Path to the Future

Link to Express-Tribune Article: published 3 Nov 2010

Link to my Author page, listing all my articles in Express-Tribune.

The Path to the Future

Dr. Asad Zaman

A recent LEAPS survey of education in rural Punjab find that about 50% of the children drop out by the end of class 3. Furthermore, the quality of education is so deficient that most third graders cannot read a sentence in Urdu, recognize simple words in English or perform standard arithmetic operations of 3-digit addition and subtraction. Since our children are our future, failure to invest in them is extremely short sighted. Nonetheless, among the many problems discussed by planners, under-investment in primary education has always been of low priority, despite massive and increasing illiteracy. The main reason the Pakistan has fallen far behind countries with far less in natural resources is that our policies have always favored a small elite at the expense of the masses.

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