WE NEED REFORMS IN EDUCATION

Education has always been the key phenomenon of a human society. Man always yearns for

knowledge. Allah made Adam and gave him from His own knowledge, thus Adam became the father
of a wise creature namely mankind. It is but a fact that man is no better than animals in case he
lacks the faculty of knowledge

Our education system is falling. Currently, education in Pakistan is rooted in rote learning and

absent-minded memorisation. Creativity and problem-solving are disregarded. Knowledge is thrust

at students, who have devised ways to retain the knowledge temporarily, regurgitate it and move on.
But this is not the essence of education. An acceptable modern education is one that gives a student
the best preparation for life after school. In our working lives, we have to make decisions and solve
problems that require creative solutions.

Melinda Gates said and I quote Kids are falling through the cracks and nobody notices it. That, to
me, is whats wrong with the school system.

Yes. The system is inadequate. How can we compete in a world market when our students are
unprepared for the world? Instead of spending money on the Department of Defence, let's

concentrate on educating our young people in math and science. Getting an education keeps

children out of trouble and off the streets. Plato declared way back when that it is a teachers job not

to fill a child's head with knowledge but to point them in a direction where they can learn and think
for themselves. I'm not saying we eradicate the system but change is not always bad.

Current policies are based on a tragic misdiagnosis of the problem. Today, we have educational

merchants, who do not impart knowledge but treat education as an industry. They treat education
as an industrial process rather than as a human one. They are driven by a culture of testing and

standardization that has narrowed the curriculum and sees students as data points and teachers as

functionaries rather than as living breathing people. Victor Hugo supports this point when he said:
He, who opens a school door, closes a prison.

To improve our schools, we have to humanize them and make education personal to every student
and teacher in the system. Education is always about relationships. Great teachers are not just

instructors and test administrators: They are mentors, coaches, motivators, and lifelong sources of
inspiration to their students. Every child deserves a champion who will never give up on them...
and insists they become the best they can possibly be.

We must be clear: reform is not only necessary, it is essential if we are to ensure that pupils are

equipped with the knowledge and skills for the twenty-first century. We are in a global race, in

which the qualifications of the twentieth century will no longer equip us with the necessary skills

and knowledge needed for the modern world. This means that we not only need to look outwards, to
emulate the countries that are powering ahead, fuelled by a rigorous education system that will not
accept second best. An educational system isnt worth a great deal if it teaches young people how to
make a living but doesnt teach them how to make a life.

We must recognise that if we do not reform our education system, we will be letting down future
generations of pupils who will be competing in this modern, international world. This is why we

need reform, and why it is wrong to bow down to the forces of educational conservatism. Our high
schools are designed to prepare students for college, not the world most will enter. Albert Einstein

said Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school. Times have
changed. Today, we are an information society with hundreds of sources of information. Last years
facts, or yesterdays, may not have any value today. Skills learned today will soon become obsolete
and new skills must be mastered. For this reason, knowing how to learn, search for and acquire

information is more valuable than being a learner-of-facts. Because most high schools students

enter the work force, their knowledge should be measured by their ability to acquire information
and turn it into useful knowledge rather than their ability to memorize.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, once, very beautifully said We are students of words: we are shut up in

schools, and colleges, and recitation -rooms, for ten or fifteen years, and come out at last with a bag
of wind, a memory of words, and do not know a thing.

The typical high school teaches 30% of its students to be failures. This is because the curriculum

only recognizes academic skills and students intelligence is measured by this standard. Non-

academic skills and associated intelligence are ignored. Teenagers are put in jail because they refuse
to conform to passive classroom learning environments. Because the education system labels them
FAILURES, they turn to criminal activity to be recognized. Every young teenager wants to learn, be

recognized, be somebody and excel. If they can't do it in the classroom, they will find another outlet,
usually one that leads to self-destruction.

John Cage said It would be better to have no school at all than the schools we now have.

Encouraged, instead of frightened, children could learn several languages before reaching age of

four, at that age engaging in the invention of their own languages. Play'd be play instead of being, as
now, release of repressed anger. We broadly agree on educating children "for democracy and

liberty," even if we don't always agree on what that looks like inside or outside of school. We agree
about "immersing kids in a community that finds the world a fascinating place" even if I failed to
persuade you of the need not merely for common standards but a common curriculum.

I would like to conclude on Robert G. Ingersolls words who said that it is a thousand times better to
have common sense without education than to have education without common sense.
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