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My thoughts on Pakistan's education. What do you think?

gotti

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Should Pakistan apply the Turkish and Indonesian model of using Latin alphabets for its local languages to assist the poorest of people to learn Urdu and English, simultaneously?

This will be good for children who find it easier to write in English because the letters are separated unlike Urdu where you have to learn to connect everything together (cursive)

Teachers always find that the kids can learn English easily whilst Urdu is always a struggle.

If I was to write "abhi", in English, in block letters, it is very convenient. People already understand it, and it is also very commonly used in movie covers, television, and newspapers.

Conversely, if I wrote it in Urdu, in block letters, like we do in English, it would be unintelligible.

People can see this grave mistake in international airports where Arabic or Farsi is written like this: ا ب ھ ی instead of ابھی



Urdu, right from the beginning, is taught in cursive and cannot be written in any other way while English is taught in cursive much later, in Pakistan. This is unfair for the children. No one who drafts these policies ever bothers to learn from the education systems or policies abroad - they are only concerned with whatever is fashionable or what crosses their mind, one fine morning.

Also, the only other script to be learned would be Arabic, for religious purposes and would be much easier for the kids and less of a burden to understand the true spirit of Islam - this is necessary for the average person so as to not be deceived into being touts in the hands of a few "mullahs".



Tajiki, which is Farsi, is written in the Russian Cyrillic script.

When the Afghan refugees went to Tajikistan, they were learning the same language (their language is also Farsi but called Darri), by Tajiki-speaking teachers, who were speaking the same language and were able to communicate with the students easily as they only had to teach them to put the language, in a different script.

It's like learning Urdu, in the Devanagari script and then, it becomes Hindi. You already know the language but just have to switch it to a different script.

Roman Urdu is already ubiquitous and Ayub also tried implementing it.



Unfortunately, what we see happening now is that the child has Urdu being spoken at his home and when he goes to school, there is a language shock as the teachers speak and teach in English. This hampers the child's performance and confuses him or her.

In America, the early Italian immigrants were told by the teachers to not speak Italian in front of the kids so as to not make them accustomed to that language and thereby, weak in their performance, at school.

Why can't we adopt something good for once?



This new model can be created and applied because about 60% of Pakistanis already do not know how to read so whatever they learn will be new for them, regardless. Whether it is Persian Urdu or Roman Urdu, it won't matter because whatever they learn to read would be their first time learning to read it.

The poorest of people will be able to stand shoulder to shoulder to the same strata of people in the Western world because they would be capable of reading and understanding Latin alphabets, almost overnight, provided that such an awareness or legislative drive truly does take place.

The division between Urdu and English education is already an issue and cannot be solved in any other way. The PTI's education policy is eye-catchy but depressing in that it doesn't solve the problem, overnight, which is the need of the hour in order to make Pakistan competitive, in the world stage.



The only debate right now is to whether go in complete Urdu (China, Iran model) or partial English (India).


I want to add the Turkey model into the debate, where they switched to the Latin alphabet from what they call, Ottoman Turkish.

Not only Turkey, but also the Turkic communities associated with Turkey have become familiar with this language almost immediately.

As a result of this, Turks are able to fit into any European or Western country's education system (where high-level education exists) because they only have to switch the language - the letters are already readable.

Therefore, my only solution to this, was, that it could be a combination of the two, and it is already in practice, in the social media and the ubiquitous SMS jokes.

Almost all Pakistanis own a mobile phone, know the Arabic numerals and can read Roman Urdu as it is the only format through which Urdu messages can be conveyed through SMS.

I mean, these SMSs are so powerful that even Zardari had to ban them when he came in power - this only goes to to show the influence of Roman Urdu (given that the SMS are in that format and not any other)

In closing, I would like to remind the nationalistic nut-jobs that Turks, their related communities in Iran and Central Asia, and Indonesians are all Muslims and will not be going to hell for switching the script - I have also preemptively responded to the "cultural identity" argument by stating that Arabic should be taught.



