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Dr.Atta-ur-Rehman : The Destroyer of Higher Education in Science,Technology, & Innovation in Pakistan.Or Why Pakistan is No.47, India is No.10 on Global Scientific Rankings?

Posted by admin in Corruption, Corruption, Education, Looters and Scam Artists, Pakistan's Hall of Shame on December 31st, 2012

WHAT’S AT STAKE?

When it comes to education, what’s at stake is obvious: our future. When corruption prevents young people from exercising their fundamental right to attend school and receive an education, people lose out on their potential and society suffers. Identifying and eliminating corruption in the education sector is key to ensuring that learning opportunities remain accessible to all.  (Transparency Organization)

 

 

Attaur Rehman’s Narcissistic Personality- Loves Media Spotlight
 
 
 
Dr.Att ur Rehman has fooled a poor and illiterate nation. He calls himself Fellow of Royal Society.  Most Pakistanis do not know that to become a Fellow of Royal Society one has to be nominated by another Fellow of Royal Society. Dr.Att ur Rehman due to his opportunist personality, has made lots of friends among British scientists, who are FRS . He meets during his political junkets to scientific meetings as a representative of Pakistan scientific establishment.images-42 in Britain. If one know enough of these FRS, it is easy to get nominated. It is a nominated position, NOT an elected position.  
Dr.Atta ur Rehman is worried. Pakistani legislators are asking tough questions from him. He is feeling the heat, because his hegemony and fiefdom as the Czar of Higher Education Authority is being challenged. If there is ONE good thing the current PPP government has done, it is, asking hard questions from this Goldfinger or Dr.NO of Pakistan’s Scientific Establishment. Even the aggressive Pakistani media and its anchors treats this charlatan with reverence. Dr.Atta ur Rehman has cultivated a Cult of His Own Brilliant Scientific Personality. He is a cheap promoter of his real or imagined achievements and does not hesitate to take credit for his subordinates achievements.  Every scientific paper published by his subordinates, has to have his name on it, even though, his intellectual scientific contribution may be less than 0-10 percent. Dr. Atta ur Rehman only cares for his own glorification. He wants to be on TV. He wants his name emblazoned in marquees. He is a narcissistic personality, who loves to be in the spotlight.  Pakistani media croons over him, never asking him tough questions, as to his own scientific contributions in recent past. He has never been held accountable for his financial expenditures. In Pakistan, auditing of scientific institutions is non-existent. Not, of those, who are his subordinates. He uses government funds for junkets to International Scientific Meeting, where he does not contribute any paper or adds to any new knowledge. He cares less, if Pakistan falls to the rank of No.47 in global scientific ranking, falling even below, tiny Croatia. His elfishness and self aggrandizement has brought the destruction of science in Pakistan.
 
Dr.Atta ur Rehman has damaged Pakistan’s Scientific & Technological Progress irreversibly. He is a control freak and does not let any young or brilliant scientist progress in Pakistan. He has veto power on all scientific matters. He is politically extremely savvy. There are several hundred scientists in China and India, to whom this man cannot hold a candle. He is well entrenched through his connections. He is related to Musharraf through family ties and consolidated his position thereafter (during Musharraf’s rule). He is “Pakistan’s Scientific Chaudhry,” for the last 30 years. 
 
Pakistan is no.47 in global scientific rankings. India is no.10. Thousands of young and brilliant scientists have left Pakistan, because this man’s absolute strangle hold on Pakistan’s Scientific and Education Policy and Growth. One of the factor that improves a nations economy is the research in science and technology. S.Korea and Pakistan received the same scientific and economic growth plan from Dr.Mahbub ul Haq, Korea followed it. It established premier scientific institution as Korea Institute of Science and Technology and Hankuk University are global leaders in scientific publications, engineering, and technological breakthroughs, but, Pakistan with its reservoirs of brains, is stagnating, because of these hacks and control freaks, who think that they are Allah’s gift to Pakistan. 
 
Across the border, India has at least 30 to 40 scientific leaders advising different political leaders and PM, Pakistan’s executives has only this man to fall back on. It is a proverbial punjabi case of “jithay de Khothi, othay a Khaloti.” Brilliant, patriotic, and decent scientists and engineers like Dr.Samar Mubarakmand are too afraid to challenge his hegemony. 
 
There are at least 15,000 scientists and engineers associated with Pakistan’s Nuclear and Ballistic Programs.  They live in anonymity. You never hear their names. You never know about their services. We know of one person who worked honestly and selflessly in this program. He could have made millions of dollars, because, he was acquiring equipment for the program from multiple countries. But, he retired with his pension and lives in a modest house bought with his provident fund. There are thousand of others in this program, who worked with jazba-i-iman. Yes, we have corruption, but as a nation of 180 million people, we have lots of honest, decent, and patriotic people, who keep Pakistan going. 
 
Action Requested:
 
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Please go and vote there and express your opinion on Pakistan’s science, technology and education. We get thousands of views from Pakistan and globally, maybe, someone will listen. It will take you one minute. Thanks.
 
China, India, Japan, Malaysia, and Singapore have achieved tremendous economic progress, because science and technology were promoted. Economic progress is directly proportional to growth of science and technology. But, in Pakistan we have a scientific establishment led by Dr.Atta ur Rehman, which keeps new talent from emerging. Since, Musharraf’s time this man is saying how many Universities, he is establishing and how great progress is being made, but that is all untrue. He is a “B.S. Artist Par Excellence.” Yes, he  was average, not an eminent global scientist, 40 years ago, but now this “scientist-cum-establishment politician,” has become a liability, an albatross,  and a grindstone around growth of Pakistan’s science and technology institutions. 
 
