Alif Laila Series of Ferozesons and my love for books

 مجھے سب ہے یاد زرا زرا-- تمہیں یاد ہو کہ نہ یاد ہو

کس کو یاد ہے ان 6 کتب کی قدر مشترک؟

ملکہ شہرزاد

حجام اور قزاق

چین کی شہزادی

گنجا لنگور

سندباد کے سات سفر

معروف موچی

1970 کی دہائی میں یہ کتب میری اسلام آباد میں "ملت لائبریری" کا حصہ تھیں جن میں بچوں کی فیروز سنز کی کتب کے علاوہ ابن صفی، این صفی، مظہر کلیم وغیرہ کی کتب تھیں

کل فیروز سنز نزد تین تلوار جانے کا اتفاق ہوا، تو یہ سیٹ خرید لیا--

کیا زبوں حالی کا شکار نظر آیا-- فیروز صاحب کے بچوں کی اگلی نسل کیلئے فکر فردا کا مقام

فیروز سنز کراچی کا پتہ:

تین تلوار سے دو تلوار کی طرف جاتے ہوئے الٹے ہاتھ پر شیل کے پیٹرول پمپ کے سامنے کھڑے ہوں تو سیدھے ہاتھ والے کونے کے سامنے کمرشل کے فرسٹ فلور پر

Tarzan and My Language Acquisition

ٹارزن کے جنگ اخبار میں روز شائع ہونے والے تصویری سلسلہ سے میں نے تقریباً 5-6 سال کی عمر میں اخبار پڑھنا شروع کیا-- یہ 1967-68 کا زمانہ تھا-- روز صبح امی، ابا یا بڑی بہنوں سے اصرار ہوتا تھا کہ وہ پڑھ کر سنائیں، اور شروع میں دو چار دفعہ ہر ایک نے سنایا-- چونکہ ہر کوئی اکثر اپنے کاموں میں مصروف ہوتا تھا، اور کہتا تھا بھئی خود پڑھ لو-- چنانچہ جھنجلا کر خود ہی پڑھنا شروع کر دیا-- اس کے بعد یہ چاروں فیروز سنز کی کتابیں IMSG سپر مارکیٹ اسلامآباد کی لائبریری سے لے کر پڑھیں-- بعد ازاں ٹارزن کی ان چار کتب کا پورا سیٹ خریدا اور بیسیوں دفعہ پڑھ ڈالا-- فیروز سنز کی ایک کتاب اسکول سے واپسی کے بعد کھانے کی میز پر شروع کرتے تھے اور وہ کوئی ایک ڈیڑھ گھنٹے کی مار ہوتی تھی--- ہماری imagination تخیل اور ایڈونچر کی آبیاری ان کتب سے شروع ہوئیں-- بعد ازاں اوریجنل بھی پڑھنے کا موقع ملا--

یہ چار کتب فیروزسنز واقع نزد تین تلوار شیل پٹرول پمپ سے خریدیں اس پیر کو خریدیں تھیں--

Why School Priorities Have Changed

 How short-term observations can lead to faulty solutions? What was important 50 years ago is not important today. See the following post

What was important 50 years ago is not important today. 50 years ago depression was not among the top 10 or even top 20 illnesses leading to death, today it is number one killer disease. 50 years ago memorizing spellings, formulas and multiplication tables was essential for all educated people, today their memorization is no longer important because of Google search, smart phones and auto spell checkers. 50 years ago self esteem, self care, self finances were taught by father mother, uncles, aunts and extended families and neighborhood friends, today we have deliberately cutoff the support environment of extended family and friends, and now want to shift the responsibility to schools.

.....

We are creating new problems because of our selfish pursuits and then want government and school systems to solve these problems.

Why the pendulum shifted in last 50 years. Regarding memorization of formulas, the shift is understandable because of availability of formula and spelling on a single click of smart phone has obviated the need. The increase in depression is owed to what Alvin Toffler called future shock.

