STEP – Science, Technology, and Education in Pakistan

LUMS has been shut down for a week. And as I said to a friend, maybe it’s a good thing. Because we, the ones at LUMS, are so disconnected from Pakistan, that it had to take the death of seven students, seven of our people, to make us pause our movies and type google news instead of facebook in our urls. Because with the divide between classes here, it’s as if Pakistan is two countries; one where all the news comes from, bombs, stampedes at ration lines, acid attacks, rapes and one where LUMS is, where people (even a few crazy women) can walk the clean quiet streets of defence and cantt, where people dine in every increasing style, where the only effects of terrorism are a few tiresome roadblocks and the echos of blasts far far away. Terrorism has reached our country now and we are slightly disturbed at it.

So finally the budding intellectuals of Pakistan have turned their attention to this problem that they had heard about but never really experienced before this. But this turned out to be a problematic exercise for me. Ask me what I want to see in this country. And I can flood your ears with concepts such as pluralism, freedom, justice, democracy, even anarchism in the style of Noam Chomsky. But ask me, “how do you get to there, from here?” And I am mute. And my hands drop uselessly to my sides. Or rather, they go up and cover my eyes because there is no point of sight when you can’t move.

My philosophy won’t work here because I know what I want but I have no way to make it happen.

I want these killings to end. I want the discourse to become more nuanced than “Islamic terrorism”. I want people to realize that all Muslims aren’t killers and that to say so, even as a joke, is to open the door to a dangerous generalization. I want Muslims to be able to criticize Israel on it’s war crimes without being attacked as fundamentalists. I want Muslims to stop defending what’s happening in our country and stop using conspiracy theories to deflect blame onto the US and its cronies. I want things to become less simplistic. But it can’t happen. Because there are certain interests for USA in creating the image of a Muslim terrorist. Because there is a certain complacency in the Muslim attribution of blame to the west. We all want to blame someone because then the responsibility to fix the problem is placed on whoever is blamed. And man is inherently lazy.

I want the people of Pakistan to be united. But for so many groups with so many nationalist claims to unite under one banner or one leader or even one party is impossible.

I want Pakistan to be partitioned into it’s four provinces. But for that to take place without bloodshed is a myth unheard of in our part of the World. And then there is the problem of our geographical location. A problem that we refer to with a mixture of pride and sorrow. The problem is that we are essential to too many interests. We are a troublesome neighbor to far too many important countries for those interests to allow us to divide for internal peace. Better a war ridden Pakistan than four small states who don’t border all those territories that actually matter to the World.

I want us to not think in terms of nationalism and patriotism. Because what use are these constructs? Why is a fellow Pakistani worth anymore than someone who just happens to be born in Iran or India? Why can’t we cherish human life and human development regardless of which boundary it occurs in? We cannot because such trajectories of thinking have never been offered to us. We cannot because if every Pakistani began to think of him or herself as an individual and began to work for their own benefit, all Pakistan would get is a slap from the invisible hand. Individualism abroad means greater progress because there are structures in which that individualism is exercised. Here, individualism is destruction. It is individualism that makes so many LUMS students rejoice that our university has closed in the middle of exams, because they hadn’t studied and would have scored “below the mean” in a course. Yes, there are Pakistanis who are rejoicing in this moment.

I want such Pakistanis, all Pakistanis to realize what it means to be at war. I want us to work. Ceaselessly. Because work alone can produce results and yes, it might be a Western concept to cherish work oh-so-much instead of sipping tea with the family but I want us to realize that tea and drawing room chats won’t do anything for us. But we can’t. Because when we go to school we die; when we talk out loud, we disappear; when we write, they write back threats. And why should we work? Why should we bother, sitting in our generator powered homes, surfing the net on our shiny laptops, going to cafes and stealing kisses on campus? Of course the greatest issue for LUMS to consider is kissing on campus. Of course. Because what effect does Pakistan’s appalling Gender Equity Index ratings have on a campus where women make up nearly half the student body? What effect do rising food prices have for us, with our regulated cafeteria prices?

So maybe it is good that LUMS has shut down for a week. But will this week change anything, I wonder? An essay here, a comment there. And this week will pass. And the rat race within LUMS will begin again. And you and I, as rational actors, will realize that nothing we do can help Pakistan and we should simply help ourselves by burying our heads in our imported traditions, getting the grades and rushing abroad the first chance we get.

I want things to change. But they won’t. Because we are stuck, you and I and scores like us. And I don’t know how we can get unstuck.

Faheem was one of the first people I befriended in early 1971 on my return from my graduate studies in the States, a friendship that survived till he breathed his last. The reasons go much beyond our common interest in physics and physics education and even our common associations with the Physics Department of Quaid-e-Azam University and the Abdus Salam International Center for Theoretical Physics, Trieste, Italy, places where we frequently met. Perhaps the main reason was that we both were greatly influenced by the Black and the anti-Vietnam movements in the States and the broader anti-establishment student movement of the sixties.

