You have to be part of the production process of either goods or services that somebody somewhere wants to consume. Increasingly, you will need some level of education to do that. But they look at private schools, and they see modern buildings, children learning well. Can there be a private solution?
The total number of schools in Pakistan is roughly , But there are 42 million kids out of school. Out of these , schools, 44, are private.
And the rest, about ,, are public. We need to acknowledge and celebrate the noble work that philanthropists like Greg Mortenson do. But Mortenson and his Central Asia Institute have begun only about schools.
Even some of the bigger philanthropic initiatives, like The Citizens Foundation -- brilliant work, very efficient, really good results, across-the-board secular -- [but it accounts for only about] schools, compared to , The Reed Foundation, based in Kashmir -- again, very effective, low-cost, excellent work -- but in just schools.
It requires a state response. The United States is the best example. Do you see this more as a technical obligation for the state, or as a moral obligation? When you have this many kids not in school in Pakistan, a moral responsibility needs to be met. Look at the consequences of these kids not going to school. And desperate and extreme poverty has some diabolical consequences for societies and for individuals.
Can you talk about why you see teachers as a problem? The teacher problem in Pakistan starts and ends with their recruitment, promotion, and retention. It produces a lifelong liability for the government. Once a teacher is a permanent employee, they become a cost center, not just for the 20 or 30 years they will be a public employee, but beyond their career as they retire and are eligible for a pension.
The second problem is that, today, the hiring of those teachers is largely a political patronage decision. It becomes a lifelong liability for the state, but a lifelong gift for the person who gets that job.
If you work for the government, eight or nine times out of ten, you are going to be a teacher, because most government employees tend to be teachers.
Do all these teachers receive proper training? One way to understand this is that in Pakistan cities, among the wealthy, the upper middle class -- in a household like mine, for example -- when we employ somebody to water our garden, drive our car, cook in our kitchen, we often ask them what kind of qualifications they have.
And the minimum qualification to do one of these jobs is matriculation. A few years ago, the government added another stipulation, saying that you had to have a primary school teaching certificate, a PTC. But given the state of affairs in the public sector, this certificate, which is issued by the government itself, is really just a rubber stamp that provides an added layer of legitimacy to the hiring of people who are basically not even high school grads as primary school teachers.
What was your own educational experience? I went to high school in the West, but I also went to high school here in Pakistan and to a private school that cost a lot of money. So my life is almost completely separate from the life of the average Pakistani, who, in most cases, goes to a public school, where English is not the standard language. They studied at elite private educational institutions, or they studied abroad. He writes a regular column for The News in Pakistan, and his writing appears frequently in a variety of other publications including Foreign Policy, the New York Times and the Indian Express.
He frequently contributes to television, radio and podcasts. Follow Us — Tw. Skip to content. Islamabad, Pakistan. Work Inquiries info tabadlab. Prime Minister Imran Khan has a lot more power than his critics may give him credit for, and he has used this power to make five bets that are going With the Taliban ascendant in Afghanistan, the Daesh terrorist network resurgent across Afghanistan, the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan terrorist group The recent takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban poses a grave danger to Pakistani society and state — but these dangers are not what a typically The theme of a colonized mindset that cannot think for itself, by itself, of itself is a powerful one.
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