For a more detailed understanding of why there is Prevalence of depression over the last 50 years see my other post

https://www.facebook.com/787063350/posts/10156932994243351/

Teachers at ICB/IMS

Sitting Sir Manzoor Ahmed Khan (English), Sir Nafees Siddiqui (English), Principal MKA Beg, Madam Shuja Zaidi (Headmistress), Sir Jan e Alam (Urdu), Sir Ghalib Raza (Urdu)

This appears to be editorial board of Sumbul, school magazine

Growing up with Magazines

In 1969-70 I was 7 when I started reading Taleem o Tarbiat and other magazines. We had almirahs shelves full of magazine issues going back to early 1960s and to even mid 1950s. 

My First Brush with Philosophy: A Tribute to Sir Nafees Siddiqui of ICB/IMS

I remember Sir Nafees Siddiqui who used to teach English at ICB/IMSB, G6/3,Islamabad. He didn't teach our class but we had the opportunity to be taught for a couple of class sessions when he came in to fill in for the absence of our regular teacher. Sir Nafees Siddiqui gave us our first introduction to philosophy and its terminology. He drew a vertical line at the center of blackboard to divide it into two columns. On left side he wrote physical, temporal, mundane, real, objective ... and on right words like metaphysical, transcendent, spiritual, abstract, subjective ,.. And then explained the terms and their difference which were instrumental in raising my awareness.

ICB/IMSB Teachers Autographs 1975-80

Tribute to my school teachers who laid the foundation for my learning at ICB (Islamabad Model School for Boys) G-6/3 near Covered Bazar/Melody. 

Autographs from 1975 and 1980:

Sir Ghalib Raza (Urdu) 

Sir Hanif Tahir (Maths) 

Sir Subhan Ullah (Geography)

Sir Rafique Malik (English)

Sir Jan e Alam (Urdu)

Sir Sabir Raza (Urdu)

I regret not having taken autographs on this autograph book from some other great teachers like Sir Saleem A Khan (Physics) , Sir Tanveer (Chemistry) , Sir Wajid Nawaz (Pak Studies) , Sir Muhammad Ahmed, (Technical Drawing), Sir Zafar Zaidi (Chemistry), Sir Arif Husain (islamiat) , Sir Shabihul Hasan (Biology)... But I do have reports with their comments and signatures 😊..

Understanding the Four Critical Stages of LMS Technology Assimilation- A Case Study of a Pakistani University

At IoBM, we crashed into the use of LMS at a breakneck speed. However, our assimilation of LMS (Learning Management System) which is just another technology is following the well known critical stages of assimilation of technology [1]. We had started our implementation in Fall 2019 and by the time the lockdown happened we had around 50 faculty members who were using the LMS. However, the lockdown propelled us into cramping the 2-3 year roll out of the LMS implementation project into a 5 day roller coaster crash implementation. The adoption of technology happened vigorously and soon everyone was using Zoom and LMS. However, the stage of rapid growth appears to be barging into a saturation stage where the initial euphoria of early adopters and vigorous users of technology is transiting into a stage of fatigue and disillusionment. I can see many vigorous early adopters facing this. This post describes these stages in detail, and how to use this in your LMS dissemination strategy.  Individual emergencies and issues that were dealt with in going from 70 sections using LMS to 500 sections using LMS in 15 days, and adding another 430 sections in the next ten days. These will be part of another case study. This post is written for our faculty who are already aware with the happenings of the issues at IoBM, their resolution and the future plan of action.

The assimilation of technology is often described by a technology assimilation curve or the "S-Curve" which is also known as the Sigmoid Curve. See Figure 1 :

Learning S-Curve: Learning going from Growth to Maturity Phase. Adapted from [2]

My Most Memorable Readings- Tilism e Hoshrub and Dastan e Amir Hamza

My most memorable experience of reading Urdu books was the time spent in reading of Ferozsons' Tilism e Hoshruba and Dastan e Ameer Hamza.

Documentaries related to Pakistan Studies and Partition of India

Partition: Borders of Blood : Al Jazeera Documentary:
In this two-part special, 101 Easttraces the events and conflicting politics that led to the greatest migration of people in human history, and unleashed a wave of communal violence that claimed more than a million lives.

How India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh were formed: Animation by Al Jazeera: How the princely states amalgamated and the new boundaries formed from 1947 till present. 