Some other facts to consider:

Urdu was only recently officiated as it was invented in the 1800's because even until the mid 1900's, Farsi was the main lingua franca for education and taught to children in the recently made Pakistan (where education and schools were not yet made available at the state level).

Urdu was an arbitrary language and we made the script for it ourselves, like with Sindi (a script in which Bhittai didn't even write in, yet, to read Bhittai, the Shakespeare of Sind, you are to use that script, why?)

Urdu was extracted from the Turkic language Chagatai (Uzbek) and Farsi, to reflect the local dialects and pronunciations. We added the following letters, arbitrarily and it wasn't revealed to us from heaven: ڈ ڑ ٹ

These letters do not exist in Farsi or Uzbek (which is in Cyrillic, now) and they can confirm this for us. Turkey and the ex-Soviet republics do have their original language and it is still taught but they either consider it the Arabic script or Persian script.

Any contradictions and fruitful input, is welcome
 
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but if Arabic is to be taught and it's a cursive script, doesn't kind of take away from you point about the difficulty kids have with cursive? Why Arabic in cursive and not urdu?
 
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but if Arabic is to be taught and it's a cursive script, doesn't kind of take away from you point about the difficulty kids have with cursive? Why Arabic in cursive and not urdu?

I thought about the same and I realized that kids learn Arabic, regardless. Removing Urdu from the equation will make it one language less. In Sind, they have to learn/teach Sindi and now, Chinese. How can our kids compete?
 
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Should Pakistan apply the Turkish and Indonesian model of using Latin alphabets for its local languages to assist the poorest of people to learn Urdu and English, simultaneously?

This will be good for children who find it easier to write in English because the letters are separated unlike Urdu where you have to learn to connect everything together (cursive)

Teachers always find that the kids can learn English easily whilst Urdu is always a struggle.

If I was to write "abhi", in English, in block letters, it is very convenient. People already understand it, and it is also very commonly used in movie covers, television, and newspapers.

Conversely, if I wrote it in Urdu, in block letters, like we do in English, it would be unintelligible.

People can see this grave mistake in international airports where Arabic or Farsi is written like this: ا ب ھ ی instead of ابھی



Urdu, right from the beginning, is taught in cursive and cannot be written in any other way while English is taught in cursive much later, in Pakistan. This is unfair for the children. No one who drafts these policies ever bothers to learn from the education systems or policies abroad - they are only concerned with whatever is fashionable or what crosses their mind, one fine morning.

Also, the only other script to be learned would be Arabic, for religious purposes and would be much easier for the kids and less of a burden to understand the true spirit of Islam - this is necessary for the average person so as to not be deceived into being touts in the hands of a few "mullahs".



Tajiki, which is Farsi, is written in the Russian Cyrillic script.

When the Afghan refugees went to Tajikistan, they were learning the same language (their language is also Farsi but called Darri), by Tajiki-speaking teachers, who were speaking the same language and were able to communicate with the students easily as they only had to teach them to put the language, in a different script.

It's like learning Urdu, in the Devanagari script and then, it becomes Hindi. You already know the language but just have to switch it to a different script.

Roman Urdu is already ubiquitous and Ayub also tried implementing it.



Unfortunately, what we see happening now is that the child has Urdu being spoken at his home and when he goes to school, there is a language shock as the teachers speak and teach in English. This hampers the child's performance and confuses him or her.

In America, the early Italian immigrants were told by the teachers to not speak Italian in front of the kids so as to not make them accustomed to that language and thereby, weak in their performance, at school.

Why can't we adopt something good for once?



This new model can be created and applied because about 60% of Pakistanis already do not know how to read so whatever they learn will be new for them, regardless. Whether it is Persian Urdu or Roman Urdu, it won't matter because whatever they learn to read would be their first time learning to read it.

The poorest of people will be able to stand shoulder to shoulder to the same strata of people in the Western world because they would be capable of reading and understanding Latin alphabets, almost overnight, provided that such an awareness or legislative drive truly does take place.

The division between Urdu and English education is already an issue and cannot be solved in any other way. The PTI's education policy is eye-catchy but depressing in that it doesn't solve the problem, overnight, which is the need of the hour in order to make Pakistan competitive, in the world stage.



