud of Jinnah but how many more leaders are there that got them Pak. It looks like a one man show to me. And that one man, no doubt a leader of great caliber, was at one time a great spokesperson for hindu-muslim unity. Today, people like me wonder if Jinnah was not playing into the hands of power brokers. Pak, devoid of a clear cut national agenda, became a ground of great power politics: between poweful landlords, Army Generals. Common man has no say in Pak`s future.
The reason why i am saying all this is that India of today is comfortable with its idea of a nationstate without bringing in Pakistan. This idea of nationstate evolved over centuries but became consolidated during the struggle for independence against the British. During this struggle, the leaders no doubt For most Indians, Pak is a fact that happened. It was tragic for most Indians because, in Pak, they see a betrayal of secularism for which Gandhiji and others had fought for so long. Of course, Pakis in Chowk will have their own version of everything. In the past 50 years, Pak has become not just a jehadi factory but also a dream factory, spinning cobwebs of fantasies for an average Paki, trying to explain away everything from why Pak lost 1965 war (most Pakis do not believe this even today), lost 1971 war to why they lost Kargil war. They also need to constanlty explain to Pakis the reason for Pak`s existence and that cannot be explained simply in terms of `` Pak exists because that is what some muslims wanted`` (which is the darn truth, if you ask me) but it has to be explained by invoking hatred against India, invoking how vily Hindus were and it was difficult to live with them. Pakis conveniently forget that not all muslims chose to migrate to Pak and India today is home to second largest muslim population in the world. It is as if those muslims do not exist for Pakis.
The tragic thing of course is that all this indoctrination is starting from school level onwards. What kind of children would come out of this type of education? Surely not bright kids, full of hope for the future. I think this system produces kids who graduate as hateful beings, with not much to hope for and be constantly fearful of their mighty ``hindu`` neighbour. What a world to live in for the small children. I think the children deserve better.
Sridhar

#56 by Romair

Another area in which Pakistan needs improvement is Research Institutes. This is a highly sensitive issue for governments because research can often continue for years without end. Moreover, research funding is consumed by a small number of people. Most governments feel compelled to spend the same amount of money building universities, or as grants to colleges. This approach creates greater goodwill for the government since the results are visible immediately.

Nevertheless, research is a crucial to industry and indigenous knowledge base. Since Pakistan is primarily an agrarian society, agricultural research is perhaps the most pressing need of the hour.

HisExcellency: cont`d: Following univ from Pakistan, apparently did not participate in the survey:

Quaid-i-Azam University
University of Karachi
University of the Punjab

These, I believe, are the three biggest in Pakistan.

Following Indian univ. did not participate:

Aligarh Muslim University
Banaras Hindu University
M.S. University of Baroda
University of Calcutta
University of Delhi
University of Madras

I don`t know where these rank in India. I doubt any of them are any better than IITs

HisExcellency #38: `` don`t know GIK well enough to diagnose whether this is a political or administrative problem. It could well be that the professors left for private sector jobs that pay higher than academics institutes. A certain % of turnover is therefore expected. Can you elaborate on the GIK problem if you know the details?``

I voluntereed for a while, with a Pakistani organization, which mentors Pakistani undergrad students. During that time I looked up some Pakistani colleges, and where they ranked in Asia and Australia. The highest any Pakistani college has gotten in Austral-Asia is GIK, which reached no. 9 a few years ago. This is quite impressive since all the other colleges in the top 10 were decades to more than a century old.

Since then, GIK has fallen to 23. There were some articles in Pakistani newspapers, indicating that a lot of its faculty has left. Then I checked their salaries and they were higher than or equivalent to those of IITs. The source I used for this information is Asian Week:

http://www.asiaweek.com/asiaweek/features/universities2000/

Engg.

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The three ranked Pakistani universities in Engineering are GIK, NUST, SZABIT. India has 10 universities ranked in Engineering. So three to ten isn`t really a bad ratio, considering India has 7 to 8 times the population of Pakistan, and had a huge lead in education at the time of partition. All the Pakistani schools that are ranked are only between 5 to 15 years old. So, as you said, they are still new, and should move up the list.

