The necessity of education
(Sara Hussain Mughal, Karachi)
Education is the most important
thing for any country to develop and prosper. Sadly Pakistan's spending on
public sector education is only 2.3% of the GDP. This is much lower than the
south Asian average of 3.6% and other low income country's average of 3.4%.
Literacy is defined as person aged 15 or above who can "read" or "write".
According to this definition, Pakistan is officially reported to have 50%
literacy rate. Which means half of its population is illiterate. With such
family backgrounds, inflation, poverty and child labor this rate is expected to
increase in future. Even for those who are termed as "literate" are only able to
read and write, which in today's technology oriented world is still consider as
illiteracy. Majority of the people forming the top controlling ties is almost
unaware of technologies and technical mindset. Thus, causing the country to
adopt the new technologies at a snail's speed.
Illiteracy also effect individually and society wise. It is a challenge to human
dignity and imposes a second-class status on a person in all societies. Life
without literacy is life without hope. In fact illiteracy rises the grand
problems in whole system like over-population, increase unskilled labor,
political instability, poor use of natural resources, child labor, poor
international image, low per acre agriculture yield and so on.