A Modest Proposal

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Sectarian violence, subjugatory patriarchy, and societal militarization – all are but a few problems that have plagued the Pakistani state. Each of these issues has direct consequences that are plain to see, yet what is often forgotten is that malaises of this sort are, arguably, secondary aftereffects of a far more basal and ingrained problem – that of the ruinous state of Pakistan’s education system. At the expense of other, rather more “visible” crises, education has thus far occupied a backwater in the public consciousness – with the result that as education minister I have received negligible support from my own party members for raising the education budget above its 1988 high of a sorry 2.88% of GDP. This nation’s (deservedly infamous) …show more content…

Others favor more deft methods of improvement – preferring awareness campaigns to encourage those “less cultured” to send their childrento school. Such efforts have already been implemented by myriad NGO’s including the CARE and Akhuwat foundations – each with varying, but ultimately infinitesimal, levels of success. Although all of the above are perfectly logical suggestions, one crucially important feature is often forgotten in such top-down prescriptions. Apparent public apathy towards education is not the result of culturally ingrained biases that need “fixing” – it is instead the product of perfectly logical capitalist norms. When parents know that an education from even the best universities in Pakistan guarantees starting incomes little greater than 20,000 Rupees (equivalent to that of a chauffeur), one cannot expect them to follow high-minded ideals of Western-style

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