LITERACY

I touched so very slightly on the literacy rate of pakistan in my post about child labour.Now I intend to go a little deeper.To start with,who is defined as being literate?Well,being literate is usually taken as anyone above 15 years of age who can read and write.Then by definition, the literacy rate of the total population is 49.9%. (Of those who are literate, approx 63% of them are male) [2005 estimates].The UNESCO figures as reported in their official journal on Sunday 19th October 2008 puts the literacy figure at 50%. According to the recent figures the literacy rate of Pakistan has now reached to 54% [2009 estimates]. Compare this to two of our neighbours,India(61% overall with 73% male literacy) and Srilanka(with a whoping 91% overall and 92% male literacy).{source:Education for All-global monitoring report},the literacy rate in pakistan seems ever so modest.To start with, as most of you would know India and pakistan started with almost the same resources with same time period for development,but we could not develop as fully as india did.What about Srilanka,even though it was almost torn apart by Tamil Tigers but its literacy rate is phenominal though it might have something to do with its small populace.You know what,many people loathe the 'parha likha punjab' scheme started by the previous government but i think it did provide at least some support to our educational system.It helped us at least improve if not revolutionize the old and unuseful educational policies we had so wrongly adorned for almost past 50 years.It helped us to include thinking based objectives in the curriculum than the traditonal rote learning system which was indeed a perennial thorn in the flesh and made our local qualifications almost useless internaltionally.Before calling any aid to educational system useless and wastefull,We should look at the example of ireland where in the 70s,the government spent heavily on the educational system incurring large debts in the process but it is that education now,that has brought the IT boom in the country giving large support to the economy.Maybe i have said too much for the day,i will talk more on the topic some other day.everybody tc