The only debate right now is to whether go in complete Urdu (China, Iran model) or partial English (India).


I want to add the Turkey model into the debate, where they switched to the Latin alphabet from what they call, Ottoman Turkish.

Not only Turkey, but also the Turkic communities associated with Turkey have become familiar with this language almost immediately.

As a result of this, Turks are able to fit into any European or Western country's education system (where high-level education exists) because they only have to switch the language - the letters are already readable.

Therefore, my only solution to this, was, that it could be a combination of the two, and it is already in practice, in the social media and the ubiquitous SMS jokes.

Almost all Pakistanis own a mobile phone, know the Arabic numerals and can read Roman Urdu as it is the only format through which Urdu messages can be conveyed through SMS.

I mean, these SMSs are so powerful that even Zardari had to ban them when he came in power - this only goes to to show the influence of Roman Urdu (given that the SMS are in that format and not any other)

In closing, I would like to remind the nationalistic nut-jobs that Turks, their related communities in Iran and Central Asia, and Indonesians are all Muslims and will not be going to hell for switching the script - I have also preemptively responded to the "cultural identity" argument by stating that Arabic should be taught.

Some other facts to consider:

Urdu was only recently officiated as it was invented in the 1800's because even until the mid 1900's, Farsi was the main lingua franca for education and taught to children in the recently made Pakistan (where education and schools were not yet made available at the state level).

Urdu was an arbitrary language and we made the script for it ourselves, like with Sindi (a script in which Bhittai didn't even write in, yet, to read Bhittai, the Shakespeare of Sind, you are to use that script, why?)

Urdu was extracted from the Turkic language Chagatai (Uzbek) and Farsi, to reflect the local dialects and pronunciations. We added the following letters, arbitrarily and it wasn't revealed to us from heaven: ڈ ڑ ٹ

These letters do not exist in Farsi or Uzbek (which is in Cyrillic, now) and they can confirm this for us. Turkey and the ex-Soviet republics do have their original language and it is still taught but they either consider it the Arabic script or Persian script.

Any contradictions and fruitful input, is welcome



All these should have been thought 65years back, just as we became independent.....
 
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All these should have been thought 65years back, just as we became independent.....

I am sure you realize that our nations were under colonialism (mental, included). Till date, for us, the learning of English is the most important thing and in India, it is the lingua franca, as the North and South Indians are not able to communicate in any other language except for that.

In Pakistan, Urdu is intelligible by 75% of Pakistanis and in order for us to move to proper nationhood like Turkey or Indonesia, we will have to convert this into one script that closely resembles English (because the highest standard of education is available in it - had it been Congolese, I'd be a proponent of that).

The sources of education, in today's age is the computer and all technology is Latinized and not Persian. The Arab world is like China or Iran in that they have technology in their own language including the letters and numbers on their keyboards, phones. But, we cannot do that for Pakistan as most of our population is already used to Roman Urdu on mobile phones, Facebook, Twitter, Social Media, TV, etc.

In short, 65 years for any nation isn't a long time.

Urdu was also made to reflect the general state of the population, which had Urdu being spoken more in public than Farsi - thus, we can see Roman Urdu much more common, even within those Pakistanis who we consider lower middle class

It will have to happen, officially, like with Urdu, because unofficially, it has already happened.

PS It is likely that this point of view would be heard and accepted by Kapil Sibbal than with whoever comes in power in Pakistan. Conversely, our people will accept it more openly than in India where ethnic pride is much strongly rooted.
 
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but if Arabic is to be taught and it's a cursive script, doesn't kind of take away from you point about the difficulty kids have with cursive? Why Arabic in cursive and not urdu?

Also, I forgot to include the fact that it will be helpful in us improving our knowledge of Arabic and understanding it when there's less burden to learn one less language (as I stated in the original post, I made).

Urdu has literature and culture (mainly because of Bahadur Shah Zafar) but it does not have the type of education that English or other Latin-script languages provide and that we need desperately to compete in today's world.

