Education
is the key tool of a man to conquer the battle of life. If you're
educated then you have your third eye to fight the miseries and
hardships of life. History tells that eduction have always been an
essential part of every civilization. Before talking about the facts
and pointing out some issues let me just mention this amazingly
genius man
who has inspired me a lot to write about this particular topic—Mr
Usama Imtiaz. He has always been an inspiration due to his
intellectual thoughts and of-course his charismatic personality as
well. The other day I was discussing some social problems with him
and we started talking about the root cause
of
many social problems & we ended up finding the origin of many other problems—illeteracy. He put it in an incredibly beautiful way
that just in a time of five minutes I found myself convinced on
a point that if we will carry out right and effective educational
projects to increase the literacy rate, we will definitely get
solutions to many other problems.
Let me just quote his
words here;
“Education is very
important. Have you seen 8-9 kids of an educated person. In a typical
Pakistan, these kids will never get education and will remain a
burden on 20% working class of this country and this situation will
remain as it is. Make education compulsory, enforce education, make
this enforcement by law. Mazdoor (labourer) will have a construction
business, if he does not have money he will look for other sources of
finance (corporation, leases, loans etc), darzi (tailor) will have a
clothing business using same sources of finance if he cannot afford,
cook will have a restaurant, Maids will have a cleaning business and
so on. If we enforce it, a generation will retaliate, and then the
second generation will know things really change. And these ideas
don't come without getting education. While I am writing this, more
than 1 crore children of school age are not going to school. What
will happen next. They will be a burden for this country until they
find a source of earning. With their orthodox mindset and lack of
education, they will do bad things in the society and overall things
will go worse. So, the point is make education compulsory.”
Causes of low literacy
rate
So here he explains it
all. Is there any point left to tell those who keep their children
away from education that how much education is important for their
country and for their own future life? Literacy is important for the
growth of the country and for the progress of human beings. Let me
just list down the few major causes of low literacy rate of third
world countries including Pakistan;
- early marriages
old social values- lack of resources
- poverty
- education systems
- unemployment
- over population
- child labor
- ineffective government policies
- mind set about literacy
- lack of entrepreneurship
- genetic effect
And the list goes on and
on. If we don't take steps to promote education we will keep facing
huge challenges in every walk of life. We will always be a deprived
nation. Our children will never get enough confidence to compete with
others who are superior to them in terms of education.
Effects of low literacy
rate
If we look around, all
those menials, slaves and workers are illiterate and uneducated they
will remain be the same as lack of education has cast a deep
influence on their lives and behaviors, they have admitted to
continue living their life-as-a-slave. Hence, whatever you want to
say it, no matter how many argument you have to keep your child far
away from education, you cannot change the fact that lack of
education serve the country as an inhibitor; if the literacy rate
will remain low it will become more and more hard for the country to
get progress. Listing down other severe and intense effects of low
literacy rate and lack of education, we have;
inhibitor of national
growth- gender discrimination
- less approach to human resources
- beggary
- unhygienic health conditions
- over population
- substance abuse (high drug addiction)
- poor living standards
- high crime rate
- unawareness of constitutional law
- less approach to human resources
- lack of awareness to human rights
- child labor.
Remedies to increase
rate of literacy
Literacy or provision of
education to your children play a key role to unlock various social
evils prevailing in our society. It helps to find the root cause and
origins of such social evils that brings you and your fellow members
of the society to troublesome and challenging situations. Thus, it is
the obligatory duty of every citizen of our country to take a stand
to promote high literacy rate in every possible way. High literacy
rate and literate societies are correlated to the positive economic
growth of a country, therefore innovative strategies and remedies
should be introduced to increase the rate of literacy of our society.
Teach A Child
One of the best solution
is to teach a single child in your lifetime. Teachers should educate
this to those students who have the advantage to pursue education in
well established institutes, that they must put their efforts to
educate a single child once in their life. On the other hand it is
the obligatory duty of the young citizens to promote this active step
to educate the poor and deprived children around them. Other remedies
include;
- education of parents should be a must practice, to teach their children in a socially mediated way in future.
- Awareness programs should be arranged to highlight the importance and emergency need of education.
- Feudal system that has always been a challenging obstacle in promoting education should be eliminated from the society.
- Better and free of cost transport facilities should be provided specifically to the students to make their access easy and reachable to the schools.
- Abolishment of child labor
- stability of political system
- formal schools in rural areas
- free education programs
We are standing at the
threshold of historic challenges and the 'emergency need of
education' is the key factor to eliminate various social evils from
the society. Thus, each one of us, regardless of our political
scenario should take a stand and pay a keen attention to promote
better educational opportunities for the betterment of our country
and to educate every single child of our nation.
