Pakistan: Forgotten orphan

http://www.thefrontierpost.com/

Even at the best of times, this orphan goes largely ignored and forgotten. And it is hardly surprising if the state-run schooling is not even distantly in view on any radar at this point in time when the polity across the spectrum is so obsessively preoccupied with the election aftermath. But the worry is that there is no sign if the poor thing state-run schooling will come to the focus when the nation is through with the pleasures and pangs of the poll and the governments settle down on their thrones. No doubt, this time round various political parties and groups had spoken of education a bit more elaborately in their manifestoes. But that talk was mostly on trite, familiar lines. State-run schooling, as such, hardly received any much mention from any of them. And this is quite disturbing, to say the least. For, nobody can dispute that state-run schooling makes up the key part of the country's educational pyramid. It indisputably stands unrivalled as far as its reach goes. It is the country's biggest and largest network for the schooling of the nation's children, and arguably the only opening available to the rural folks in our sprawling countryside to send their offspring for mainstream education. Appallingly, despite its position of primacy in the country's educational dispensation, the system has been let to rot over the years nonchalantly. So much so, a huge mess of it has become visibly, screaming for urgent remedial measures to come alive. Yet, if in spite of that, the rotting system has failed to draw the attention of the power contenders in the poll, what hope could be entertained if the incoming rulers would set about revamping this schooling system that alone caters to the education need of the huge populace of poor children even in urban areas, let alone the desolate poverty-ridden countryside? But this is not acceptable any more. The system must improve at any rate. The children of the poor have every right to education, and the state is bound by the constitution and the law to give them this right. They must have every opportunity to develop their potential and their inherent talents, with which they are endowed no lesser than their rich peers. This opportunity has not been afforded them in the past. No sincere or worthwhile government effort has ever been made over the past decades to resurrect the collapsing state-schooling system. That has to change now. Over the time, much pedantic talk has come forth from the thinking class. Quite often have the citizens been bombarded with statistics like rates of enrolments and dropouts, and percentages of male and female enrolments and dropouts, and what not. The din of demagoguery and populism have been no lesser deafening. No dearth either has been in pious vows and tall promises. But one thing has been constant all along: the state-run schooling has just been hurtling down unchecked. And that downward slide still continues, with no evident worry in the quarters that should be deeply concerned. None of the power contenders had spoken of the rotten state-run schooling all through the hustings. And as yet, none of the incoming rulers has spoken of it. This is quite unsettling. So long as the state-run schooling stays a mess, the whole of talk like Education for All and constitutional right of every child to education would remain sheer bunkum and the accomplishment of these objectives just a pipedream. Hence, the incoming rulers, even those who were saddled in power previously, must, for a change, focus first on salvaging the crumbling state-run schooling from the morass it is stuck in so ruinously and putting it on the right track. A hugely painstaking job it certainly would be, for the system having long fallen into wholesale decay and annihilation. But the effort would be worth it, and a big nation-building enterprise too. No exaggeration would it be to say that revamping of this devastated system would indeed be a step towards national enlightenment. Would any of the incomers take this plunge? Better keep the fingers crossed. At times even unimagined happening do occur, though. So you never know, even though the past has not been so eventful on this score.