1. Pakistan's Prime Ministers, 40 videos: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLgA5TIRIbVGfzNqGF5vVv1gMT2vc6e6qF 
2. Pakistan's Chiefs of Army, 23 videos: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLgA5TIRIbVGdZdCzm8x9BR1MWnEEE7qr4
3. Pakistan's Chief Justices, 43 videos: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLgA5TIRIbVGfBOd4SmjL37LSO5qa1rinm
4. Ghaddar kon, 30 videos: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLgA5TIRIbVGcQGbzN5eS2Ltn_amnIG6ss
5. Mughals: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLgA5TIRIbVGeBxht5miuwL3CNzMI9KrQY

Examples of How Children Fail

In "How Children Fail", the acclaimed author John Holt describes how children stop using their mind, and fail. It is quite evident from the example pic below that the child was using his mind. Unfortunately, the teacher was grading "mindlessly" from the key that he had. This example is not an isolated case. There are scores of examples in the book and of various subjects where this occurs. With these kinds of wrong answers to wrongly phrased/formatted questions, the child learns that it is dangerous to use his mind. It is much better to be solving the problems "mindlessly" to get good grades, instead of "mindful application" which can often result in wrong answers. There are just too many students' papers to check by the teacher, and too many questions in each paper to give space to the teacher to drill down into the thinking of each child for each answer to see whether the logic in child's mind was correct or not. Too many failures like this and child stops thinking, and starts resorting to mindless application of formulae which also results in random grades. The child realizes that whether I use my mind or not, my grades are random. It is dangerous to use my mind, the child concludes. This is "How Children Fail" and we see so many people around us proudly proclaiming "I hate maths".

Can a Child Learn a Foreign Language without obtaining full competency in First language

بچے کی زہنی نشو نما و خود اعتمادی کا گلا گھوٹنا ہو تو اس کو "پہلی زبان" پر دسترس ہونے سے قبل انگریزی زبان کے جبر میں قید کر دیں

I got this comment on the above FB post: 

Actually kids can learn multiple languages early in life a lot easier than later. But the downside is often that they take longer to speak. Girls tend to do better than boys. I learned to speak two and understand a third language all before 3 years of age:

The advantage of parents knowing multiple languages and sharing them with children will ONLY accrue once the child has obtained "full" competency in the "first" language(s) in which parents, grand parents, uncles, aunts, extended family, neighbors converse and the child finds himself immersed after his birth. By full competency I mean that the child can understand a joke, crack a joke, relate a hilarious (make believe) experience that will make family members or friends burst out with laughter. Once a child has this level of competency in the first language, then competency in any other language is a piece of cake. Without this level of competency in the first language, gaining full competency in any other language is wishful thinking.

پہلی زبان
First language is the language in which the child opens his eyes and hear his parents speaking. It is the language with which the child learns to interact with parents, grandparents, brothers, sisters, neighbors and friends. Articulation of thoughts into words and sentences is a complex learning. Then development of verbal skills to express abstract and complex ideas and learning to crack jokes and appreciate humor are the most difficult skills. Once a child has reached this state, learning any other language is a piece of cake.

The friend (Omer Dossani) further clarified that:

Irfan, our servents spoke Bengali, grandparents spoke Katchi, mother and father spoke 40% Urdu and 60% English. So, I cannot relate to what you are saying but maybe you are correct. From the research done by TCF in Pakistan they strongly stand behind their commitment to stick to Urdu as the medium of instruction based on the research that shows that kids learn best in their native language and so far their students are doing well

Articulation of complex ideas requires complex linguistic skills. The added pressure of not having enough verbal skills in a foreign language, stultifies expression of complex ideas, destroying self confidence and impedes mental development. Once complex verbal skills are fully developed in the first language, the child gains confidence to tackle any other language. Eg Schools where speaking in English is must, and the child is being bullied, the child is afraid and hesitant in complaining because the teacher will scold him for speaking wrong English instead of patiently trying to understand child's grievance. The child's emotions get strangulated and destroys his self confidence. 

Essential Orientation for Teachers and Faculty Members

Essential Orientation for Faculty Members, Teachers and Facilitators embarking on a journey to understand experiential learning and weaning away from the conventional mode of teaching. In my opinion this is the minimum level of understanding required by teachers of schools and universities.To maximally gain from this material, watch the following videos and read the following blog posts. Then write your reflections by connecting the ideas to your experience or observation.