Our political governments whether PPP, PML, or even Musharraf’s, take Dr.Atta ur Rehman’s advice as gospel. His scientific publications stopped 30 years ago,. He now he gets his name in every paper published by young Pakistani scientists working in institutions, he controls. He is far behind, the thousands of global scientists, including those from Pakistan (who are living abroad), who have made significant strides in scientific innovation. What is the downside of Dr.Atta ur Rehman’s hegemony over Pakistan’s scientific establishment?  A major negative effect of Dr.Atta ur Rehman’s iron grip over scientific institution is that any younger scientist, who comes up with an invention or patentable idea, has to get Dr.Atta ur Rehman’s blessings to move it forward. The result is that all new ideas and inventions dies at the desk of this scientific gargoyle. Therefore,  younger generations have not produced a scientist of Dr.Salam, Dr.Samar Mubarakmand, or Dr.A.Q.Khan’s  calibre.  All innovations and inventions in science and technology in Pakistani have been lost, because they lacked the blessing of Pakistan’s Scientific Czar. 
 
Pakistan is one country, which has not produced a single global patent!
 
 
Dr.Atta ur Rehman’s Jealous Resentment of Dr.A.Q.Khan

Dr.Atta ur Rehman is also behind the whispering campaign to demonize Dr.A.Q.Khan, the Father of Pakistan’s Nuclear Processing Technology in Pakistan and the West.  Dr.Atta ur Rehman tried to use his clout with Gen.(Retd) Musharraf to oust Dr.A.Q.Khan.

Dr AQ Khan, had in a dramatic move made public a long charge-sheet against the outgoing chairman of the Higher Education Commission (HEC) Dr Attaur Rehman, saying he was the blue-eyed boy of Gen Pervez Musharraf because both hailed from Delhi.

In a note sent to The News on Thursday, Dr Khan regretted that despite eight years in office and spending billions of taxpayers’ money, Dr Attaur Rehman could not even set up a single university, leave alone his tall claims of setting up six foreign universities.

Dr Khan, breaking his silence after a very long time, also made some new revelations, saying Gen Musharraf wanted him to become a minister but he proposed the name of Dr Attaur Rehman. He has also claimed that Pakistan had made the nuclear bomb in 1984.

In his attack on Dr Rehman, the first of its kind which might put the tall claims of the HEC in a new perspective, Dr AQ Khan said: “As an organic chemist with no industrial exposure, he fell into the trap laid by many of the incompetent sycophants that surrounded him. They excelled in on-screen, colourful presentations containing figures, graphs and forecasts, but these were nothing more than a house of cards. Those running the HEC had never set up or run even a high school, let alone a university.”

Ms Henny Khan, the wife of Dr AQ Khan, on behalf of her husband, also sent a long note to this correspondent to join the debate going on about the performance of Dr Attaur Rehman, who was one of the longest-serving persons during the last eight years of Musharraf but failed to deliver.

Dr Khan is the second top man who has blasted Dr Rehman after former minister Ishaq Khan Khakwani.

In his communication to The News, Dr Khan said the article on the Higher Education Commission in The News of Oct 14, 2008, together with the criticism on its performance by former federal minister Ishaq Khan Khakwani and Dr Attaur Rehman’s reaction were highly informative to the common man in general and the academic community in particular.

“The truth always hurts and Khakwani is known for calling a spade a spade. He was also very outspoken in his criticism of Gen (retd) Musharraf’s illegal and unconstitutional acts. On both counts, he has hit the nail right on the head,” Dr Khan said.

He said he had known Prof Dr Attaur Rehman for almost two decades and was aware of his good work at the HEJ Institute at the University of Karachi. He recalled that after Gen (retd) Musharraf staged the coup against Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, Dr Rehman became Musharraf’s blue-eyed boy, presumably because both came from Delhi.

He revealed: “When I was about to retire, Gen (retd) Musharraf offered me the post of minister of science and technology, which I refused. I had good reasons for doing so. I did not want to be part of the Gen’s cabinet, to see him in cabinet meetings and to shake hands with him as if all was well between us. At their specific request, I suggested Prof Attaur Rehman believing that, as a foreign trained, good academic, he was capable of doing the job. After my retirement, Gen (retd) Musharraf asked me to become his adviser, which I again refused. However, a number of senior Army officers requested me to accept this post for my own good as the general was known to be very vindictive. As adviser, I could keep myself busy with educational activities. I accepted the post on the condition that I would not be required to attend cabinet meetings.”

Dr Khan said after his appointment as minister, Prof Dr Attaur Rehman changed and was no longer the humble person he used to be. None of the advisers (with the status of a federal minister) i.e. Mr Sharifuddin Pirzada, Dr Ishfaq Ahmad and myself ever put a flag on their car or put “federal minister” on their car number plates. On becoming adviser and later the HEC chairman, Prof Dr Attaur Rehman constantly used the term “federal minister”, even adding it on his HEC letterhead. It was a pity he felt the need to do so, as with his educational and professional background, there was no need to do so. His academic achievements said it all.