Interestingly, GIK is now ranked as 12th in faculty in the list, ahead of many Australian, Korean and Chinese universities. So maybe they solved their problem. Its lowest ranking is in reputation at 36.

The most selective university in Pakistan is Shaheed Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto. It is the 15th most selective in Austral-Asia. It is more selective than IIT Madras and IIT Delhi.

The highest ranking university in Pakistan is NUST, which is 20th on the list. It is 10th in the list in Resources. Once again ahead of IIT Madras and Delhi.

MBA

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In MBA, Pakistan has two ranked: LUMS and SZABIST. While India has 9 ranked. So Pakistan needs another good MBA school. Interestingly SZABIST and IIT (Bombay) and Birla Inst. of Tech are the only three schools in South Asia ranked in MBA and Engineering. This would make SZABIST the best university in Pakistan.

LUMS was ranked 18th in Business. There were only two India institutions ranked higher than LUMS, making it the third highest ranked in Business in South Asia. Since 2000, they have introduced a lot of new programs in IT and law, and gotten some new faculty, so it should be higher now.

Interestingly, LUMS is six times more expensive than Indian Insitute of Management (Ahmadabad), which is ranked 2nd.

Multi-disciplinary

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There are only two Indian univ. ranked in this category, with Jawaharlal Univ. highest at 40. Univ of Dhaka is at 64. And no Pakistani univ is ranked. So Karachi univ etc. need to improve there stuff.

#51 by AlephNull

The minimal attention paid to Partition by Indian textbooks is intentional, not coincidental. The partition of India dented Congress` claim of being the sole representative of India and its official policy of secular nationalism. Moreover, Nehru`s role during the 1937-45 period was itself critical in distancing the Muslim League from Congress. If Prime Minister Nehru allowed such troubling facts into textbooks, his own image would be tarnished.

Omitting important events also distorts history, just like Pakistani textbooks omit the racist outbursts of Ayub Khan against Bengalis.

We must recognize such deliberate omissions in both Indian and Pakistani textbooks.

#51 by AlephNull

Even in Pakistan, the textbooks did not contain anti-Hindu and anti-India prejudice in the 1950s and 60s. In fact, during those days Indian movies were played in Pakistani theatres as well. It was only after the 1971 conflict with India, that Pakistani hatred for India intensified.

Just like Indians justify their hatred of Pakistan because of Kashmir & Kargil, Pakistanis also justify their hatred for India because of Kashmir & 1971 War. Why should the Pakistani media, TV and curriculum be charitable to India, when the Indians are using Bollywood and cable channels to spew hatred against Pakistan?? There is no shortage of such justifications on either side.

But even if India and Pakistan settle the Kashmir dispute peacefully... the difference in text books emanates from different perceptions of history.

Pakistanis view Gandhi`s movement as a Hindu movement, not a national movement. While this movement may be pivotal for Hindus, for the vast majority of Muslims (especially educated Muslims) of India... it was simply irrelevant. Irrelevant because it did not address the economic, and socio-political problems of the Muslims. It is therefore, not surprising that Muslim textbooks consider War of Independence, Sir Syed Ahmed Khan`s Aligarh Univ, Partition of Bengal, Jinnah`s 14 Points, Pakistan Resolution, 1945 Elections, and Partition of India as more significant than Gandhi`s civil disobedience movements and Salt March.

If you are referring to these differences as ``hatred``, then you are being unfair. Political & ideological differences are acceptable forms of political expression. Hatred is not.

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First off, the statement about the 1937 elections is highly dubious
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Please read ``India Under the Raj 1919-1947 Vol. II`` written by Suniti Kumar Ghosh to get the real story about Congress and 1937 elections. If you can`t get a hard copy, it is also available online at http://www.maoism.org/misc/india/india_raj_v2/chap-5.htm

I am quoting some excerpts here that prove that Congress was primarily a Hindu party, which despite its aspirations to be the sole voice of India, failed to bring other communities under its umbrella.

