of 16. Pakistan’s Education task force a partnership between government officials and civil society has declared an education emergency and launched a social media
campaign.
The messages of the Education Emergency initiatives are in English so the SMS impact too is likely to be minimal. Interestingly this major campaign only asks people to sign a petition or call a representative and join a march. The social media momentum gained during the first few days through Facebook slowly waned as there was no tangible cause to rally around. The website engages the community by asking them to run their own awareness event on educational emergency. That is about it. There seems to be no clearly defined mission or goals of this hyped up campaign. Community engagement through facebook and twitter alone is hardly more than a feel-good experience for a few. The globalised Pakistani youth of today is energetic and charged for change. However, all initiatives are hollow and there is no path defined to channel national youth energy. Primary education is already in dire straits when 25 million children are not attending school.
To add to it the current government has struck a blow to higher education. This would perhaps be a blow to our socio-economic growth at par with the devastation wreaked. When higher education suffers we would see the impact in a decade manifested in poor quality doctors, engineers, professors and managerial professionals who make the backbone of the country.
There are reports submitted by the Education Emergency website. Gleaning these reports they refer to the IMF induced dilemma of social sectors reform which essentially mean lower government spending. Such reports in a nutshell relate that the problems are just too many and too complex to be solved. As Pakistanis live suffering from the elephant in the room syndrome, a former mountaineer named Greg Mortenson from the United States is single handedly achieving miracles.
Greg did not share our language or culture or religion. He did not achieve a top university education imbibing terms such as social responsibility, community engagement, stakeholders, spillover effects, quantifiable goodwill, sustainability, geo-politics and glocalisation. Mortenson’s learning curve worked automatically. He is now teaching us how to create, manage and operate an enterprise that deserves the most prestigious award known in management parlance as the “Quality Award.” He has been iconoclastic in a region where our Muslim leaders despair of archaic tribal custom and militancy in the face of new players of the old great game. He has won the hearts and minds in the most militant and rigid tribal codes and created an educational miracle that extends to public health involving the most oppressed members of society namely women.
If the Pakistan Education Task Force was serious about change it would have studied the work of Greg Mortenson’s CAI and Pakistan’s own indigenous The Citizens Foundation and then set benchmarks and outlined best practices to chalk out a plan. A social media campaign would have then focused on mass appeal through a local version of Twitter that enlisted all telecom providers. The energized youth would have whole heartedly devoted time and resources to a noble cause. Remote access learning programs are already been effectively employed in many countries and even the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and other development organizations strongly advocate their usage. Even within the current dismal 2.1% of GDP devoted to education, directing more money to ICT based education programs can significantly address the education emergency. Pakistan Education Task Force has failed to plan and is thus planning to fail.
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