Coming back to the achievements or lack thereof of the HEC, Dr AQ Khan said billions of rupees were spent over the last eight years with very little to show for it. “Prof Dr Attaur Rehman met me a number of times, the last time being hardly three or four weeks ago. We discussed the establishment of six technical universities with the help of six foreign countries. I was rather shocked to learn from him that all these universities were to be set up by the HEC — all the infrastructure, equipment, faculty, salaries, transport, residential facilities, etc., were to be provided by Pakistan. The foreign universities’ role would be solely to nominate the foreign faculty, advise and issue degrees. I was always under the impression that such universities were to be financed and run by the respective foreign countries. Since Prof Dr Attaur Rehman became the HEC chairman, I have always been advising him to first set up one university and only attempt a second one when the first was up and running smoothly but, as an outsider, my suggestions were not welcomed. We now see the results — hardly anything worth mentioning.”

Dr Khan said another issue that sidetracked the academic one and with serious financial repercussions was the mobile phone publicity campaign. Prof Dr Attaur Rehman, as minister for information technology, went all-out to introduce the mobile phone culture. We all saw on TV how every Tom, Dick and Harry was using a mobile phone, but nobody thought of the financial repercussions.

“In the very first year of its introduction, Pakistan spent $1 billion (one billion dollars) on the import of mobile phones, not even to talk of the remittances back to their parent companies of hundreds of millions of dollars in revenues. A manufacturing plant, costing a fraction of that amount, could have produced phone locally; thus, saving hundreds of thousands of dollars and providing jobs to many local engineers and technicians. If we were able to produce state-of-the-art centrifuges, high frequency inverters, top quality nuclear valves, ballistic-guided missiles and nuclear weapons, why were we not able to produce mobile phones?

Dr Khan said he had no doubt that Prof Dr Attaur Rehman’s intentions were good. However, he pointed out that his planning proved disastrous. “His weakness was that he was not an engineer and, therefore, lacked a basic understanding of the requirements of technical education. As an organic chemist with no industrial exposure, he fell into the trap laid by many of the incompetent sycophants that surrounded him. They excelled in on-screen, colourful presentations containing figures, graphs and forecasts, but these were nothing more than a house of cards”.

AQ Khan said those running the HEC had never set up or run even a high school, let alone a university. “If Dr Attaur Rehman had listened to my well-meant advice and set up even a single university, he would not be facing such scathing attacks today. Such a university would have seen hundreds of good engineers graduating by now.”

Dr Khan said he always gave Dr Attaur Rehman the example of the GIK Institute. Ghulam Ishaq Khan made him (AQ Khan) project director and he had the unflinching support of Ghulam Ishaq Khan himself, HU Beg, Shamsul Haq, Brig Amir Gulistan Janjua and Elahi Bux Soomro.

“Together, we put up the GIK Technical Institute in two years at a cost of approximately Rs1-1/2 billion. Within two years of its inauguration, it was listed as one of the top ten technical institutions of Asia. Incidentally, my former teacher at Delft (Holland) and Leuven (Belgium), Prof Dr MJ Brabers, was the first rector and there were 15 foreign professors when the institute started functioning.”

Dr Khan said another example of concentrating on one thing at a time was the establishment of the uranium enrichment plant at Kahuta. “We started with literally nothing in 1976 and by August 1984 we had put up one of the most advanced facilities and had even managed to produce nuclear weapons. All this was done with a budget of Rs 100 to 110 million per year.”

He pointed out that Prof Dr Attaur Rehman had visited the plant and was, therefore, in a position to judge himself whether his advice had been genuine and workable.

“Our success was due to putting together of a very strong technical team. We were lucky to have had the full support — both financially and morally — of Shaheed Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, Gen Ziaul Haq, Ghulam Ishaq Khan and others. HU Beg was a great supporter to us and looked after our financial requirements with great acumen, ensuring strict control and regular audits,” Dr Khan said.

Dr Khan said it was a great pity that despite his sincere efforts, good intentions and access to funds, Prof Dr Attaur Rehman was not able to deliver what he set out to do. He believed that not a single new university was established or an existing one brought to a level where it could be counted as one of the 200 top-most universities recently mentioned in Time magazine, while India has two mentions on that list. “This is mainly due to his inability to select a competent team of technically experienced advisers. Academicians never make good administrators and planners,” he regretted.

 

 
And, Dr.Atta ur Rehman is responsible for it. He is Dr.Teflon, friend of all rulers, dictator and democrats, and is immune to accountability, whether, administrative or financial.  No one can shake his control over Pakistan’s Scientific Establishment. He is like a leech sucking the life blood of science, technology, and innovation in Pakistan!
 

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Who will pay for Pakistan’s state? The Economist highlights the mismanagement, cronyism, chaos, nepotism, and pernicious theft of taxes in Pakistan

Posted by admin in Corruption, Domestic Policy, Economics, Education, Foreign Policy on December 13th, 2012

Pakistan’s economy

Plugging leaks, poking holes

Who will pay for Pakistan’s state?

Dec 8th 2012 | ISLAMABAD | from the print edition

PAKISTAN’S national poet, Muhammad Iqbal, believed the subcontinent’s Muslims needed to unite if they were to prosper. Without a strong sense of nationhood, he wrote, “mountains become straw and are blown away in the wind”.

Poetry and taxes do not often mix. But those melancholy lines grace an analysis of Pakistan’s fiscal plight by Ehtisham Ahmad of the London School of Economics. The country’s tax revenues have collapsed. Its debt is almost certainly unsustainable without outside help. And yet Pakistan does not pull together. “Textile lobbies, the urban gentry, traders and agriculturists, all point to the other and say: Tax that group first, but do not tax me,” Mr Ahmad writes.

