Education In Pakistan Part 2

His celebrated Minute Educational Policy, of 2 February 1835, is the classical starting point of accounts of the new colonial education policy in India. Generations of scholars have found the following quotation from Macaulay’s Minute quite irresistible - though we must not allow ourselves to be misled too much by its rhetoric. Macaulay wrote: “We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern - a class of persons Indian in blood and color but English in tastes, in opinions, in morals and in intellect”. The velvet rhetoric of this quotation is misleading. The British were not interested in the tastes or the morals of Indians Whom they set out to educate, much less in their intellect. That is just the decorative padding of Macaulay’s Victorian prose around the central point that was at issue. The key to the new education policy lay in the desire of the colonial government to create a class of people who were to act as intermediaries or links between the alien government and the common people of India. The English burro sahibs, who no longer operated in Persian, needed a large army of English educated clerks. That was what the new Anglo-vernacular educational policy was all about.? Parallel with ‘educating’ large numbers of English speaking clerks and training a few persons from a privileged and ‘loyal’ background to join the White ruling elite, there was also a need for creating a new class of Indian professional specialists who were to draw on an English education and ‘know-how’. There was to be specialized training for doctors who would practice modern medicine and engineers who were needed in the fields of transport and irrigation. Medical and Engineering colleges were set up. But the numbers involved in this were relatively very small. The specialist needs of professional training on a relatively small scale did not create a significant base for scientific and technical education.

There was one more profession which however was different. That was the legal profession. As the colonial economy took shape and colonial commerce expanded the old indigenous judicial system was no longer adequate for ‘modern’ needs. In the early days of colonial rule, the legal system had not been materially altered. Where parties in litigation were represented by veils the regulations prescribed no definite qualifications for them, no precise mode of proceedings, no rules of evidence. All that was to change.

The creation of a new legal system on modern lines was set in motion with the setting up of Supreme Courts at the Presidency towns. Legal practice became increasingly professionalized, the more so with the growing complexity in the scope and size of statute law and regulations and rules of judicial procedure. The Charter Act of 1833 provided for the setting up of a law commission “to ascertain and codify” the laws of India. The new judicial system was based on statute law that was expressed in English. There emerged a new profession of English educated lawyers. It expanded rapidly and was to involve large numbers.

Today the field of legal studies is an overgrown branch of our educational system. In its size it is wholly out of proportion to our needs. It is overgrown because it is cheap and, given the way in which it is taught, intellectually as undemanding as the education of clerks. Anyone who goes to district butchery in Pakistan will realize that there are far too many lawyers around, few of whom can hope to earn a decent living from the profession itself. Few of them are educated well. Given the fact that language is the main instrument of the law, one wonders how some of them manage their professional work, for their knowledge of the English is poor. Perhaps common- sense greased by bribery makes up for lack of proficiency in the law. There seems to be a good case for limiting their numbers and raising standards for those who do go in for law.

There is a two tier system in the legal profession also as it is in other spheres of our life. Here too we see a sharp contrast between hacks at the lower end of the profession and brilliant minds at the upper end, both amongst the judiciary and among practicing lawyers. In this sphere, as in others, we remain a class divided society where sound knowledge is the property of the privileged and ignorance is shared out among those from more modest background? The primary objective of colonial education policy (which we continue today) was to produce clerks, the class of lower level class of pen-pushers who were needed to do the hack-work in 9vernment offices. Government was the largest provider of jobs for the ‘educated’.

The term ‘educated’ was to have a special meaning for it referred not to those who had acquired substantive knowledge but to those who had received no more than just formal ‘education’ and obtained the relevant diplomas certifying that they had passed examinations for the requisite degrees. Demand for ‘education4 was and it still is, driven not by a desire to acquire knowledge but by the need to acquire ‘qualifications’ or labels that qualifies people for government jobs. It is the label that matters, not the actual education content of the course of studies. The degree, the paper qualification, are passports to jobs. Our educational system has thus become geared to the production of half-educated sand bearers, whose diplomas as B. As or M. As or M. Sc.Bs. are intrinsically Worthless but have value as ‘qualifications’ when they apply for jobs. In the absence of a diversified industrial economy, Pakistan is among the more backward societies in the world today in Which the government still remains the major employer. Dependence on government jobs is a measure of our backwardness.

Access to government jobs is, therefore, the prime objective of a very large and influential section of our population the white collar jobs seeking section of the educated urban middle class. i have labeled this class the salaried. The term “middle class” is too wide, for that includes various groups of self-employed people whose interests are different from those of the salaried. Likewise the term ‘petite bourgeoisie’ also has wider connotations. Hence the need for new more precise term to refer to this class.

The raison d’etre of the salariat is to get salaried government jobs. Students are also included in the term the salariat for they are the stage of Preparing themselves to get such jobs. They belong structurally and ideologically Indeed students are the most militant vanguard of the salariat. This social class is salient Particularly in colonised societies with a Predominantly agrarian Production base, in Which the urban society is dominated by seekers after government jobs.

Given the relative scarcity of government jobs, the salariat tends to fracture along ethnic lines, in the drive of different sections of it get a better access to the jobs. They fight for ethnic quotas in the allocation of jobs. Where members of an ethnic group are ‘bolter educated’ than their rivals, i.e. where the group has relatively more sand-bearing members, they will fight for allocation of jobs by ‘merit’ against quotas’. But if a quota system is in being, they will fight for a large quota for their own group. They will fight rival ethnic groups also for a larger share of places in institutions of higher education which dispense the diplomas that qualify them for jobs.

Students are the militant arm of the different sections of the saIariat. They know that politics of quotas has more to offer them than the Substance of a good education. They are therefore not interested in the quality of education that they receive. They are only interested in the grades that they will be given. They prefer the gun to the pen. In the unfolding of the dialectics of our government-job dominated society and the diploma disease, true pursuit of education has no place. The salariat dominates political debate in Pakistan though not state power. The unique role of the salariat is special to colonised societies with a predominately agrarian production base namely countries such as Pakistan.

Politics of the salariat and the narrow outlook and aims of our students has put its indelible stamp on our educational system as well as on our ethnic politics. The students go to colleges and universities, but not to get an education. What they want is ‘degrees’ mere paper qualifications. They have little positive interest in education as such. Than can produce angry reactions for fear that will make exaaminations more difficult. All that they want are encapsulated notes that can be memorised at examination time.

It is miracle that our universities do manage, despite all odds to the contrary, to keep a few brilliant teachers and also, thanks to then, to produce a few brilliant students too. For reasons that I do not understand it seems our women perform better in acquiring a good education than men. Anyhow, all credit to such young men and women and their teachers. But, alas, there are far too few of them. On the whole the scene is pitiful. We cannot begin to tackle the problem of education in Pakistan without first treating the diploma disease and changing the purposes for which education is sought.

In the long run the answer lies in building a technologically advanced and thriving industrial economy in which jobs would be available according to competence. No businessman would wish to employ half educated.