Videos

• Sir Ken Robinson: Changing Education Paradigms
• Sir Ken Robinson: Do schools kill creativity?
• Sir Ken Robinson: Bring on the learning revolution!
• Angela Duckworth: Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance
• John Hunter on the World Peace Game
• Diana Laufenberg: How to learn? From mistakes
• Sam Richards - A Radical Experiment in Empathy
• Kiran BirSethi teaches kids to take charge
• SugataMitra's new experiments in self-teaching
• Cameron Herold: Let's raise kids to be entrepreneurs
• Arvind Gupta: Turning trash into toys for learning
• Kathryn Schulz: On being wrong
• Deb Roy: The birth of a word
• Patricia Ryan: Don't insist on English!
• Your Body Language Shapes Who You Are by Amy Cudy 
• Parhogelikhoge by Dawn News Channel
• Alan Kay shares A powerful idea of ideas
• Play is more than Fun 

Essential Blog Posts

These are the essential blog posts from my blog at syedirfanhyder.blogspot.com:

• How STEM and Learning is made difficult
• Why Project Based Learning? An Experiential Learning Case Study of Language Teaching
• How Language Acquisition is Made Difficult for Children: Eight Lessons from an Urdu Acquisition Case Study
• Subject Compartmentalization vs Holistic Learning: How to align with natural process of learning of a child
• Problems with Bloom's Taxonomy: Impact on Curriculum and Motivation of Students
• Education as Tazkia: Is a child like a clean slate?

See also:

For the list of all my posts on School Education, click here

For the list of all my posts on Higher Education, click here

For the list of all my posts related to PhD and Research, click here

A Tribute to Cricket for Spearheading my English Language Acquisition - Sports and Language Learning

I often see parents worrying about language skills of their children. A closer look at the hobbies of such children will indicate that they are not passionate about any hobbies especially sports. Here I would detail the role of cricket in spearheading my English language acquisition.  As my interest grew, with cricket and started following the cricket there were some milestones.

The book that I read in 1980s

[Work in Process]
Coming soon

Power of Word in Value Based Education: Discriminating Truth from Falsehood

Honorable Prime Minister, Group Chairperson City School, dignitaries, educationists, teachers and my dear students. I thank the organizers for giving me the opportunity to speak about value based education, some thing that is near and dear to my heart. Power of Word emanates from the depth of our feelings. Words are only words unless they have conviction and heart felt emotions supporting the message. The reason why we are talking about values today is because we have lost sight of the fundamental value that used to be ingrained in the lives of the students. Some 40 years ago, all the corridors and halls of the schools in the morning would start with the reverberation of that prayer from Iqbal that outlines the purpose of life of the students: To make my life a beacon of light whose purpose is to remove the darkness from the entire world and to spread light everywhere. Somewhere along the way, we lost sight of this noble value. Our education's purpose became my personal career and prosperity for me and my family. My only objective became to have a generator that would lit my home instead of my knowledge spreading light everywhere. 

Parental Concern about Economic Future of our Child

I often see parents excessively worried about the economic future of their child. They are often projecting their own insecurities and their own inadequacies on their children despite a huge difference in their situation as a child and their child's current situation. Their over-worrying about the economic future of child belies their faith and eeaman in Allah as Raziq. In their eagerness to protect their children from any adversity that they may face in future, they destroy their confidence, numb their creativity, and kill their enterprising skills which are the very skills required for survival in the unpredictable future. This post explains the misconceptions in this regard.
[Presented at ERDC Seminar on Economic Future of Your Child at KSBL, January 28m 2018]

To Kill a Mockingbird: A Personal Journey

I was around 10 when I saw the movie "To Kill a Mocking Bird" on PTV in 1971-72. That was the time when I didn't focus on the dialogues but used to only concentrate on the emotions and feelings depicted. We didn't have access to Internet or magazines with briefs about the programs or movies being shown on the PTV. There used to be a flyer but often it only listed the titles but not details. However, I could sense even at that early age that what I had seen is not a typical run of the mill movie, but I had gone through a tremendous and profound experience. It would be a decade later when I would find out about how much acclaim the movie had won through a book that I issued from the American Center library. This was an attractive pictorial history of cinema and from there I discovered that this movie had won the Oscar for the best picture in 1960, and Gregory Peck had won the Oscar for the best actor.  One of his three roles that made him my all time favorite actor (the other two were in Roman Holiday and Guns of Navarone). I also read the book on which this movie was based around the same time. The book and this movie had a tremendous impact on me as described here:

• See also: How West Teaches History (through Movies) and How We have Forgotten: A Nation that has No History, has no Future !