• ``Out of the election battle of 1937 the Congress emerged with 711 out of 1,585 seats in the provincial assemblies, mainly from the `general`, that is, Hindu constituencies. It did badly in Muslim constituencies; contesting only 58 out of 485 Muslim seats, it obtained 26, about 17 of them from the NWFP. It did not win a single Muslim seat in eight out of eleven provinces``



• ...Congress, which had been rejected by the Muslims in the elections in the whole of India except in the NWFP, was seeking to establish itself among them by buying over their elected representatives. Whether this move was ethical or not, it was the Congress leaders` aspiration to become the sole heir to the British raj and monopolize power in a future self-governing India that stood in the way of the formation of a coalition with the League even on the basis of a Congress programme. The result was disastrous for the people of India. K. M. Munshi, the Congress stalwart, called it ``the beginning of the end of United India``. This view was shared by many others including Azad, who laid the blame on Nehru. But the policy was not Nehru`s alone but that of the entire leadership.



• This refusal of the Congress leaders to form a coalition with the League and share whatever little power the British raj had conceded convinced the Muslim leaders that they could not hope to enjoy a share of power in a unitary Indian State with an overwhelming Hindu majority, except as camp-followers of the Congress leaders. Later, Viceroy Wavell said: ``Pakistan was the creation of the Congress, for it was the refusal to establish Coalition Governments in the Provinces that alarmed the Muslims and drove them to extremes.``



• How reasonable was the Congress leaders` claim that the Congress represented all classes and communities? The claim was a spurious one. First, representing as they did the interests of the big compradors, landlords and princes, they were hostile to the interests of the workers and peasants. Second, the claim that they represented all communities was disproved by facts. As noted before, the Congress won only 28 seats out of 485 Muslim seats in the whole of India in the elections to the provincial assemblies in 1937. Its influence on the scheduled castes was far from what the Congress leaders claimed. B. R. Ambedkar hurriedly knocked together an Independent Labour Party in Bombay a few months before the elections and his party won 13 out of 15 seats reserved for the scheduled castes in Bombay, though its resources were nothing compared with those of the Congress. According to Ambedkar, the seats won by the Congress with a majority of scheduled caste votes were only 38 out of 151 reserved for scheduled castes in India. He said that ``the results of 1937 Election conclusively disprove the Congress claim to represent the Untouchables``. The Congress organization itself was overwhelmingly Hindu. In 1936, out of 143 members of the AICC only six were Muslims -- 3 from the NWFP, 1 from Bihar and 1 from U.P. and the sixth member, Abdul Kalam Azad, sat in the committee as a former Congress president.



• It appears that, rhetoric apart, the Congress leaders did not themselves hold that the Congress represented the entire Indian people. On 25 March 1938 Gandhi said to a Gandhi Seva Sangh meeting:
  
  ``Today, we have power neither over the Princes, nor over the zamindars, neither over the Muslims nor over the Sikhs.`` Kripalani said: ``As for the Muslims, their hatred of Congressmen exceeds their hatred of Hindus.``



• On 28 March Gandhi said that the Congress ``got many Muslims enrolled as members. But they had to be coaxed into becoming members. This is a kind of flattery, or you may call it a politically motivated policy. We maintained friendly relations [with the Muslims] merely from a practical point of view: it was like a businessman`s practical policy``.



• At a meeting of the Congress Working Committee Nehru observed that ``the Mussalmans had absolutely no trust in him [Gandhi] and considered him their enemy``.



• On 31 August 1937 Birla, the great benefactor of the Congress and Congress leaders, wrote to Gandhi: ``The Congress is without doubt a party enjoying mass support, but it is essentially a Hindu Party...``

On September 26, 2001 the CEO of Hewlett-Packard, Carly S. Fiorina delivered a keynote address in Minneapolis, Minnesota on the topic of ``Technology, Business and Our Way of Life: What`s Next``. Here is how she ended her address...