 

The tax authorities can identify a mere 768,000 individuals who paid income tax last year. Even fewer—just 270,000—have paid something in each of the past three years. That is one reason why Pakistan’s tax revenues amounted to only 9.1% of GDP in the latest fiscal year, one of the lowest ratios in the world (see chart). These are exceedingly narrow shoulders on which to rest a nuclear-armed state of 180m people. The culture of cheating starts at the top. Most members of parliament, many of them conspicuously affluent, do not file tax returns.

In the months before an election, due by May, the government of President Asif Zardari of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) is proposing a controversial remedy: an amnesty for evaders. They will be invited to wipe the slate clean with a one-off payment of only 40,000 rupees ($400). The government says it is a quick way to resuscitate the public finances and expand the tax net. Its critics see the amnesty as a boon for politically connected crooks.

The scheme is the brainchild of Pakistan’s tax chief, Ali Hakeem, head of the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) since July. His computer boffins have spent the past few months trawling data—not to find out how much people earn, but rather to unearth their spending patterns and lifestyles. The FBR has come up with 1,700 variables that predict a person’s tax liability. Some clues are obvious, such as foreign travel, owning a house in a posh neighbourhood and big-ticket purchases such as cars. Others are ingenious. It turns out that having a weapons licence is an excellent indicator of wealth. The FBR’s analysis also shows that married men are richer than single men. Men with two wives are richer still. However, men with four wives (the maximum allowed to Muslims in Pakistan) are often poorer than those who have only one.

Many people escape paying taxes by simply bribing the tax inspectors who call on them, Mr Hakeem admits. “We want the computers to be the enforcers,” he says. The exercise has identified around 3m people who should be paying tax. Under the plan, these people will be served notice and given 75 days to comply or they will face punishment.

But if the FBR can identify the dodgers, why can it not pursue them for the full amount they owe? The tax board says it wants to use its new data fast, before a possible change of government jeopardises the scheme. There is no time to calculate the evaders’ full liabilities.

Mr Hakeem believes the system is so rotten that, in effect, it offers an amnesty to almost everyone anyway. But cynics worry that the oily businessmen and back-room fixers who have prospered over the past four years of PPP government will use the scheme to legitimise their ill-gotten gains. It is “a way of laundering your money”, says Hafeez Pasha, a former finance minister.

Amnesties, which have failed in Pakistan in the past, create perverse incentives. They alienate taxpayers otherwise disposed to being honest, who may decide to stop filing and wait for the next such offer. At best, the amnesty will bring in another 0.5% of GDP in revenue, Mr Ahmad suggests. At worst, revenues may fall.

Both Mr Pasha and Mr Ahmad argue that more fundamental reform is required. Many people fail to pay taxes because they are not legally obliged to do so. Agriculture is exempt from federal income tax, largely because parliamentarians are either large landowners or dependent on rural votes.

Mr Hakeem’s board has the power to exempt products through regulatory orders without the approval of parliament. One such order, dated April Fool’s Day, 2011, made a mockery of the country’s sales tax, imposing a 0% rate on 184 items, including carpets, buttons and the willow wood from which cricket bats are made—as well as “any other goods as may be specified”. Mr Hakeem’s number-crunching may help plug some leaks in Pakistan’s tax bucket. But his board has already poked hundreds of legal holes in it.

Pakistan promised to abolish loopholes in 2008 as one of the conditions for a generous IMF loan of $11.5 billion. Yet it failed to do so. It also promised to remove the tax board’s discretionary power to create loopholes. But punching holes in the tax code is a handy way to “win friends and influence people”, Mr Ahmad says.

A low tax take breeds problems. People who might otherwise pay their taxes wonder what services they will get in return. Federal revenues are swallowed up by debt servicing, defence spending and power subsidies, with no room for much-needed spending on health, education or welfare. A constitutional amendment passed in 2010 gave the provinces clearer responsibility for such programmes. But the provinces lack a reliable tax base of their own. In the latest fiscal year, Pakistan spared only 0.3% of GDP for health.

Despite such miserliness, Pakistan’s budget deficit still exceeded 8% of GDP last year. The government has bridged the gap by borrowing from the central bank and the banking system (which itself borrows heavily from the central bank). This has crowded out private borrowing and ushered in inflation, projected by the IMF to return to double-digit rates by the middle of next year.

Fundamental tax reform will always upset one powerful constituency or another, whether it be the landed gentry, farmers, traders or industrialists. Without reform Pakistan courts economic disaster, a financial crisis that might blow the precarious economy away like straw. That would upset everybody. But Pakistan’s ruling elites assume that such a crisis will always be averted with help from international donors. And, says Mr Ahmad, “they are probably right.”

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Critical Thinking is Critical for Pakistan to Progress in the 21st Century

Posted by admin in Education, Islam: The Universal Message of Peace, Pakistan Fights Terrorism, Uncategorized on December 12th, 2012

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has. 

Dr.Margaret Mead 1901 – 1978 American anthropologist

 

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Is Pakistan a Nation of Sheep?

 
 

Default Allah will not Change the Condition of a People until They Change Themselves

Surah No. 13, Ar Raad, Part of Ayat No. 11




إِنَّ اللّهَ لاَ يُغَيِّرُ مَا بِقَوْمٍ حَتَّى يُغَيِّرُواْ مَا بِأَنْفُسِهِمْ وَإِذَا أَرَادَ اللّهُ بِقَوْمٍ سُوءًا

o فَلاَ مَرَدَّ لَهُ وَمَا لَهُم مِّن دُونِهِ مِن وَالٍ




Translation :




Verily ! Allah will never change the condition of the people until they change it themselves (with state of Goodness). But when Allah wills a punishment for them, there can be no turning back of it, and they will not find a protector besides Him.

