Dressing to Instil morality

 The rhetorical assertion whether the focus of the university should be to check the morality of students or to impart a market-oriented skills to students. A fierce debate has recently cropped up in the media circle as the prestigious varsities of Pakistan started fining their female students on wearing jeans and tight clothes. The current trend to pursue a dress code rather to encourage the originality of ideas is going to flourish the quality of education or conservative thinking.

Normally, the university students are young adults, who are mature enough to differentiate the difference between the good and bad. They are preparing and training to be working in the practical life in their foreseeable life. After having spent twelve painstaking years in school and college students have developed a mature thinking and personality. They need not to be taught how to behave and what is good for them or what is not. Freedom and independence should be given on the graduation level so as the student can choose what is the best for them or what is not. It is also noted that university across the world promote creativity and originality of thoughts.

Globally, Pakistan has dismal figures in educating their masses. It did not even meet its Millennium Development Goat (MDG), signed in 2000 to bring the literacy rate of the country to 85 per cent till 2015. About 56 per cent of the population consist of young ones and majority of them are out of school. Unfortunately, only 5 per cent of these young adults reach the university level. Even these handful students are unable to reach the practical life(Job market). The students have reported to be wanting the relevant skill for the practical life after having graduated from the varsity.

For the society to be civilized, character building and discipline must be flourished. But it should rather be promoted at the earlier stages of lives when the children are at the initial stages of learning. This help the student to further proceed these views and thinking. While giving a morality and ethic lessons to the adults at a grown up stages seems irrelevant. It is noted that students pursue higher studies in order to get practical and original knowledge.

Immoral practices are also thriving rapidly in the society today. The television industry is highly contributing factor in this trend such as the promotion of irrelevant fashions and luxurious lifestyle in the society. As drama, movie and music reflect and represent different aspects of the society aesthetically. But in contrast, it has affected the society badly while promoting indecency and vulgarity. Moreover, the portrayal of the foreign culture on the media lead us to follow their lifestyle. Wearing a jeans or tight clothes is commonplace in the west while the same practice is considered unethical. This thinking vary from person to person.

The secularists argue that this is the rigidity and inflexibility of mind to ban on the freedom of an individual. In the 21st century, the developed countries of the world focus more on the attaining of knowledge, research and creativity. They have greatly facilitated their lives for them with the help of knowledge and creative thinking. Today there are more PhDs scholars in the Europe and American than in under developed and third world nations. However, the priority of the educationists must be to devise new and novel ways of learning methods and promoting education.

In a nut shell, the university should promote knowledge and research in order to open-up new horizons of creativity. Today, Pakistan is in need of education emergency but not the emergency of teaching ethics and morality. Imparting creative thinking and market-oriented skills must be the priority of the educationist rather than devising dress code to give morality and ethic lesson to the students.