Ahmet Pasha
BANNED
- Joined
- May 23, 2017
- Messages
- 10,024
- Reaction score
- -5
- Country
- Location
I feel in Pakistan education is deliberately being held away from common folks by waderas and elite who dont want to risk their authority or control.
Opinions are dime a dozen (including the one that I am sharing now). This goes across the professional community all the more since there tends to be a lot of judging because they are based on individual interactions at different times. I have been in conversations where someone is always denigrating someone else and I don't think I am the only one with this experience by the way.
Even going back to the days of the initial Pakistani training and delivery of F-16s in the early 80s, I heard glowing feedback from some including Instructor Pilots but then another chap who was a maintainer went about how the aircraft in training were handled very roughly. Perhaps the latter confused our boys with others because he made general comments and could not place any names, but the IP had names and stories to tell (all rating the pilots very highly).
To Oscar's points above, and this does not take anything away from the system in use for the intake stream that comes into PAF academy, I think given the massive population pool, the education standards (performance in secondary school etc.) could be raised. However the problem with raising the standards is that the PAF would become an elitist organization. Good professionally to a certain extent perhaps but not very representative and that has its downsides from a national cohesion standpoint. The reason for this is that a significant proportion of the population will not make the grade given the less than optimal educational and social backgrounds they come from. The current minimum requirements allow candidates with 3rd division to apply for selection. This means you have some very average students also applying. But the primary reason for this is not because we have a small pool so we have to lower standards, rather it is because military service is for all Pakistanis and the volunteer nature of the armed forces allows for some of the chaff to be eliminated during the selection and training process.
Pakistan could implement a system very similar to that used in the United States where they have very competitive students/candidates applying for the services academies admissions. That would mean that the armed forces would compete with the private sector but then again it would leave out a very significant proportion of the population from serving. A case in point is the situation in Balochistan with existing standards have been lowered further to bring the Baloch youth into the military. If higher education/selection standards were applied uniformly, even those wanting to make it would be disappointed given the relative lack of educational infrastructure compared to Sind, KPK and the Punjab.
Arguments can be made for and against, but this is the gist of the situation given the social/educational situation on the ground.
I also want to highlight one additional point. Money can buy a lot of technology, capabilities, but the evolution of the military institutions takes time. There is no quick fix to this. In this way, Pakistan has been blessed for two reasons. One is that our military institutions were brought up from scratch in 1947. From 1947 to 2017, it has been seven long decades of evolution BUT this is 70 years with wars/military operations interspersed. This has allowed for introspection, learning and improvements in an iterative fashion. We are not a rich nation, we do not have the best equipment, but I think the institutions and the environment in which we operate have been a blessing that give Pakistan an edge compared to very many countries (including first world).
Lastly, let's consider what has gone on in FATA in terms of scale. I realized that after the US, no other country besides Pakistan has conducted operations at such a scale. Where most others were operating in battalion or company level capacity, we had corps and entire air commands involved in planning and conducting operations and they were executed successfully despite a lot of blood and treasure being expended. This is something not easily achievable (a double-edge sword for sure as you'd rather not be doing such things, but when you are in it, then you make the most of learning from such things.) Apologies for the long rant, I know we are not the best, there is a lot more mid-night oil to burn, but we can give as good we get and this should be a source of pride.
If educational standards in the country are low, then they MUST be raised instead of lowering PAF's standards. Elitist criteria are very representative: they represent the best he country has to offer. There is nothing to apologize about. Period.
