Last week I was at a institution in Lahore which holds evening classes and preps students for exams like the MCAT and other standardized tests. As I was sitting waiting for my ride to arrive, I overheard a conversation a student had with the institute's staff. She was asking if one of the books she had received was available in English because she didn't know how to read Urdu. This is a woman that is at least 20 years old that has lived her whole life in Pakistan, and she can't read Urdu. I've spent my entire life in a country where Urdu is not spoken, and I can read Urdu with elementary proficiency. How can someone who has grown up surrounded with Urdu, not know how to read Urdu?
Many students in Pakistan study in "English Medium" schools. Basically, these are schools that teach solely in English. The great tragedy is that these schools are the schools viewed as the best schools when in reality they are doing more harm then good. I would like to highlight a few negative effects of English Medium schools.
1. Separation of Knowledge and Education
Even today, my father's eyes light up when he talks about getting his MBA. After working in corporate America for some time, my father decided to get his MBA. During his MBA courses, he would read certain theories about management and working with people and then he would go to work and see how true the theory is. Or he could try implementing some of the advice given in the books or by the teacher. If a theory said employees always do X, my father could say well actually I've been working in Corporate America and in my experience, employees do Y. The curriculum was designed so that when a student goes through the program, he or she will go back into his company or community and implement what he or she has learned. This element is completely lost in English Medium schools that get their curriculum from other countries.
Students in English Medium schools go to school and memorize English texts, then come home and speak Urdu or Punjabi or Pashto or Sindhi, etc. The education the students are receiving has little relevance to their own lives. School is put in one box, and how you live your life is put in another box. The goal of education should be empowering people to better themselves, but what we see happening is that education is having no effect on the way the vast majority of people live their lives. How will education expand minds and produce visionary thinkers when what they spend their entire day learning a curriculum that does not factor in their ground reality?
2. White Supremacy
Since day one, you're taught that English is the language of success. If you want to move ahead in life, you have to learn English. This has a crippling effect on the person's sense of self. They start viewing their own culture and history as backwards and wrong. They view English and everything associated with the west as the superior way of life. They want to speak only English, they want to wear only jeans and t-shirts, they want to look white and apply creams to their skin to turn themselves white. The ironic thing is that most of the students have never met a white American or European person in their life, yet inherently they feel they are inferior.
Instead of learning their own history and culture and feeling a sense of empowerment, students are taught that everything here is wrong and we need to imitate the west as much as we can. I've always found this mentality intriguing because these people never truly become one of the westerners and they never truly fit in with the traditional culture. They're in this weird middle space. They haven't truly mastered English and they haven't truly mastered Urdu. They can't understand Robert Frost and they can't understand Allama Iqbal. English Medium schools are destroying the Pakistani Identity and producing students that are not confident in themselves. All of their effort goes into fitting in by mimicking the west.
Moving Forward
What we need is a new generation of leaders that are not worried about fitting in. A new generation that is confident in themselves and their ability to bring change in their homes, their communities, their country, and the world.
We need to stop teaching an imported curriculum that seeks to produce good employees for Western companies and work on producing mentally, physically, and spiritually mature human beings. We must be the change we wish to see in the world. Until we strive to change ourselves -not strive to copy others- we will not see a change in Pakistan.