 

Allah will not Change the Condition of a People until They Change Themselves

Quite often the servant of Allah is granted abundant blessings but he becomes bored and longs to change it for another which he claims is better. In fact, Allah, the Merciful does not deprive him of this blessing, and He excuses him for his ignorance and bad choice until the servant is unable to bear the blessing, feels discontent, and complains about it. Then Allah will take it away from him. When he gets what he wished for and sees the great difference between what he had before and what he has now, he is filled with worry and regret and he wishes to have what he had before. If Allah wishes good for His servant, He would make him see that whatever blessings he now has is from Allah and He will show him that Allah is pleased with him, and the servant would praise Him. If he is deceived by his soul to change this blessing, he would ask Allah for guidance.There is nothing more harmful to the servant than becoming bored from the blessings of Allah; as he neither sees them as a blessing, praises Allah for them, nor is happy with them but he becomes bored, complains, and considers them as a means of distress. He does not think that these things are from the greatest blessings of Allah. The majority of people are opposed to the blessings of Allah. They do not feel the blessings of Allah, and moreover, they exert their effort to drive them away because of their ignorance and injustice. How often is a blessing bestowed on a person while he is exerting his effort to drive it away and how often does he actually receive it while he is pushing it away, simply because of his ignorance and injustice. Allah says, “That is so because Allah will never change agrace which He has bestowed on a people until they change what is in their ownselves.” (Al-Antal, 8:53) And He, the Almighty says,”Allah will not change the good condition of a people as long as they do not change their state of goodness themselves (by committing sins and by being ungrateful and disobedient to Allah).” (Ar-Ra’d, 13:11)
What can be worse than the enmity of a servant toward the blessings he has received? In so doing, he supports his enemy against himself. His enemy arouses fire in his blessings and he increases the fire unawares. He enables his enemy to light the fire and then he helps his own enemy to blow on it until it
becomes strong. Finally, he seeks help against the fire and blames fate. 

 

We are the best of Creation but are we living up to our Creator’s expectations

Lack of critical thinking skills in Pakistan has kept the whole nation backward in all aspects of life. Pakistan’s social, political, economic, health, and religious problems can be traced back to a lack of critical thinking. Pakistanis tend to accept every trauma as part of fate, without thinking that Almighty Allah has endowed man with free will and intellect, by which man can become “Master of his own Fate, and Captain of his own Ship.” Man is a Creation of the the Ultimate and Everlasting Intellect, Allah Almighty. Are we defying Almighty Allah or disappointing Him by not utilizing our capabilities to the maximum. As his Creation, do we not trust our individual God given capabilities, embedded in the ‘hard drive’ in our head?  The human brain has been chiseled by none other than the Master Creator of the Universe. It can perform quadrillion upon quadrillion functions in a life time, including controlling the performance of all human faculties. But, Man cynically depreciates his own abilities through negative and cynical thinking. Thereby, denigrating the Masterwork of his Creator, The Al-Musawir. 

Pakistanis stoically accept political malfeasance and incompetent governance as a fact of life

 Pakistanis as a nation,meekly accept corrupt mediocrities to rule us and guide us throughout our national life?  Our fear of sticking our necks out or standing for Truth and Justice has made us into a retrogressive society. This is no different from sheep or goats who can be led by a goading with a stick by the herder or shepherd. Pakistanis can only change Pakistan, if we can master nuclear and missile technology, then changing the fate of the nation is a piece of cake. Wake up, my Pakistani sisters and brother! Throw down the yoke and breathe the freedom of a technologically,politically, economically, and socially advanced nation. We are 180 million strong, WE CAN DO IT! Change Pakistan. Change your world. otherwise, no one will come around and change it for you. Get rid of “luteraas,” like Swiss Bank Account Thief, Zardari, Raja Rental, drunkard Bilawal, Mehran Bank Robber Nawaz Shariff, and paindoo crooks like Malik Riaz, and the rest of the feudal shahi.  Let us not be empty “gharas,” which make much noise, but are hollow from inside. If we do not reform ourselves, no one will reform us. Allah will abandon us to our fate, because, we are not using our brains to make critical national decisions. The followers of the Greatest Man, who ever lived have become an ignorant and corrupt Nation of Sheep. Whenwe can’t BEAT the Corrupt, we throw our hands in despair or become part of them. What have we become? What malaise is eating our souls? Are we a nation of “Phaydoos,” or a nation of sheep?

 

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The brutal “control freaks,” in our primary and secondary in rural and inner city education systems

Pakistani educational system is for the most part based on rote learning and bowing to whims of dictatorial and control freak “masterji” and “ustaniji.” Most of our primary and secondary school educators are charlatans or “drop-outs,”from other more lucrative or challenging professions.   They put young minds in their vise grip in which individualism and creativity is stifled. Challenging the accepted rules and concepts are a taboo in our mostly rural society. On the other hand growth of urban centers have resulted in blind acceptance of Western ideas and concepts, without whetting them through a filter of critical thinking.

The Forgotten Islamic concept of Critical Thinking

Therefore, we present the kernel of concepts which form the basis of critical thinking and which have lead to the advancement of Western societies in science, technology, and social values. Islam taught Muslims to debate and discuss all ideas, but, after the fall of Spain, Muslims became insular and isolationists. Debate and discussion became dormant. New ideas became a rarity. Demagoguery became the source of all knowledge. This lead to development of learning institutions, who were mostly centered around faith and dogma, and the concepts of taqiq fell by the wayside, leading to the the dark age of Muslim society, which has yet to merge into the bright sunshine or Renaissance of Critical Thinking during the glory days of Islam, when streets of Europe were in darkness or ignorance, the lamps of Baghdad were lit with the beacons of knowledge. Critical thinking were intrinsic part of Muslim culture.  This was the period of enlightenment from streets of Cordoba to souks of Baghdad. Critical Thinking is the Engine of Economic Prosperity and Social Advancement. It starts in early education and continues throughout life.the West learned it from Muslims, now the Muslims have to revive it in their own societies.