How to Create Love for Poetry: A Tribute to Sir Ghalib Raza of ICB

Over the last 25 years as I desperately try to connect my students with the joy of reading and poetry, at universities and at schools , I realize the worth  of what Sir Ghalib Raza was achieving in my school days. He was making us "feel" the poetry, not "understand" it. Poetry is meant for "feeling" the emotions which are being expressed by the poet. You kill the poetry by trying to "explain" it. This is the story of how Sir Ghalib Raza imbued love of poetry in me and other students. He would not make us labor with "explanations"  but would rather focus on evoking the "feelings". He knew that once a loving association is developed, understanding will follow naturally in good time. He would enjoy reading the poetry immersed in the emotions being expressed. He loved poetry and he infected us with that love.  Thank you, Sir Ghalib Raza, for cultivating in me this love for poetry and literature.

My association with Sir Ghalib Raza started on the wrong foot. I was in class 8th at Islamabad Model School for Boys (now ICB), in G-6/3, adjacent to the famous Covered Bazar (which was razed a few years ago). It was first or second week of the new term. When Sir Ghalib Raza entered the class most of the students were talking to each other. He may have noticed some disturbance in the class, and he thought that I was the one making it, and the first thing he did was to come and slap me. I used to be a really quiet student at that time; always very careful not to get on the wrong side of any teacher. This  was my first time in life being slapped, and I cried. When I reached home, I was still disturbed and shared my perplexing experience with my mother. My mother arranged a meeting at the school a few days later. She met with Sir Ghalib Raza, and discussed the issue. I think the matter was resolved amicably and Sir Ghalib Raza's attitude towards me changed drastically. Of course, I never gave him an opportunity to be cross with me ever again. He would later on always call me as Irfan-e-Hyder, and I think he was the only one who called me with this twist that actually improved the meaning of my name.

• See also: Why People Hate Poetry? Because Schools have Taught them to Hate Poetry!

I can still recall his athletic built, his fair complexion, his hazel, brownish-green eyes. He was among the smartest of the teachers at the school, looking specially dashing in his Pakistan flag color blazer with Pakistan emblem indicating his participation in an international event where he had represented Pakistan. We could see him in the morning conducting fitness exercises for the male and female teachers. Exercises for teachers included jogging, stretching, warm up, etc. I learned to copy many of these movements during my early morning exercise regime at my home, and still seem to repeat these movements when I exercise. Several year later, I would learn of his romantic, colorful and adventurous side of his handsome personality.

From that 1975-76 session, I recall his love for Urdu poetry. He seemed to have in his memory immense poetry related to every conceivable situation which he could recall effortlessly. His recitation was correct,  balanced and amazingly wonderful and without accent. I still recall his explanations of poems and "ghazals". They were less about pedantic details, critical appreciation of the style, or focusing on form or measuring the meter. They were more about beautiful and emotional evocations with copious references to  excerpts from romantic poetic works emphasizing a relevant theme.

I recall vividly three of his recitations in class that were delivered in his distinctive style. First one is from the ghazal of none other than the most romantic of Urdu poets, Shair-e-Rumaan, Akhtar Shirani: 

mai aarzo-e-jaaN likhon , ya Jan-e-aarzo ​

tu he bata day , naz say emaan-e-aarzo ​

I later discovered its beautifully fluent rendition by Munawwar Sultana. Whenever, I hear the song, I can see Mr Ghalib Raza reciting it teht-ul-lafz.