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It was mid-October 1973 when, after a grueling 26-hour train ride from Karachi, I reached the physics department of Islamabad University (or Quaid-e-Azam University, as it is now known). As I dumped my luggage and “hold-all” in front of the chairman’s office, a tall, handsome man with twinkling eyes looked at me curiously. He was wearing a bright orange Che Guevara t-shirt and shocking green pants. His long beard, though shorter than mine, was just as unruly and unkempt. We struck up a conversation. At 23, I had just graduated from MIT and was to be a lecturer in the department; he had already been teaching as associate professor for five years. The conversation turned out to be the beginning of a lifelong friendship. Together with Abdul Hameed Nayyar – also bearded at the time – we became known as the Sufis of Physics. Thirty six years later, when Faheem Hussain lost his battle against prostate cancer, our sadness was beyond measure. Read the rest of this entry »

In this article, I make the case that grade I-XII textbooks, prescribed by the provincial and federal textbook boards, should be made available on the Internet for free. I discuss the reasons why this is necessary and the benefits that will accrue from such an effort.

Outdated and Incorrect Curriculum

In a household survey conducted by Gallup Pakistan in May 2009, 70% of the respondents said that they send their children to government-run schools. These schools are often faulted for imparting incomplete, incorrect, and rot education to children. The school textbooks prescribed by the provincial and federal textbook boards are part of the problem. The description of the relevant material in science and math textbooks is at times inadequate whereas the social sciences, religious, and Pakistan studies textbooks have been used by the successive governments to further their political agendas.

Making textbooks available online will allow educational experts both inside and outside Pakistan to easily scrutinize their content for clarity, correctness, and completeness. The feedback received from educational experts will greatly help to improve the quality of these textbooks. Read the rest of this entry »

The Daily Times reports:

The National Assembly (NA) Standing Committee on Education on Friday recommended that the government formulate a national admission policy to facilitate the students in admission process in different educational institutions of the country.
The meeting held with Abid Sher Ali in the chair discussed the problems of students in getting admission in educational institutions. It observed that there were many ambiguities in the admission policy of Karachi University. The committee asked for its thorough review.
Education Minister Mir Hazar Khan Bijarani informed the committee that the admission policy of Karachi University would be discussed in the parliament to take members input for formulating the policy.

This is a step in the right direction. A standard and transparent national admission policy will not only lessen the confusion among students, who currently may have to go though a different set of entrance exams for each university, but will also help in reducing the cases of illegal admissions in universities.

Editor’s Note: We would like to thank Mr. Salman Naveed Khan for bringing this important news item to the editorial board’s attention.

Students’ extracurricular activities on campuses are signs of thriving learning centers. There have been student unions in our colleges and universities since independence. These elected student bodies were first banned during Zia’s regime, restored for a short interval in 1988 when PPP came into power, and then banned again a year later. The debate on whether these bodies should be allowed on campuses has been revived by the current government.

Student political groups, which are, in reality, the student wings of regional or mainstream political parties, plead vigorously in favor of student unions and it has been a common observation that these groups flourish when student unions are in place. There are a lot of people in our institutions who advocate student unions on the basis of their existence and functioning in many developed countries. Student unions in developed countries are entirely and strictly indigenous student bodies having absolutely no relationship with any national or regional political pressure groups. With such a composition, these unions serve the students of the specific institutions in which they operate. They have no plans, intentions, or functions that relate to national or regional politics.

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Happy 63rd Independence Day to all our readers.

“Remember that your Government is like your garden. Your garden flourishes by the way you look after it and the efforts that you put towards its improvement. Similarly, your Government can only flourish by your patriotic, honest and constructive efforts to improve it.” — Founder of Pakistan, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, speaking at Islamia College, Peshawar, April 12, 1948.

Text of the complete speech, titled “Responsibilities of the Youth”, is available at HumSafar.info.

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Dr. Zahid Ayub is the President of Isotherm, Inc., which is a manufacturer of heat transfer equipment in Arlington, TX. He is an Adjunct Professor at the University of Texas-Arlington and is a Technology Editor for the International Journal of Enhanced Heat Transfer. Among the honors Dr. Ayub has received are the Michigan New Product Award, ASHRAE Distinguished Service Award and ASHRAE Research Service Award. Dr. Ayub is also a Fellow of ASME and ASHRAE.

Seafood export from Pakistan to European Union (EU) countries was banned in early April 2007, after an EU team visited the Karachi and Korangi fish harbors to investigate quality standards at the fisheries facilities. Earlier, during a February 2005 trip, the EU team warned the Pakistani authorities about sub-standard quality at the harbors. This ban on all fish imports from Pakistan to the EU has resulted in a multi-million dollars loss. As quality standards normalize across the globe, the standard of quality in Pakistan’s fisheries could potentially cost millions more in revenue in coming years.

Fish rotting under the sun at local fisheries

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This Frontline short documentary reported by Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy examines the impact of the Taliban in Pakistan “out of the mouths of babes.” The narrative is highly engaging and is a searing indictment of the Taliban. The documentary makes an interesting statement on the battle against the Taliban: it is as much for the minds of the future citizenry of Pakistan as it is for square footage of land.

The swelling refugee camps of internally displaced people squeezed from their homes by US drone attacks, and faultlines between the Pakistan Army and the advancing Taliban are also examined. The Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre places the number of these refugees at upto 900,000 people, near half of whom may be children; out of their homes, and out of school.

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