The Education Department of Punjab issued a notification that all public sector schools of Punjab be converted to English medium schools from this year onwards. The Punjabi children of Pakistan are suddenly studying in English medium schools. All it required was the effort of passing a mere statement. Point to be celebrated here is that changing the medium of instruction has been taken as a precondition in order to raise the standard of education.
It is not to be implied in the least that English medium schools do not account for a higher standard of education. I believe English-medium schools offer good quality education only because our curriculum was shaped accordingly and most importantly, our teachers were well-versed in the language. In the public sector, clearly no such manoeuvres have been performed. Before making this declaration, such aspects should have been taken into consideration by the Punjab government.
Changing the curriculum is one of the first things that should have been undertaken, followed by a comprehensive teachers’ training programme. There are quite a number of unemployed, trained teachers out there who could have been recruited for the purpose.
On my recent trip to Lodhran in South Punjab, I was able to visit a total of eight schools that were previously being run by the government. I did not find any of the children with whom I sought to interact speaking possibly in any other language than their local one, Saraiki, though their books were in Urdu and English language.
** Upon further examination, I found that children had memorised those pages in English and were not able to tell what it meant. Considering the fact that teachers are not qualified enough and children do not find the language spoken in their daily lives, it really is not surprising that they do not know what they were studying.**
The English language, without a doubt, is one of the dominant languages in the world. According to a report by UNESCO, estimates have suggested that around 50 percent of today’s spoken languages may be extinct in the year 2100. Education accounts for one of the fundamental factors in the disappearance of these languages. Most of them would be indigenous ones.
Successive governments have not been able to recruit staff that is qualified enough to teach English in public sector schools. In such a situation, the government should not risk the future of the country for the sake of a foreign language. When students and teachers are well versed in the language of instruction, only then are they capable of sharing knowledge, ask and answer questions, take plunges of creativity and fashion an environment of healthy and interactive discussions and debates in the classroom. That is what learning and educating is about and stands to define quality education and raising the bar.
Very few non profit entities have been able to come up with a novel approach of brightening the young minds of our nation. Supplementary reading material in local languages like Saraiki and Punjabi is being introduced in the local schools of Southern Punjab.
The idea behind this particular endeavour is basically to allow students to remain connected to their indigenous language. The get reading material that consists of short stories that are interesting enough and which comes to them like a breath of fresh air in order to think creatively, critically, freely and out of the box. Only then can we expect them to become responsible and active citizens of our nation.
Similarly, some educational foundations are sending their teachers to cities like Karachi for teachers’ training programmes. They undergo a process of learning and adaptability to modern methods of teaching so that they are able to impart gainful knowledge to their students.
While English may be the ‘language of power’ and the ‘language of today’, we cannot let it hamper our country’s youth’s creativity and act as a hurdle on their path of learning. We need to realise that our system of education is still far behind in adopting such a strategy as the Punjab government has done.