Critical thinking I

Strategies for critical thinking in learning and project management

Critical thinking studies a topic or problem with open-mindedness.
This exercise outlines the first stage of applying a critical thinking approach to developing and understanding a topic. You will:

  • Develop a statement of the topic
  • List what you understand, what you’ve been told 
    and what opinions you hold about it
  • Identify resources available for research
  • Define timelines and due dates
    and how they affect the development of your study
  • Print the list as your reference

Here is more on the first stage:

Define your destination, what you want to learn
Clarify or verify with your teacher or an “expert” on your subject

Topics can be simple phrases:
“The role of gender in video game playing”
“Causes of the war before 1939”
“Mahogany trees in Central America”
“Plumbing regulations in the suburbs”
“Regions of the human brain”

  • Develop your frame of reference, your starting point,
    by listing what you already know about the subject
  • What opinions and prejudices do you already have about this?
    What have you been told, or read about, this topic?
  • What resources
    are available to you for research
    When gathering information, keep an open mind
    Look for chance resources that pop up!
    Play the “reporter” and follow leads
    If you don’t seem to find what you need, ask librarians or your teacher.
  • How does your timeline and due dates affect your research?
    Keep in mind that you need to follow a schedule.
    Work back from the due date and define stages of development, 
    not just with this first phase, but in completing the whole project.

Summary of critical thinking:

  • Determine the facts of a new situation or subject without prejudice
  • Place these facts and information in a pattern so that you can understand them
  • Accept or reject the source values and conclusions based upon your experience, judgment, and beliefs

Critical thinking II

Second stage exercise in critical thinking:

Critical thinking studies a topic or problem with open-mindedness.
This exercise outlines the second stage of applying a critical thinking approach to developing and understanding a topic.

With the second stage:

  • Refine/revise the topic
    either narrowing or broadening it according to outcomes of research
  • Rank or indicate the importance 
    of three sources of research
  • Clarify any opinion, prejudice, or bias their authors have
    While an opinion is a belief or attitude toward someone or some thing, 
    a prejudice is preconceived opinion without basis of fact
    while bias is an opinion based on fact or research.
  • Identify key words and concepts that seem to repeat
    Is there vocabulary you need to define?
    Are there concepts you need to understand better?
  • In reviewing your research, are there
    Sequences or patterns that emerge?
    Oposing points of view, contradictions, or facts that don’t “fit?”
    Summarize two points of view that you need to address
  • What questions remain to be answered?

Critical thinking, first stage helped you to

  • Develop a statement of the topic
  • List what you understand, what you’ve been told 
    and what opinions you hold about it
  • Identify resources available for research
  • Define timelines and due dates
    and how they affect the development of your study
  • Print the list as your reference

With this second exercise, 
think in terms of how you would demonstrate your learning for your topic
How would you create a test on what you have learned?
How would you best explain or demonstrate your findings?
From simple to more complex (1-6) learning operations:

  1. List, label, identify: demonstrate knowledge
  2. Define, explain, summarize in your own words:Comprehend/understand
  3. Solve, apply to a new situation: Apply what you have learned
  4. Compare and contrast, differentiate between items: analyze
  5. Create, combine, invent: Synthesize
  6. Assess, recommend, value: Evaluate and explain why

 

Summary of critical thinking:

  • Determine the facts of a new situation or subject 
    without prejudice
  • Place these facts and information in a pattern
    so that you can understand and explain them
  • Accept or reject your resource values and conclusions 
    based upon your experience, judgment, and beliefs
  • Reference

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Pakistan’s Education Roadmap: How Does Finland’s Education Become The Best In The World?

Posted by Dr. Manzer Durrani in Education on March 5th, 2012

Commentary:

Literacy rate of Pakistan is very low. Government of Pakistan is responsible for this, as it allocates only 3% of budget for education.

How a feudal based political machine called PPP, killed Pakistan’s Education Systems through ghost schools, nepotism, educational scams. and sending children of party waderas abroad on international scholarships, with blatant  disregard to merit or competitive ability. But, that is to be expected from a matriculate “Civilian Mediocre Dictator Zardari,” and his half-wit, and inarticulate dimwit side-kick or Chela “PM” Sancho Panza a.k.a Gilani.

 

 

Before, the advent of the Pakistan Peoples Party and the hydra headed PMLs, Pakistan’s education system was better than other semi-developed nations.  During PPP’s chaotic rule, Pakistan’s education system has been decimated, if not completely destroyed.

Zardari, who is a matriculate from Cadet College Petaro, most likely in third division, cannot be expected to pay any attention to the education system. But, this set-back is also an opportunity in disguise, that is, after this ‘ government of the inepts leaves,’ the next government can overhaul the whole education system from its foundation. Finland has the best education system in the globe. Pakistan seek Finland’s, educationists for help. Pakistani teachers should be sent to train in Finland and teachers exchange program can be set-up between the two countries. Finns are generous people, they will most likely be generous in their advice, even, if it requires tele and/or video conferencing, if they are too afraid to come to Pakistan. But, if they read,’Three Cups of Tea‘ by author Greg Mortenson, it would be apparent, how much of an “education famine,” Pakistan’s children and parents are suffering from and even small gestures in improving the literacy rate and primary education, would make a great dent in fighting the forces of darkness, choking Pakistan. 