``There was once a civilization that was the greatest in the world.

It was able to create a continental super-state that stretched from ocean to ocean, and from northern climes to tropics and deserts. Within its dominion lived hundreds of millions of people, of different creeds and ethnic origins.

One of its languages became the universal language of much of the world, the bridge between the peoples of a hundred lands. Its armies were made up of people of many nationalities, and its military protection allowed a degree of peace and prosperity that had never been known. The reach of this civilization’s commerce extended from Latin America to China, and everywhere in between.

And this civilization was driven more than anything, by invention. Its architects designed buildings that defied gravity. Its mathematicians created the algebra and algorithms that would enable the building of computers, and the creation of encryption. Its doctors examined the human body, and found new cures for disease. Its astronomers looked into the heavens, named the stars, and paved the way for space travel and exploration.

Its writers created thousands of stories. Stories of courage, romance and magic. Its poets wrote of love, when others before them were too steeped in fear to think of such things.

When other nations were afraid of ideas, this civilization thrived on them, and kept them alive. When censors threatened to wipe out knowledge from past civilizations, this civilization kept the knowledge alive, and passed it on to others.

While modern Western civilization shares many of these traits, the civilization I’m talking about was the Islamic world from the year 800 to 1600, which included the Ottoman Empire and the courts of Baghdad, Damascus and Cairo, and enlightened rulers like Suleiman the Magnificent.

Although we are often unaware of our indebtedness to this other civilization, its gifts are very much a part of our heritage. The technology industry would not exist without the contributions of Arab mathematicians. Sufi poet-philosophers like Rumi challenged our notions of self and truth. Leaders like Suleiman contributed to our notions of tolerance and civic leadership.

And perhaps we can learn a lesson from his example: It was leadership based on meritocracy, not inheritance. It was leadership that harnessed the full capabilities of a very diverse population–that included Christianity, Islamic, and Jewish traditions.

This kind of enlightened leadership — leadership that nurtured culture, sustainability, diversity and courage — led to 800 years of invention and prosperity.

In dark and serious times like this, we must affirm our commitment to building societies and institutions that aspire to this kind of greatness. More than ever, we must focus on the importance of leadership– bold acts of leadership and decidedly personal acts of leadership.

With that, I’d like to open up the conversation and see what we, collectively, believe about the role of leadership.``

HisExcellency #38

{{90% of Indian students don`t know that even in 1937 elections, Gandhi and Congress had been rejected by Sikhs, Muslims, Christians and Scheduled Castes.}}

First off, the statement about the 1937 elections is highly dubious. It is of course framed by the canonical Pakistani world-view of “Sikhs, Muslims, Christians and Scheduled Castes” as monolithic communities, which they most certainly were not. To my certain knowledge it was not true of Christians.

But if Indian students don’t know about the events of the 1937 elections – let alone HisExcellency’s questionable account thereof – there is a simple explanation, namely that their school education more often than not pays minimal attention to it! The whole messy and bloody process which gave rise to Pakistan, the struggle against the Congress and ‘Hindu machinations’, and the communal meltdown of Partition, would naturally be a subject which Pakistanis obsessively return and revisit as defining events of their nation’s history.

It is very different for Indians – their national outlook has historically not pivoted on the Partition or the existence of a nationally designated enemy other in Pakistan. Pakistanis, indoctrinated in the ideology of equal-equal, tending to see themselves as competitors and rivals of India, projecting the mirror-image of their own outlook onto Indians, may not appreciate how little attention national discourse in India used to pay to them. It is quite understandable that Pakistanis would have extreme difficulty in putting themselves in the shoes, not of Indian Punjabis or Sindhi refugees, but of Tamilians, Malayalis, Maharashtrians, etc. or in short a huge majority of Indians whose forefathers were not traumatized by the events of partition and consequently had little reason to fixate on Pakistan. Whether by accident or intelligent choice – I would like to think it is the latter – the Indian establishment prior to the 1990s minimized public attention to Pakistan. That is probably the wisest policy towards a problematic country and one to which I hope India will return as soon as possible.

