PAKISTAN’S CONFLICTED CLASSES- PART 9
Schooling to Assimilate Western Culture
What makes the acquisition of knowledge by Pakistan’s educated classes different and distinct, compared to countries in the West, and Far East Asia ? The difference is fundamental and has its roots in the 13 years of foundational schooling starting from age 4.
In countries that develop rapidly and successfully in the global South, the learning of school subjects is associated with trying to learn, understand and know about the world around them: its history, geography, its sciences, natural resources etc.
The school curriculum also offers deep-dive glimpses of the human body and its functions; of how chemicals combine to form new compounds and mixtures used in daily life. The study of the sky, the constellations and planets and laws that govern their cosmic movements. They learn mathematics to understand how quantities and measurements are computed, about the complex numerical relationships between parts and wholes, etc.
They study language to develop good working vocabulary and comprehension skills. These skills are applied in the analysis of characters, of human relationships, dissecting social disparities within given contexts and situations, sifting fact from opinions, etc. All this is done through the study of fiction and non-fiction literature.
In Pakistan, the aspect of “learning” by students (as opposed to “teaching” by teachers) never really evolved to develop into full-blown classroom practices. Students mostly regurgitate what they are taught because that is what they are tested for. What they actually learn, understand and apply meaningfully, is not generally assessed.
Although the 11-year long curriculum for elite (english-medium) schools is almost the same as anywhere elsewhere in the world, it produces starkly different outcomes. The biggest value-add of elite english-medium schools is the consolidation of social prestige and future economic power. Both good and bad elite schools subliminally foster their students to believe that their future is inextricably tied to their parents’ fortunes which …as they learn quickly…..is tied to foreign powers beyond their borders (the Global North or the West) ). They have to win their attention and approval by thinking, feeling and behaving like them. So they study less to gain knowledge and more to emulate the Global North’s culture.
“Subject content” is learned properly and well only to get top grades that parents purchase for their children through expensive private tutoring. It is like going to Dubai to buy costly quality goods. When Exams are over and done with, the knowledge is parked somewhere where it rusts like an un-used vehicle.
The serious knowledge-acquisition types, mainly from the middle and lower-middle classes can be found in well-established state schools, or schools still revered for their devotion to knowledge acquisition. These are now scarce, almost absent. There are bright minds in elitist schools, too, who swim below the social radar, get accepted in reputable universities overseas, slip off quietly never to return. Their pursuit of excellence keeps them going. But they are a microscopic minority. For every such Pakistani, there are a 100 overseas Indians and 100 far-eastern Asians whose crack-elite youth excel in advanced areas of research and study and also remain committed to return.
Education is about Making Connections
Many in Pakistan’s ruling (but less-educated) elite are puzzled by why “degrees are in such demand” (!) , since knowledge acquisition does not carry much weight for them. Many others equate demand for knowledge with demand for street-savvy techie knowledge (computers and the use of the internet).
This is in sharp contrast with Indians and Far-East Asians in foreign universities who engage so fiercely with what they are learning, they hardly have a care for what kind of clothes they wear or lifestyles they adopt. Academically combative, and keenly aware that they are acquiring knowledge of a kind that could change the world, they manage to integrate their need for self advancement with those of their society, culture and nation.
With few exceptions, a vast majority of Pakistan’s corrupt ruling elite, educated or not, persist in their delusion that their children’s social and financial success is largely owing to their own long-handle social, political and financial reach. Education has ornamental value, the flower in their lapel. Foreign degrees are lauded as social currency to strike bargains when negotiating relationships (e.g. marriages and courtships). They are flaunted with the same aplomb as their foreign BMW. However, they also serve as their long-term insurance when they may migrate overseas to seek jobs.
The elite class are still tripping and stumbling over the true value of education (as a means of knowledge acquisition) when taking up their studies in western colleges. Their belated “insight” …or education-culture shock….does not penetrate as deeply as with the females among them. As future mothers, in their role of social value-givers they want to educate their own children in better, more meaningful ways. They have grown acutely aware of their catalytic power to foster better moral values (“tarbiyat”) from cradle to grave, with a wider knowledge-base.
There is, no doubt, a creeping realization among both sexes that education offers them the means to manifest their hidden talents in individualized ways. Their world of choices are routed through immersion in knowledge. Many from among this lot are supporters of Imran Khan.
This realization comes 40 years after new upgraded knowledge flourished and prospered in China and Far-Eastern Asia. During the early eighties, when swarms of Chinese students poured into western universities, they were partly awed, partly overwhelmed and partly humbled by their experience as knowledge-gatherers. They returned home with the distinct feeling that they knew more and could achieve more than ever before. Between 1985 to 2020, China raised its literacy rate from 65% to 97.2%. It was no coincidence that during that same period China achieved its economic ascendancy and parity with the United States, a feat that knocked the Global North off their feet.
Countries like Pakistan have not even taken the first step yet. Their elite have a hopelessly skewed understanding of the role of knowledge and economic growth. This connection, almost 150 years old, was revisited after the introduction of the internet. It hammered home to the world a truth that needed a branding: “knowledge-based-economy”.
Blaming and Shaming the Awam (Masses)
During the 2-year long Covid phase, online platforms sprang up everywhere to run businesses and deliver education in Pakistan. Only those belonging to the educated classes benefited most from the transition. The rest languished in their ignorance and struggled to keep pace.
Today, the section of the ruling educated elite who support Imran Khan can be drawn as having a pair of joined heads each facing in the opposite direction (a) and (b), like Janus:
(a) A public appearance of rhetorical support for him. This one belts out conscientious objections to blatant social injustices. It is what the educated are supposed to do.
(b) A private one of unflinching loyalty to their class that is ideologically wedded to the Global North. After seven decades of immersion in it they have developed a “cultural affinity” with Western values and goals.
Consequently they operate on parallel tracks of consciousness switching from Left to Right and vice versa whenever expedient. Their “original sin” remains the moral compromise they made when outsourcing national politics to the uneducated who, they believed, had the aptitude , the underworld street-smartness to do the dirty work of national self-governance for them.
When the educated from all classes (lower middle, middle and even overseas Pakistanis) argue their case for Imran Khan, they use fiercely reasoned arguments and statistics; they analyse information and data; they sift through opinions to get to facts; they think critically when weighing options while joining the dots; they resort to historical precedents; many even show an understanding of legal terms and their implications. They do all that any educated mind would do. Imran Khan, an educated man himself, showed them how.
When they turn to the Awam, to explain Imran Khan’s exhortations, they harangue them for not understanding, for their chronic state of Jihaliyat (Ignorance), their duplicitous loyalties; their incorrigible helplessness, their lack of moral scruples, their absence of self-dignity, pride and honour, their scummy subservience and cowardice and their “idol-worshipping Fear”. These, they think, are the true reasons for the Awam not coming out and standing up to resist.
Not once do they acknowledge the sense of self-empowerment the leaders exercise due to their own education. They are in complete denial of the root-cause for their frustration with the Awam which is: denying the Awam and their children the full 12-year term of quality schooling for seventy years, since the birth of the nation. They appear astonishingly oblivious to the truth that an uneducated destitute Awam cannot respond like the educated. Otherwise, hundreds of million Pakistanis would be on the same page at the same time, tackling shared issues and offering a truly collective intelligence.
If mass education is to make a difference in Pakistan, its motives and goals have to be aligned with what the rest of the educated world takes and does with education. Because in a national culture that values power, wealth and status, “education” will always play a minor role. Elitist credentials (not knowledge) serve as their passport to personal and professional success. That leaves the nation drowning in ignorance-based practices.
