What’s wrong with our education system and why we cannot remember the knowledge inculcated in educational institutions? Just the other day we hiked at the Margala Hills for two hours, and when we reached the top the twinkling lights from Islamabad city were presenting a mesmerizing view. I was questioned why the lights were twinkling at someplace in the city, and I failed to answer, though I was able to memorize some vague points regarding the speed of light during the change of the medium. I was baffled by the realization that despite studying physics for four years; I was not able to point out the basic phenomenon and processes of light. I was certainly studying for marks’ sake to compete with my batchmates in getting higher positions back then, that was why I could not remember the knowledge. This is what happens when we do study for the sake of marks, we get good marks definitely, but we forget what we have learned. This failure of remembering the knowledge in books and implementing that knowledge to understand basic natural processes has a strong link with our educational institutions, their environment, teachers, and their criterion regarding good students. Mostly, the schools and colleges in Pakistan teach the students to learn things from the book either it is Chemistry or Biology, Physics or Computer to score only higher marks in the examinations. No one inculcates that how such processes, such laws, or such ideas about life and the world can be seen or felt practically from our surroundings, because everything is happening around us, only there is a dire need to make the eyes of our mind open to thinking about them.
Nevertheless, everyone teaches us how giving bold headings or using markers helps us in getting good scores in Physics or Biology. Under the system of our education, students are required to learn, think and act in such uniformity or harmony that their inquisitions and their interests to learn different aspects of a topic get slaughtered. This schooling system demotivates and discourages the natural inquisitive abilities of the children and their cognitive development gets on a rough path. It would not be an exaggeration if I refer to the thoughtless minds of students like me as ‘empty cerebrums’ which have become habitual of only tolerating things that are infused into them for short-term achievements.
The ability of our minds to retrospect about life or the things working in our lives or the world has got stagnant. And, when the mindsets of the students are filled with the motive of only scoring good marks, this uniformity of mindsets kills their ability to critical thinking. In this way, students pass exams with good marks but cannot retrospect the knowledge later on in life. It would be an injustice to blame wholly the educational institutions for this failure because many other factors also contribute to this issue including the lack of concerns towards such kind of studies at home and the competition to score good marks in the exams. After all, our intellectual greatness is judged by society based on someone else’s marks. You are considered an intellectual only if you get higher marks than everyone else in your batch. These major factors shape the minds of the students in studying, thinking, and reasoning. Moreover, they successfully repress the growth of the reasoning power of their minds, the curiosity in them, and the ability to contemplate things.
The government is also a stakeholder regarding the issue of promulgation of rote learning culture which mitigates the chance of remembering the knowledge learned in schools/colleges. But the future of the schooling system seems to present a bleak image with the introduction of the Single National Curriculum (SNC) as it focuses on the proliferation of uniformity and ending diversity of thinking and learning. As students are already facing predicaments in their studies due to the mixed language (Regional language at home, Urdu in educational institutions, and English in exams), the addition of the Arabic language would add more to their troubles.
So, what we need is a mode of learning system which mutually focuses on studying for the sake of grades as well as for the sake of knowledge, because without good grades, one cannot get a good job to make a good living. And we can achieve this goal by working together with parents and teachers; providing such an environment for the students which compel them to think freely while studying for marks’ sake too. The government should also take steps in revising the course books and lessening the languages as much as possible.
Asia Batool
The writer is a student of English Literature studying at UMT, Lahore.