Furthermore, if we were to convert everything like Newton, Einstein and Gray's works into Urdu and then teach every single student who had learned it differently before, what the new word for calculus, E=MC2 or sternocleidomastoid is, respectively, it will push us further behind than where we are even now.

The slow creeping up of Roman Urdu has already taken place and everyone who had learned Urdu as their first language, can articulate, read, write and learn in Roman Urdu, very conveniently. The internet, media and social media (including SMS) has played a humungous role in all of this.

Even Urdu poets are sharing their material with colleagues using Roman Urdu online, as they are not familiar with an Urdu keyboard as no such thing exists (or at least, it is not as ubiquitous as the desktops are today or typewriters were, before).

Everything we have is working perfectly in that direction and the stage is set - we just need the policy.

The poverty-stricken people of Pakistan will now be able to do their own governmental paperwork, read English signs or at least be able to read their own names in the language (which defines literacy).

I know that this can be done in the Persian script too but it will make them isolated to Pakistan or literature available in Urdu, alone.

If someone's name is Mustansar and he can write it in that manner, he can also recognize other words that we use so commonly. If one can read and pronounce that then being able to read words like metallic or mutilate will not be difficult. Understanding will be the only jump needed.

Right now, they have to learn everything from scratch and by the time they get to forming words or understanding them, there's a kid somewhere in Europe, getting his master's or inventing a cure to some disease.

Words that are already known to people and written in what I called Persian English, like Government, Office, Officer, Police, Computer, Internet, Website, News, etc. (there are a lot more, I've even seen complete sentences of English, transliterated into Urdu), can be written as is, enhancing the capacity of people to read or write them in English.

Learning in the Latin Script will allow them to easily transition into English and gain a higher education.

Otherwise, staying as is, will get them nowhere. They won't understand what they buy at supermarkets, tractors, etc, let alone use technology or gain an education.

Also, making a case for Pakistan in the world stage with higher number of educated people is much easier than now when we would rather burn people's vehicles in the streets.

Advancement of technology and development can also only be done if we have a higher and better human capital.

Frequently mentioned political parties already write their names like this. Even their uneducated supporters call them by these Persianized English acronyms

پی ٹی آئ
ایم کیو ایم
جے یو آئ


How about PIA? پی آئ اے

Even if you use an online translator to understand this, it will give you the English acronym.

Conversely, in the Arab world, their political parties, like the Hamas use the Arabic acronyms in English. This is worlds apart from Pakistan in that we never use Urdu acronyms and stick with the English ones, as shown above.

Lastly, there are Roman Urdu translators available online that translate Roman Urdu into English and transliterate the same word into Persian Urdu. Therefore, it is already in popular use.


There's a lot more that can be added - it's just an imagination just like any idea, but, to me, it is very practical.
 
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This is not about the education this is about the language we teach at schools in pakistan!
 
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I totally disagree with you--we don't need to do anything with our scripture and i am totally against this point that Urdu should be written like modern Turkish-We are already lost our actual cultural influence over Europe and dominance of all sort. At least we should keep our language in its original looks.
And who says that learning Urdu is difficult? In-fact learning Urdu makes much easy for a child to understand foreign languages like Farsi, Arabic and even English because Urdu includes various words of different languages like Ticket of English,AABGINA of Farsi if i am not wrong--instead we need to each poor infrastructure of our education system.
and furthermore how are we gonna understand Sindhi and Punjabi and other regional languages??It will be difficult for our offspring to understand regional language then--so what to do??convert regional languages too?
 
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and furthermore how are we gonna understand Sindhi and Punjabi and other regional languages??It will be difficult for our offspring to understand regional language then--so what to do??convert regional languages too?

Yes. I am in favour of removing all regional languages like Turkey only has one and their people are called Turkish, Pakistan should also be one nation and its people called Pakistanis and not hyphenated Pakistanis like Sindhi-Pakistani or Punjabi-Pakistani

I didn't quite understand the rest of what you wrote so please reword it, if you can.

Am i the only one confused here :confused:

What confused you?

Tell me so I can try explaining it better because I think, this is a very relevant point to be included in the education debate in Pakistan.
 
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