Posted on July 6, 2025
Karachi:
Having taught sociology for fourteen years at the secondary level in Pakistan, I have found that many of my students lack three areas in particular; Originality of thought, lack of analytical production in class and indifference to the value of social sciences.
The three problems identified above are not only restricted to the private sector of Primary and Secondary Education in Pakistan, but are more acute in the country’s public schools and universities.
Our students should be inspired by the teachers themselves to find original ideas and innovative thoughts. By having discussions in the classroom with them on a variety of issues, from the increase in divorce rates in Pakistani society to the qualitative contribution that could be useful to design a research disbursement for a school project, I have found that many of them are restricted in their thinking and, consequently, in their effort in the particular task. This may be due to, among other factors, the years of social conditioning both by their families and households and society that they witness.
To counteract this, a teacher should know that students in the 10-16 vital age group should not be delayed in their creative and valuable contributions to class discussions.
The administrative hierarchy of educational administrators should also realize this.
At the same time, students must realize that it is important not only to be novel in the presentation of an idea to the class, but must also be analytically worthy of a reflexive reflection.
For that, they will have to forget the stereotypical images, focused on class, gender, racial and ethnic divisions and preconceived (and false) notions of what it means to be a human in a relationship with society that surrounds us in the modern/postmodern world today.
This is the task that today’s teachers must be aware, if they want to guide the original minds of tomorrow.
Beautiful minds like Stephen Hawkings, John Nash and Sayyed Hossein Nasr today and Leo Tolstoy, Faiz Ahmad Faiz and Rabindranath Tagore of yesteryear must be taken on board to build a ‘collective consciousness’ for the world of tomorrow.
Poets such as Hu Shi, Yosano Akiko, Goethe, Wordsworth and Iqbal should read and reread if we want to succeed in this huge task in front of us.
Shakespeare must be contextualized in the Pakistani society that surrounds us if today’s students are to build bridges of understanding and humanity with the world of tomorrow. In this world, knowledge should not have a ‘price label’ and must be taught by the intrinsic good it implies.
They must be done to understand how curiosity, guided in the right direction, leads to an inquisitive mentality, which knows no limits, when it comes to reaching the borders of the information. This yearning for knowledge must be fed and respected both inside and outside the country’s classrooms.
Finally, the need for us to understand the value of social sciences and social scientists for today’s Pakistan.
The social sciences must be emphasized as very important if the Pakistani State and its future (today’s students) will face the challenges that afflict the nation and the dark mentality of its citizens today.
Social sciences such as economics, sociology and liberal arts such as historiography have built nations.
Unfortunately, the Pakistani academy has not yet realized all the potential of a social science education. Our students need to be released from the conventional paradigm of a duality of trade sciences and should be done to understand the primacy of social sciences in today’s world.
As AI transforms the education sector today, social sciences offer a great internal vision of the changes that will be made in the education sector both inside and outside the classroom. It offers us a window to the opinion that society will be massively affected by the new era of information and to succeed in this age of information, students will have to decouple from conventional ideas of classroom education.
The social sciences will surely offer tomorrow races ranging from research, academia and the changing face of the government and public policies. And the human will be in the primary chord of these mass social cracks. Appropriate that Pakistani students recognize the potential of this great transformation.
Finally, ethics will be a fundamental part of this new scope of education. Pakistani parents, teachers and students themselves remember this valuable lesson. It means that education and the process of imparting it in Pakistan must also have an ethical angle.
Ethics and morals play an important role in all didactic objectives and this aspect of education can no longer be ignored, especially in the AI era. If it is considered, then education must be taught freely of value (perfection cannot be achieved here) since all positive philosophy, interactionist experiments and laboratory products must be associated with the “final good”, that is, the search for education for its intrinsic value.
Ethics and morals infused with humanism will greatly contribute to answering the questions that are destined to emerge in tomorrow’s society. In this speech, education cannot be limited to ethics and humanist pedagogy. For example, taking only one sign of the question of what knowledge is, in the future it will imply many dilemmas and ethical consultations.
You have to have a global perspective for education in Pakistan today. If it is not granted, then historiography will continue to be versions of the scribes of real history, geography will continue to ignore significant monuments of interest to the geologist of the future and the social sciences will be lost the things that should be “taught” in a class environment.
The next world of education will ask us fundamental questions of what knowledge is, how to pursue and what it means to be a human connoisseur. IA will transform the education sector and the world beyond education to a large extent. In this sense, our students must be aware of the challenges of tomorrow and the innovative and attractive ways of overcoming them.
It is an era of knowledge. And knowledge will continue to be powerful in this era.
Taimur Arbab is a sociology and writer -headquarters in Karachi
All facts and information are the exclusive responsibility of the author
