I posted this PBS video a while ago about the Pakistans education system. Now with the unfortunate event in Peshawer, and the attention on Pakistan, we should be outrage about these numbers. In Pakistan, public education has become a battleground. Members of Fatma’s local school council are outraged, saying the elite only care about themselves and keep the poor illiterate to stay in power. Government officials send their own kids to air-conditioned classrooms. Lets see them make their kids sit here and see what it is like, says one council member. Arent these the children of Gods creation? “Today, there are 68.4 million children between the ages of five and 19 in this country, and fewer than 30 million of those kids are in any type of school,” says Mosharraf Zaidi, a longtime advocate of reforming Pakistan’s schools. “You look at the consequences of these kids not going to school -- and lets set aside the fearmongering and the scare-mongering of saying, you know, ‘What if all these kids become terrorists?’ Setting that aside, the real problem is that, if you arent capable of participating in the global economy, you will be very, very poor. And desperate and extreme poverty has some diabolical consequences for societies and for individuals.” pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/pakistan901/video_index.html
Posted on: Mon, 22 Dec 2014 07:57:26 +0000