PMLN has been trying to pull the wool over the country’s eyes in Balochistan by claiming that the education budget has been raised. In basic terms this is not an incorrect statement because the amount of funds has been increased. However as education watchdog Alif Ailaan pointed out, this is only trying to hide the fact that education funding as a percentage of the budget actually decreased since last year.
17% of the total #BalochistanBudget is allocated for #education in 2016-17. 19.86% was allocated in 2015-16. https://t.co/i2cMkJXSep
— Alif Ailaan (@AlifAilaan) June 20, 2016
Students in Balochistan may still be better off than students in KP, however, as that province is handing over hundreds of millions from the budget to Maulana Samiul Haq’s extremist madrassah that has been termed as ‘University of Jihad‘.
Even for those who do not attend madrassah, though, the lines are being blurred. Government is working on a new plan to turn students into parrots as whole of education system will be dedicated to memorising Quran in Arabic. The new proposal would make Quranic education mandatory for all schools.
Already Pakistan has sunk to the bottom of global education rankings, scoring only 9.2 points out of 100 in a recent survey compared to India who scored 60.9. The whole country is suffering from negative effects of religious extremism, and still government is giving hundreds of millions to extremist seminaries. How can we expect anything to improve if we continue to follow the failed policies of the past?
There is no shortage of religious instruction in this country. What is missing is critical thinking. Teaching students how to think will not only improve our education rankings in the world, it will also help to counter extremism and sectarianism because people will not be so easily fooled.