The second piece was no wonder, again from Akhtar Shirani:

tā ḳhuld-e-barīñ le chal! 

ai ishq kahīñ le chal! 

sansār ke us paar ik is tarah kī bastī ho 

jo sadiyoñ se insāñ kī sūrat ko tarastī ho 

aur jis ke nazāroñ par tanhā.ī barastī ho ​

I now come to his wonderful rendition of a  poem of which only two verses had remained stuck in my mind for the last over four decades, I vaguely remembered that the poet was Ahmed Nadeem Qasmi. The two beautiful ashaar were:

Maang ki tarh seedhi sayyaarain, teRhi leekhoan say kutnay na paaen

and

mein in chatanoan peh bethi tujh ko dohay sunaati rahoon gi;

The poem related to a young wife looking at her husband tilling the soil of the fields as she carried the lunch to him at mid day, and waiting for him to join her on a rock nearby. The way Sir Ghalib Raza recited the poem deeply immersed in the scenery and engrossed in the imagery depicted in this poem is a treat for me till this day. I can visualize him reciting the poem each time I think about that class session way back over 4 decades ago in 1975. I can see his face red with emotions. I can see him in his trance actually living the situation of that young wife of the tiller singing for her husband. In that moment his emotions and feelings were felt by us in a transmission that connected him to the hearts of all the students. I can still visualize him standing there in front of the class reciting the poem. I don't think I understood at that time all the meanings of the verses or the depth of emotions and messages. But I experienced the feelings that he was feeling and expressing in his ecstasy. In that moment, I fell in love with poetry. I enjoyed it then and I enjoy that experience now whenever I think about it.

I had been searching for that poem for a long time. My Sargodha Board Urdu textbook of 1976 is long gone and forgotten except the couple of ashaar that I found stuck in my mind. Today I had the great fortune of having Mr Hammad Rasheed, a lover of literature and poetry, some how pulled out the poem from Internet. It is actually by Ahmed Nadeem Qasmi:

 تھپکی : ایک کسان عورت کا اپنے شوہر سے خطاب 

I was waiting for this information. I am now completing this post which had been lingering in my draft folder for years. Thank you Hammad Rasheed Sb. for reconnecting me with the poem and that experience. The context of the two couplets that had been stuck in my mind for so many decades are now again much clearer, and what a pleasure it is to remember and recall that experience of his rendition:

جھٹپٹے تک ابھی ہاتھ تیرے

ہل کی ہتھی سے ہٹنے نہ پائیں

مانگ کی طرح سیدھی سیاریں

ٹیڑھی لکیروں سے کَٹنے نہ پائیں

میں یہاں اِں چٹانوں پہ بیٹھی

تُجھ کو دوھے سُناتی رھوں گی

اپنی آواز کی تھپکیوں سے

ہاتھ تیرا بٹاتی رھوں گی

The full poem is copied at the end of this post to highlight how poems highlighting the feelings and emotions should be used for kindling love of reading and poetry rather than dry analysis and dead erudition.

• See also: How Education System is Promoting Non-Readers and "Functional Illiteracy": Top Ten Reasons

Mr Salman Siddiqui, a renowned academic, often says that if you want to make people hate poetry ask them to explain the poem or paraphrase it or explain the style, or explain the context. Poetry is not about context or analysis. Poetry is about emotions and feelings. 

I think this is so true. Our curriculum and text books prefer explanation of poetry over feelings and intellectual analysis over heart felt emotions. Instead of developing interest in poetry,  the analytical approach of critics teach us to hate all those poets whose life events we were forced to memorize and "tarz e kalam" that was thrust down our throats. We could not understand those sentences and therefore hated pedantic explaining of details that we found in no way connected with the emotions that the poet was actually feeling, experiencing and then expressing. No wonder most of us hate poetry to an extent that we have stopped enjoying it and have even started hating Urdu itself. 

• See also: How Education System is Promoting Non-Readers and "Functional Illiteracy": Top Ten Reasons

Later I learned about his romantic life that was full of adventure. He had passion and was romantic. As someone said: Poetry is an infectious disease.  It can not be taught.  It can only be caught.  And it can only be caught by someone who already has the disease. 