Rabbi Zidni Ilma – “and say: `My Lord! Increase me in knowledge” [Quran, 20:114]

I am sure that many of you noticed that many of today’s kids cannot do the math without a calculator like many of us older people. Many also can’t read, talk or write as well either. Not all, but a lot more than before. I get comments every day about this problem. We used to be among the best in high school education four decades ago. We are now 34th in math in the world. Our children have been dumbed down for decades by an antiquated education system, that tracks neither the money spent per school, nor the educational results that they accomplish for our tax money, per month or quarter. 
——————————————————————————————————————————-
Main Article
by
Vic Spencer, USA
Reference
We (USA) as a country are among the four HIGHEST SPENDERS on education, delivering the 34th in education results. Wouldn’t it make sense to study Finland, who has the best education results? With our annual county primary and secondary school budget of $370 million this year, spend a couple of thousand on each, and have a team of principals evaluate what we could use. Why are we not learning from the best, who by the way are doing the job less expensively than we do? Wouldn’t it make better sense to spend a few thousand dollars there than spending two or three times the normal amount of millions in high schools that are going nowhere with ACT scores in ten years?
Finland is the top country in the OECD-PISA tests which is the international authority for high school level testing according to the US Department of Education. It happens to be a beautiful place also.

Education in Finland starts with preschool at age 6. The preschool emphasis is on fun and THE IMPORTANCE OF LEARNING. Preschool is followed by nine years of compulsory basic education. From 9th or 10th grade one can go to the Upper Secondary school (like senior high school) or a 3 -year vocational school, but the curriculum is so heavy in either of these that one can cross from one to the other, or finish one and then go to the other for emphasis on trade skills. Either branch can lead to a university for a masters or PhD degree or to a Polytechnic College that focuses on trade skills with the possibility of a Bachelor’s or Master’s degree. 

Although the great majority of Finns finish their education by age 25, later than most other nations, education is looked upon as a life-long process in any job. People are generally much more educated in any trade or professional jobs than they are in other countries. They do an excellent job in having the highest work force readiness of any nation. 

Please review at least the top URL I am presenting from Finland in English. For more details, go to: 

National testing, school ranking lists and inspection systems do not exist in Finland. 

http://finland.fi/netcomm/news/showarticle.asp?intNWSAID=41557

http://online.wsj.com/public/article_print/SB120425355065601997.html

Being a teacher in Finland, as in most industrialized countries, is the most highly respected position. Medical doctors come second. I do not think that this is a cultural difference. The education system is set up such that they earn people’s respect every day by the way they are centrally managed in the country to the highest standard in the world and by the level of authority that is given to the teachers. Teachers are also very well trained. Keeping both teacher competence and school quality the best is a national mandate in Finland. 

The Finnish education system has the top university graduate students with a master’s degree volunteering for becoming a teacher, and to teach in the field in which they earned their degree. There are assistant teachers of course with lesser qualification under lower grades and in pre-school. 

Could we get there? Absolutely, if there was a large enough incentive plan for teachers to get a masters degree and beyond.

All parents understand that education is very important for their children and would never second-guess a teacher’s decision in Finland. If the child did something bad in school, you can bet that both the teacher and the parent would be in total agreement for the punishment. Therefore it rarely happens, because parents and teachers are always in agreement, and the teachers have a very good relationship with the students. 

Could we get there? Absolutely, if the kids came home with better math results, and if all of us parents realized how vital it is to back the teachers in front of our kids. Like it or not, their future depends on the teachers. We parents cannot teach our children all the courses they need.

In Finland, the children have enormous respect for teachers, but call them by their first names. Teachers and the children eat lunch together, which is free to all children. How about that? I think that this is also the result of parents and teachers working totally in harmony to educate the child.

In Finland the children are not graded before the fifth grade. The teachers decide how they are progressing. They are later tested, but their grades are not told the parents or the child during the following few years of education. This method appears to build high confidence and self esteem. The kids have a high graduation rate, scholastically achieving more than we do. So parents have no worries about how well the children will be taken care of by the teachers. There is no reason for it. Remember again that the teacher is a university graduate with a master’s degree. Only the teachers know how the child is doing. The teachers meet weekly to discuss what problems any of the children have and make decisions on the spot about what type of class and teacher could be the best for their advancement toward a high school diploma. This could be a specific special education class. This is a very interesting approach that obviously works very well. We could try it. Charter schools, here we go if public schools cannot do it.

Finland has a national education policy and national testing. Morals and ethics are in the curriculum. This is a big difference between their system and ours. The teachers make all decisions about how their class will be run, how the education material will be presented and what books are to be used. They keep up with the best worldwide. There are two official languages in Finland: Finnish and Swedish. People typically speak four languages in Finland. One is Finnish, then English, Swedish, and one of German, French or Russian at minimum. They have some ethnic problems with immigrants, gypsies and some northern Lapp tribes; but they keep those cultures and languages alive as well. 

Could we delegate more authority to teachers? Absolutely, depending how their continuing education is progressing. 

All areas in the school are decorated. There may be a fireplace where they eat or wait for classes to start. The focus is on what the students would like, to make the school a very pleasant place to be, for students as well as for teachers. Disrespectful or property damaging behavior is unimaginable in this environment. If it happens, I imagine it is dealt with lightning fast with repercussions at home as well, but I heard that teachers do not tell on the students to parents.

