Dehumanization of Education System

Dehumanization of Education System

By

Nadeem Akram

Theoretically, an effective education system should be able to produce creative, intelligent, skilled, and knowledgeable youth capable of steering Pakistan out of this quagmire and on the path of growth, development, and prosperity. Unfortunately, our education system is neither equipped nor designed to deliver what is expected off of it. The fault lies with policy makers, educators, corporate intervention, and to a certain degree our parents. The increasing ‘commercialization’ couple with apathy of our rulers have literally dehumanized our system of education.

To start with, at present we have three different education systems operating in Pakistan. Public, private and religious seminaries system which are at odds with one another. Notwithstanding their divergences in terms of their approach to impart education, these systems do have a common denominator. All three systems are producing robots which having this amazing capacity to store and retain facts and reproduce that information at the required time to move on to the next grade. Whilst the public and religious seminaries foster a rote regime to ‘assess’ a student’s ability, private institutions on the other hand employ a standard testing to assess a student’s so called ‘suitability’. In either case, the idea is to dehumanize the learning process by buttressing a ‘content-bloated, pre-fabricated, highly prescribed curriculum’ connubial to stringent testing system which hurriedly picks up those who have learned more than the others, thus sealing the fate of many, who according to Albert Einstein ‘will live it (their) whole life believing that it (they) are stupid’. The system is teaching a fish how to climb a tree and not how to swim.

What make humans unique is their diversity, curiosity, and creativity. A system that removes human nature out of the equation, or in other words ‘dehumanize’ the learning process is merely promoting conformity which eventually leads to mediocrity. There is nothing wrong in verifying what a student has learnt through a formal testing mechanism, but the fault lies when a student’s ‘suitability’ is hurriedly ascertained based on the test results alone. Grades, by and large remain the sole criteria, to brandish a group of students believed to deliver more than the others. This is a superfluous notion, since the entire system is honed upon getting good grades and in the process the concept of ‘learning’ is thrown out of the window. At some point in time, most of us have come across a student or two with excellent grades, sailing through the admission criteria of a professional college with relative ease and yet they are at bay as they enter an Engineering or Medical college. The reason these students struggle to stay afloat in professional colleges is that they may have ‘acquired’ the skill of retaining and reproducing information and data with relative ease, they lack the ability to learn, explore the unknown, creating rather than acquiring new knowledge because the system had them wear blinkers thus overly narrowing their focus and inability to see the larger picture.

The learning culture in our educational system, like many others in the world, has gradually been eclipsed by corporate culture. Just like corporations all that matter is the bottom line. In corporate culture it is all about setting targets which are specific, measureable, action-oriented, and result-oriented and time bound, the present system has straight-jacketed parents as well as children into this SMART corporate doctrine. The system is no longer concerned with developmental needs of a preschooler, primary student or a secondary schooler, what we have instead is preschoolers being forced to cram data and information in order for them to make it to a coveted kindergarten and kindergartners being force fed ‘information’ to make them more ‘efficient’ and ‘productive’ and thus guaranteeing their admission in a ‘desirable’ institution. Words like harder, tougher and faster echoes in our classrooms, and students are expected to contribute to the bottom-line of a certain institution; good grades all-around.  

The target oriented approach prevailing in our educational system ensures that a select few among many who have mastered the skills of acquiring and reproducing information, conforming to a defined set of mental and physical skills, sustained disciplined approach, and more importantly, a burning desire to outdo others in terms of achievement of targets, kind of “employee of the month” approach, if you may! Just like corporations, who spend millions on its Human Resources department to give their organizations look more human than they actually are, the educational institutions embellishes its monstrous and monolithic enterprises with co-curricular activities in an effort to ‘humanize’ the otherwise dehumanized system. Unfortunately, the so-called co-curricular activities are more focused on competing rather than learning and God forbid having fun. A trip to an historical site or a museum eventually ends up with students being asked to submit a write up about their experience. The fun part actually becomes a painful memory, once students find out that they were supposed to follow that one particular pattern liked by the teacher. So much for creativity, imagination and expression!

Pakistan’s education system faces numerous challenges. Apathy of successive governments has led to a near collapse of public education system. The space created by government’s failure to sustain and improve public education system was quickly filled by corporate sector. Private schools mushroomed all over Pakistan and over the years have attained a status symbol. Unregulated and unchecked these private institutions have developed their own curriculum and teaching philosophy. Mimicry and aping the West are hallmarks of these institutions. There is little or no realization that what may work in West may be far from ground realities in Pakistan, but blind following persists. The alarming development in the recent years have been the creation of preschools where children as young as two years are sent to preschools with a hope of entering into a ‘prestigious’ kindergarten school. It is a well-established fact that a child needs a nurturing family. To negate a child’s emotional growth in his/her natural habitat: home, and to make a child sit in a classroom for three to four hours is abusive and neglectful. Yet parent are made to believe that this is what is best for their child. Manufacturing and choreographing two year’s old to get to produce ‘on demand’ is doing an irreparable damage to the fragile souls and minds of these children and is certainly dehumanizing.

Compared to our flawed education system where it is ingrained in our children’s mind to do more and more, Finland education system focuses on less. Finnish kids start their formal education at the age of seven because of the realization that children will learn more by playing and exploring than sitting locked up in a classroom. In early years the focus is to teach children “learn how to learn” and the grading is subjective and not based on ‘high risk’ standardized testing. It would take another column to fully cover Finnish model, but suffice to say, Finland has the best educational system in the world according to a new global league table, produced by the Economist Intelligence Unit for Pearson. How Finland did it? It is simple-by taking a humanistic approach, where each child is recognized as a unique individual with different developmental needs and by eliminating the evaluation-driven, centralized model that our systems use. If we must ape, then why not ape the best?

There is yet another disturbing fact that is furthering the dehumanization in our school systems in general and in our society at large. Before the advent of private schools, there existed only half a dozen or so ‘elite’ schools in Pakistan. However, in recent years these private schools have acquired the status of ‘elite’ schools and the existing class divide among student have quadrupled if not more. These schools have infused a false sense of ‘superiority’ in the students which have seriously harmed the way the see the world around. These students live in a fantasy world, where they are made to believe that they can be anyone they want to be or get anything they want. Primarily, these institutions fosters an environment where competitiveness is imbedded in students’ mind. They are made to believe that excellence means nothing but being at the top. “A genuine concern for the fellow human beings is the essence of humanity. How can one be concerned for fellow human beings if he has learned to push or leave others behind to succeed and to excel? The modern education system delivers such youth that is primarily concerned about themselves and those who would eventually hire them. Being concerned about the pain and sufferings of others is not something that they are educated in. Humanity is only a subject of academic interest for them.”