Masood Hameed Baloch
In barren society where there is no hope of intellectual productiveness, irrational ideas gradually creep in.
The tragic incident of Mashal Khan in Mardan University shocked the nation. It galvanized Vice-chancellors of various public universities to recommend tolerance lectures be held on campus throughout Pakistan on a weekly basis. Specific lectures could be helpful to counter the rising intolerance in the society.
Whether it is religious seminaries, political parties or university premises irrationality seeped everywhere in this society. Fascists thinking and intolerance emanate from lack of proper education.
In our society if you have another opinion, then people will become your enemy.
It makes a bit puzzle, actually what kind of education our universities impart to the students.
People of the civilized world have realized that man does not live by food alone and have to feed higher faculties too by cultivation of art, literature, and keep in close touch with the gadgets of science.
In our society if you have another opinion, then people will become your enemy
Fortunately, the world is progressing so rapidly with advance education. But our society falls behind in this field.
We have more than one standard of education for different class of people. The kind of education in Madrassah spawns factional, religious and cultural conflicts. It creates barrier to modern knowledge, stipples creativity and breed bigotry.
Whole curriculum is a sorry tale of subjugating our knowledge, learning science and art to faith and fairy-tales which are part of religious discourse. Imagine, if invaders become the heroes, it will instigate the people towards warfare ideology.
To carve out a better education system, then faith must be separated from education. Liberal values be introduced through curricula reforms so that it can teach the students tolerance and respect.
The system should scrap the traditional teaching method, and involve the latest pedagogy in classes. Our examination system evaluates students not on the basis of cognitive abilities but encourage them for rote memorization. It needs to be overhauled at par with the changing demands.
In this 21st century in the developed and advance developing countries there is ongoing and vigorous research, done by specialists into finding how and what the students must be taught, that when they become part of the national workforce.
To carve out a better education system, then faith must be separated from education
Fortunately, there are some very successful models in practice in the world, where students are taught, along with solid sciences, humanities and arts. All these models are secular. Students are instilled the idea of questioning everything to become inquisitive.
More courses should be introduced how the mind works, how society build up, and how to effectively cope with the issues.
The latest modules and techniques, may become helpful to impart critical thinking and skills, which is more important to life success, across a variety of matters.
Hopefully, by bringing all these reforms in the education system. Then, we may have enlightened and generation of true educated people. And in the long run our society keep moving on path of rationalism.
Writer is a freelance columnist, blogger and a contributor to Balochistan Voices.
Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article are those of the author and Balochistan Voices not necessarily agrees with them.
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