Children are actually given very little homework to do. Teachers work about 40% less class hours than US teachers do. Both of these surprised me, but it stands to reason that a happier, friendlier and more effective school environment that does the job well, with less teaching hours and less homework, makes for happier teachers and children. It is the principal that makes this happen.

The principal is more like a general manager although he/she comes from an educational background. He/she makes sure that his/her school is operating at its optimum, including all teachers and supporting services including medical, dental and special ed-related functions. It is noteworthy that special ed kids are diagnosed by any teacher, the case is discussed immediately in their weekly meeting, diagnosis is confirmed and the child is placed into the right classroom possibly not in the same school, with the most qualified teacher for his/her problem. The communication environment is completely open among students, teachers and principals. This area is very different from the US model, and more than 50 countries are studying how they accomplish the results they accomplish. 

Could studying them help us? Absolutely. It would do us a lot of good I believe.
Very important: The Finns realize that when their teachers excel and are satisfied, and so are their students. Teachers in Finland are well paid. An elementary school teacher makes $45-50/hour. A high school teacher makes $75-80/hour. The typical per class load is 18-20 students.

The biggest difference I found between the USA and Finland is the average teaching hours spent per year per teacher. This figure is a little more than 1,100 hours for US teachers, and it is 570 hours for teachers in Finland, and just as a second example it is about the same for Japanese teachers as it is for Finnish teachers.

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‘Thanks to Allah’

Posted by Dr. Manzer Durrani in Education on February 13th, 2012

‘Thanks to Allah’

—Photo courtesy of Fayyaz Ahmed

‘Thanks to Allah’, as our cricketers would say, “Just 40.1 per cent of the 5-16 age group [schoolchildren in Pakistan] could do two-digit subtraction sums (with carry) whereas a mere 23.6 per cent were able to do three-digit division sums. Only 41.8 per cent could read a sentence in Urdu or their mother tongue (English is a far cry). Far fewer could read a story,” revealed the nuclear physicist Dr Pervez Hoodbhoy in his column yesterday, quoting the recently releasedAnnual Status of Education Report.

You bet if the nationwide survey done for the said report had included questions like ‘how to drink water according to Islam’, ‘what to recite in Arabic before you embarked on a journey’ or ‘which foot be placed before the other whilst entering or leaving a mosque’, the students consulted would have come out shining with brilliance.

Primary school textbooks are now replete with such day-to-day knowledge that will win you brownie points in the hereafter. Wasn’t it the founder of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew, who whilst on a visit to Karachi in the 1970s was asked how his country could help Pakistan become an economic power, and he had remarked with words to the effect, that how can you even begin to think helping a people who believe that real life starts after death? Obviously, we were yet to shape our blasphemy laws back then, and the dignitary left this country in one piece.

The thing is that we are a unique nation of a unique people living in a unique country with a unique, past, present and future, as the very learned and respectable Mr Javed Jabbar has argued in his recent book to present his case for Pakistan. It is this sheer uniqueness that demands that perhaps our children’s abilities too, should be judged by a unique yardstick which is tailor-made to judge Pakistani intellect, and not the run of the mill surveys based on the wisdom of ‘one size fits all’. Tune into a quiz show and you’ll get your answers.

Here is a hypothetical example: please don’t be surprised if many schoolchildren would not know the name of the only Pakistani to have won the Nobel Prize, and at the fact that those few who might know the right answer, would also hasten to add that Dr Mohammad Abdus Salam, despite his name, was not a Muslim. That’s why it was important that the state remove the word ‘Muslim’ from his epitaph in the Rabwah graveyard, which originally proclaimed him as the ‘First Muslim scientist’ to have won the coveted award.

Ours is also a country where young adults in a Pak-Afghan border area barely know the name of the country they live in; many do not know the name of the President or the Prime Minister, as a televised interview by journalist Saleem Safi revealed the other day. But surely, if asked, the same bunch would have denounced America as a reincarnation of Satan in our times and hailed Bin Laden as their lost Messiah. And they would certainly also tell you what constitutes blasphemy, and why women should be locked up.

The knowledge being disseminated from the pulpit (including TV televangelist shows) and the textbooks is simply frightening. It is frightening in the literal sense of the word, because it is aimed at instilling the fear of God in your hearts and minds via the most ferocious of interpretations of the religious dogma. This leaves one incapable of thinking for oneself.

Here’s an example: Tibb-i-Nabawi or treatment through recourse to medicines, herbs and curing techniques used by the Prophet of Islam is today a growing field. An entire brigade of pious, qualified doctors and homoeopathists has jumped on to the bandwagon. Many are administering treatment through Hijama, which is Arabic for an old Chinese technique that extracts toxins from the body by superficial incisions made on the skin and drawing blood, using vacuum cups, hence, ‘cupping’.

The Prophet must have used it and also recommended it for its curative properties, but to call it a divinely-guided cure for all ailments, from pain in the back to diabetes and hernia, is really stretching it, especially the divine part of it. This is precisely what Hijama practitioners claim as they urge you to recite Ayat-ul-Kursi (a Quranic verse with healing and helpful qualities whilst in distress) as they administer ‘cupping’. And thanks to Allah, many are cured.

Who needs arithmetic, reading or writing stories in a worldly language, God forbid, when we have our own unique, divine mechanisms, and Arabic, to guide us through this transitory life on Earth?

 

The writer is a member of the staff at Dawn Newspaper.

FEBRUARY 10TH, 2012


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