• See also How Language Acquisition is Made Difficult for Children: Eight Lessons from an Urdu Acquisition Case Study

تھپکی

See Also: 

• A Formula is Worth a Thousand Pictures: Dijkstra vs Buzan's Mind-Maps
• Anti-National Language Policy leads to Rule by Rich and Corrupt Elites
• Capitalist Transactions Replacing Traditions and Values from Istanbul to Makkah
• Georgia - Lesson in Preserving Language, Religion and Culture
• How Education System is Promoting Non-Readers and "Functional Illiteracy": Top Ten Reasons
• How Language Acquisition is Made Difficult for Children: Eight Lessons from an Urdu Acquisition Case Study
• How Schools Teach Students to Hate Reading: Mass Creation of Non-Readers 
• Managing English Teaching Outcomes in Universities: An Experiential Learning Case Study of ESL/EFL
• Most Effective Way of Cutting a Nation from its History and Ideals - Imposing a Foreign Language
• Why People Hate Poetry? Because Schools have Taught them to Hate Poetry!
• How to find "Buzurg" and "Wali" of Allah
• Importance of Literature in Law: A Case Study of the Panama Case Supreme Court Judgement
• Mukhtar Masud's Awaz-e-Dost and Love for Literature and History
• Sad Ending of Abdullah Yousuf Ali - the Translator of Quran
• What Legal Questions Perry Mason would have raised in SC Panama Case Disqualification of PM - New!

Myth: Government Universities Cost Less than Private Universities

This post explores the myth that Public Universities Cost Lower than Private Universities. I think the average cost per student per year of a public university is much more than that of a private university. Given below is a preliminary analysis. A more detailed analysis is required.
2005-2006 Analysis of Public sector universities indicates that:

• HEC funding per student (2005-6) ~ Rs 75 k 
• Additional fees paid per year per student
• Typical fee: ~ 25 k (For universities like KU) 
• Exorbitantly: ~ 150 k (IBA, NUST) 
• Total Average cost per year = 100k – 225k 
• Land acquisition and capital investment through PC-1s and other external funds would be extra and would amount to hundred of millions of rupees of funding per year to each public sector university.

Private Sector HEIs in 2005-06 in Karachi were typically costing a student less than Rs. 100 k. Mind you these universities took not a single penny from the tax money collected from the poor!

[2012]
In 2012, the average cost per student per year had climbed up for many public sector universities to over Rs. 200k. Whereas, many private sector universities in Karachi had fees around half. Remember, this would include operational costs as well as capital costs. Whereas the Rs.200k per student per year operational
costs of public sector universities does not include capital and development costs, which is an additional tab to be picked up by the poor taxpayers.

[2015-16]
According to the budget documents Rs 79.5 billion has also been earmarked for Higher Education Commission (HEC) including Rs 21.5 billion under the Public Sector Development Program (PSDP) and Rs 58 billion on account of current expenditure, showing an increase of 13 percent as compared to Rs 51 billion earmarked for 2015-16. [1]

The amount comes to around Rs 200k per student for on-campus students of government universities. Please note that this does not include the land grants and other allocations. This is directly from the federal budget.

The per student cost of a government university must also include the cost of all the officials of all the ministries responsible for making the government universities work. This cost should also include:

1. Cost of HEC personnel, administration, staff and operational costs responsible for calculating, approving, sanctioning, monitoring of any funding requirements for the government universities.
2. Cost of all the accreditation bodies for Engineering (PEC), Business (NBAEC), Computer Science etc. I think currently there are over ten such bodies and many others are in the process of formation. Their operational costs must be computed and distributed over the public universities. This function in US and other countries is typically performed by independent professional bodies with little or no tax money involved. 
3. Cost of Ministry of Finance, AGPR, Planning Commission and other ministries responsible for disbursements of operational budgets, pensions, sanctioning and monitoring of PC-1s and their funds, decision making etc. 
4. Cost of provincial departments and Governor secretariat's responsible for sanctioning of leaves, appointments, projects planning etc. 
5. Cost of all the capital investments through land allocations, grants, funds through other government agencies. 
6. Cost of all the USAID and development funds loans and advances along with their interest payments

You add up all these costs and you will find out that the total cost per student per year, can come out to be at least ten times the per student cost of the private universities. Please note once again the private universities are not using the tax money of the poor people.

Now the justification of all these costs is on the basis of social equality and equal opportunity for the poor people of Pakistan. There are two major arguments:

• There are many public universities whose fees are much more than several private universities. This should not be allowed. Example, IBA's cost is Rs 150k per semester which is much more than most private sector universities. 
• Why can't the government calculate all the money that it is spending on the public universities divide it by the number of poor students that it wants to support and give that as a hardship scholarship vouchers to the poor students. Let the poor students shop around for a university that would let them study with that voucher. I think this may be a more equitable distribution of money. It would then be channeled to the more efficient universities who can give the best quality for the least amount of money. This is how the market dynamics play out. 