HisExcellency #38

{{Tampering with education and history for political ends, is not an exclusively Pakistani practice. Indians also do the same. … Hatred for Pakistanis is as predominant in India, as it is in Pakistan.}}

What hatred for Pakistan there might be in India today has far more to do with the events of the last ten years, with Pakistan’s sponsorship of terrorism in Kashmir and the Kargil War. It is definitely not a consequence of Indian school textbooks (history, civics, geography, language/literature etc.) prior to that time (probably even now – I simply haven’t seen ones more recent than 1989).

Pakistani students are subjected to a course of ‘Pakistan studies’ that identifies Pakistan as an Islamic state and is replete with hate material directed at India the enemy nation, at the Hindus who are automatically associated with India, rants about ‘Hindu machinations’ in the pre-independence period, etc. This has been exhaustively documented in Nayyar and Salim’s 130-page report on the state of curricula and textbooks in Pakistan.

There is simply no counterpart to this in India. My own experiences towards the end of the 1970s bear this out. I had to offer ‘History and Civics’ as one of six subjects of an NCERT-approved curriculum at the 10th standard level (the other five subjects were English, Hindi, Mathematics, Science, Geography). Political history had a 50% weight of the ‘History and Civics’ subject; ‘cultural history’ (religion, literature, science, architecture, art, music, etc) had 20%; civics (essentially a study of the Indian constitution) took up 30%. The political history paper required essay-type answers to 5 questions drawn from at least 3 sections. My options were ancient (pre-Islamic), mediaeval (pre-British) and modern periods of Indian history (there was a section on modern world history, which I could not choose because it wasn’t taught by my school). The modern period was taught in the second half of the 10th standard, i.e. in the waning stages of the countdown to the public exams. The result was that the post WW I period of the independence movement got scant coverage, mostly as an afterthought; my school-based knowledge of modern Indian history peters out after the Rowlatt Act and Jallianwalla Bagh. There was far more extensive and repeated coverage of the ancient and mediaeval periods, reinforcing what was learned through primary and middle school. What I learned about the Indian independence movement was through general reading, not formal study. The upshot of all this is that, if I even wrote the word ‘Pakistan’ during history exams, it was to describe the extent and major sites of the Indus Valley civilization, and nowhere else. Jinnah and his associates never made an appearance!

If I had to complain about the school history I studied, it would be to deplore the excessive attention paid to the Delhi Sultanate, the Mughals, and North India in general, and the inadequate coverage of South India. The 10th standard exam was my farewell to the formal study of Indian history – the last two years were spent concentrating on math and science and training like a racehorse for university entrance exams.

It may be true that officially-encouraged historians begin with the Nehru generation wrote/rewrote Indian history to support the notion of composite culture and serve the ends of national integration. The basic effect was to go far easier on mediaeval Muslim rulers of ‘North India’ than objectivity might dictate and to make bogus `secular` heroes out of thugs like Tipu Sultan. I can’t see how this would engender hatred to Pakistan except reactively out of resentment to distorted history.

#46 by pmishra2

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the assumption of superiority above others is so strong amongst parts of islam, that the clash with reality leads to taking refuge in fantasy.
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Tom Friedman should thank his stars that Muslims introduced Europeans to modern science and medicine. Otherwise he would be an illiterate street urchin living on bread crumbs in squalid medieval London and burning Jews/women/astrologers as witches or heretics.

Even a cursory look at the number of Jews, Muslims scientists and Protestants burnt by the Europeans at the stake will reinforce the fact that Muslim civilizaton was not even half as barbaric as the Christian ones.

The superiority of Muslim civilization and education institutions in the so-called Dark Ages is a matter of fact, not assumption (..just like the superiority of Western civilization in modern times).

>>For every five days, Pre-engineering students spend on anatomy, they probably spend one hour on Pak Studies and Islamiyyat<<

they teach anatomy to pre-engineering students in pakistan?