The Teach a Child School; standardize opportunity not exams

The Teach a Child School, Lahore, video was being shared around yesterday.

Much like the 1 Rupee school profiled in Karachi last year, this school also aims to empower its students, charging an honorific Rs 5 a month, so that students claim ownership over their experiences.

A more detailed profile of the school from its website:

Support:TAC: Teach A Child School System, Lahore, Pakistan (low-res version)

A lot of the points that come up in these sort of interventions and efforts has a lot to do with motivating students, building aspirations, involving teachers and parents in learning and developing an enabling environment. It really pulls the rug from beneath the single point agenda of all political debate on education; the now ubiquitous goal to "standardize" education.

One comment that is notable from the profile is above is about giving students from vulnerable backgrounds, similar opportunities as those from affluent backgrounds.

Now, we should do what we can to support such organizations. The students that come out of these schools will definitely have advantages amongst their peers who attend public schools. However, when we talk about doing our best to help students from poorer backgrounds in general, standardizing education and exams is the last of what should be our concern. This school may be offering better opportunities within its four walls, but what happens once they leave the school?

Whenever one profiles successful interventions in education, you see children accommodated, their needs analysed and provided for and their unique circumstances considered. If we had a standardized curriculum, that would ignore individual circumstances which would do more harm than good.

Supporting campaigns and NGOs is well and good. Granted these help, but actual change of any nature wont come until the children profiled above are not only able to access the same education as their affluent peers, but are able to access support such as tutoring, admission test preparation, work placements and internships, guidance for university application etc.

Its the inequality in opportunity that needs to be reduced, and access to opportunity "standardised". 

In the mean time, we should all support the Teach a Child School and similar initiatives. But also remember that putting kids in brick and mortar schools, and giving them uniforms to wear will help, however, wider society is very unequal; while these kids make their way through school, those at the top are increasing the gap at an accelerating rate.

And just to be clear dumbing everyone down in the name of equality is not the solution either! 

Taxing problems: few winners, many losers

Since the early 1990s, inequality has intensified in Pakistan. The consumer boom under the Musharaf regime, coupled with high inflation since 2007 has widened the gap between the rich and the poor.

While the rhetoric in the media is largely made up about issues of access to resources and state services, the wider implications for ignoring inequality are ignored.

Some quick thoughts on this.

1) Given the minuscule number of tax payers in the country, the idea of having a progressive taxation system that redistributes wealth from the rich to the poor is non-existent. We still live in a system where individuals, even those who can well afford it, expect the state to provide them services for free.

2) The states inability to raise enough taxes forces it to borrow money from the State Bank, commercial bank or foreign sources. In all of these cases the increase in inflation and the burden of repaying the debt is borne primarily by those who the state should be protecting. The "haves" however are net beneficiaries through low or non existent tax obligations.

3) Links between politicians, civil servants, the military, industrialists and feudal networks insures that resources are allocated in a manner that serves their own interests. Laws, systems and methods that would help to reduce inequality either by redistributing wealth from the rich to the poor, or by improving the state of the poor are non-existent or co-opted to suit the interests of a small segment of society.

This list could go on for several more points, but I think you get the picture. As we rally against price hikes, increase in the cost of gas, oil and electricity, corruption and mismanagement, we should stop to remember that even in the worst of times, they are winners and losers. The winners continue to win big, while the losers lose more badly. The long term costs of increased inequality are mostly ignored.

The following talk best summarises alot of the points I would agree with.