Consider this: Before HEC (2002-03) a government university like IBA Karachi's fee was Rs 24k/sem, and new startup private universities were charging around Rs 40k/sem. After HEC's advent today the government IBA fee is Rs 216k/semester, and new private universities are charging from Rs 4 lacs/semester to Rs 6lacs/semester. What is happening? This is the impact of not counting the costs. HEC effectively has become an institution that has raised the entry barriers and has reduced access to both the private universities and to the government universities. More on this in a later post.

References:

[1] Report

This write-up is an extended rehash of the ideas presented in a talk on "Five Major Myths of Higher Education" made at the CIO Conference, March 2009 at Sheraton, Karachi. See another link.
Presentation originally made at CIO Conference, March 2009 at Sheraton, Karachi.
The links and write-up below is an extended rehash of those thoughts:

Myth #1: Our backwardness is because we lag behind in Science and Technology
Myth #2: There is mushrooming of Higher Education Institutions in Pakistan
Myth #3: Impact Factor research measures real impact
Myth#4: Myth and Fiction of Government Universities Costing Less than Private Universities
Myth#5: Bigger infrastructure (land, building, equipment) means better education
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See Other Posts on Higher Education

Essential Orientation for Teachers and Faculty Members
Power of Word in Value Based Education: Discriminating Truth from Falsehood
Myth: Government Universities Cost Less than Private Universities
How Readers are Created. Ecosystem that Produces Readers
How Schools Teach Students to Hate Reading: Mass Creation of Non-Readers
How to become a Life-Long Learner: Mission of Developing Life-Long Learners
Why Students Avoid and Stop Taking the Course of Some Teachers: 7 Top Reasons
Why Educational Experiments are "Doomed" to Succeed?
Abuse of Presentation Slides in Classrooms: Ban Powerpoint Presentations
What Students Expect from their Teachers: Roles and Responsibilities of Teachers
Who Fails when a Student Fails
A Formula is Worth a Thousand Pictures: Dijkstra vs Buzan's Mind-Maps
Testing/Grading vs Motivation: A Variation on Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle for Academics
Why Project Based Learning? An Experiential Learning Case Study of Language Teaching
13 Myths of Schooling and Education: Resources
Why Education and Why Higher Education: Leadership in Life and Society
Why do our graduates want to leave the country? Curriculum's Relevance to Social Impact
Truth about Attention Deficit Disorders (ADD/ADHD): Reasons and Revelations
Fairness in Grading: A Lesson by the Great Dijkstra
Problems with Bloom's Taxonomy: Impact on Curriculum and Motivation of Students
Education as Tazkia: Is a child like a clean slate?
How Parental Judgments can Shatter a Child: Self Fulfilled Prophecies 
Which Field with Great Scope Should My Child Choose: There is always a room at the top
Learning Problems: Top 9 Questions to Answer Before You Run for Help
Who is educated! - Iqbal's View
Can Grades and Degrees Measure the Success of Students?
Myth: We are Backward because we Lag Behind in Science and Technology
Beauty is Our Business - Mathematics, Excellence and the Great Dijkstra
Syllabus- Coverage is Enemy of Understanding
School Discipline vs Prison Discipline
How our Curriculum Design (from Simple to Complex) Insults the Intelligence of a Student
Subject Compartmentalization vs Holistic Learning: How to align with natural process of learning of a child
Why this current urgency about visions and entrepreneurship
Bell Curve Evaluation of Students: Islamic and Secular Perspectives

How Readers are Created. Ecosystem that Produces Readers

How can we create readers and an ecosystem where readers can thrive. How do we make reading a contagious disease when our educational institutions from schools to universities have become mass producers of functional illiterates [1]. Universities complain that they are getting intake that has studied English for 12 years but have no reading comprehension and no expression. The employers are complaining that graduates coming out of the universities can not even write a single page of correct English. This is a dismal situation. How come we are producing functional Illiterates who are defined as people who know how to read but are not readers, and those who know how to write but are not writers! How can we reverse this?