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Insaf Research Wing Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf
Tehreek

IRW
Insaf
nsaf Research Wing
nsafresearchwinginsafresearchwi Central Secretariat
Street No. 84,
84

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Finding solutions
olutions for a better Pakistan
Sector G-6/4,
G
Islamabad, Pakistan.
Tel: 92-51-2270744
92
hwinginsafresearchwinginsafrese Fax: 92-51-2873893
92
irw@insaf.pk
irw@
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“Iff you have actually read this paper and the supporting works, there is no way
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that you will ever look at education the same way again.
again.”

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Insaf for our Children
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A Radical Education Policy Paper
hwinginsafresearchwinginsafrese 18 March, 2012

archwinginsafresearchwinginsafr Author: Meinhaj Hussain

Committee: Education

esearchwinginsafresearchwingins Dossier # 002

Version # 001

afresearchwinginsafresearchwingi Nature of the document: Proposal

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justicehumanity
ticehumanityequalityfaithpiety
equalityfaithpiety
Insaf Research Wing (IRW) is a part of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) reporting to the secretary general. IRW
was created in 2009 to carry out research in order to find solutions for problems in Pakistan. The foremost goal of
IRW is to keep people of Pakistan and PTI informed and prepared.

The wing is composed of 10 committees. Each committee addresses issues related to its field of expertise. The
committees defined as of yet are (i) Socio-Political (ii) Information & Technology (iii) Economic (iv) Energy (v)
Healthcare (vi) Corruption (vii) Foreign Affairs (viii) Education (ix) Environment (x) Strategic Thinking.

The research reports/papers are either commissioned by the central executive committee of PTI or committee
members of IRW. PTI members can also suggest IRW to consider researching on a matter they find important.
IRW welcomes any contributions in the form of scholarly work addressing important issues. Nevertheless, after
the author(s) sends the document it is peer reviewed before getting published. In the process of peer review the
document is technically analyzed and scrutinized. The procedure is necessary to maintain quality control. However,
varying opinions and ideas are not penalized.

Apart from working on research reports/papers which shed light on problems and provide basic solutions, IRW
aims to act as a conduit to the shadow cabinet and/or spokespersons aiding them with the task of preparing
extensive policies for PTI. These inputs are from several professionals who are well versed in the subject. IRW
also serves as a check on the reigning government’s policies.

The Wing does not follow a preset ideology while carrying out research. IRW does not endorse any
opinion presented in a published report/paper as an official position. Likewise, several research
reports/paper on a similar subject published by IRW can have contradictory recommendations
though it should be noted that these point of views are sole responsibility of the author(s). Very
rarely when there is a complete consensus on a certain research report/paper within IRW only then
it is recommended to PTI for official perusal. Any published document by the wing does not
constitute it as an official position of PTI unless otherwise stated.

Insaf Research Wing works at a national level but its members are located throughout the world bringing in the
much needed international experience. IRW practices an open membership policy valid for all Pakistanis regardless
of religion or race. Nevertheless, members of other nationalities from international organizations interested in
helping Pakistan are always welcome to join IRW.

Published reports of IRW can be accessed on the website. The headquarter of IRW is located at PTI’s Central
Secretariat, Street No. 84, Sector G-6/4, Islamabad, Pakistan.

Copyright © 2012 by Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf All rights reserved.

 Committee on Education  Insaf for our Children

Contents

1. INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................................................................... 4
2. PAKISTANI EDUCATION TODAY ........................................................................................................................................ 5
3. THE GREAT MISTAKE – A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE OF THE DEGENERATION OF ISLAMIC EDUCATION SYSTEMS 6
4. THE ADVENT OF MASS SCHOOLING ...............................................................................................................................10
5. MOVING OUR CHILDREN TO THE WORLD OF IDEAS ..................................................................................................13
6. OPEN SOURCE LEARNING.................................................................................................................................................15
7. IMPORTANCE OF K-12 EDUCATION................................................................................................................................20

Insaf Research Wing  Page 3

Committee on Education
1. Introduction
Education is considered a critical and
important factor for improving the condition
of Pakistan and Imran Khan has already
shown with Namal College how he can
make a difference in this field. All hopes are
that the PTI will drastically improve the
condition of education in Pakistan, a step
only possible through insaf and eliminating
corruption. There are many experts on
education available to the PTI and who are
more than willing to help establish a Pakistan
built on insaf. The purpose of this paper is to
outline some key and lesser known aspects
that may provide a different insight to the
traditional.
For one, when we talk about education
today and how beneficial it is to the people
we are making some fundamental
assumptions and these may require a closer
look. Firstly, what we are talking about is not
education per se, but education as conceived
originally in the Prussian state around the
1820s. This form of education spread
throughout Europe and eventually to the
United States with Horace Mann’s “Seventh
Annual Report” to the Massachusetts Board
of Education. It thereafter became the world
standard of “education”, in fact we shall call it
Mass Schooling for the purposes of this
paper.
Secondly, we are implying that this form of
education is a universal and untainted “good”
that must be accepted. This results in Mass
Schooling being essentially a form of un-
Islamic “religion” built on blind faith. In my
Insaf Research Wing
 Insaf for our Children
reading of the educational programs and
questions of reform throughout the Muslim
world, these key fundamental questions are
never raised and perhaps never even known.
We are too busy trying to copy the circuit
board without knowing what the board
actually does.
Because of this gap in knowledge, some of
the assertions made in this paper will seem
questionable. I do not have the space to
provide every evidence for every single
startling assertion, but to those who want to
inspect the arguments further, I would highly
recommend Weapons of Mass Instruction, a
book by an American schoolteacher John
Taylor Gatto who taught 30 years in public
schools before resigning from teaching
during the year he was named New York
State's official “Teacher of the Year”. He then
spent 22 more years tirelessly talking about
the problems of the present schooling
system that has been replicated worldwide.
He has travelled three million miles to
lecture on the subject and his earlier book,
Dumbing Us Down, has sold over 100,000
copies. Weapons of Mass Instruction should be
sufficient but should any further
recommendations be needed, I would be
more than happy to oblige. Let us however,
now first start with, briefly, what Pakistan
presently has.
 Page 4
 Committee on Education
2. Pakistani Education Today
There are three kinds of education that are
being handed out to Pakistanis today. One
created for the elite involving foreign-
language, often English. This system is based
on a Western education model. The
education lacks any real substance in Islam,
but instead replaces this with a history,
philosophy and social science that propagate
a world-view centered on the ascendancy of
Western civilization. Evolution is taught as
fact, served with fanciful diagrams of half man
and half animals. And the conspicuous
absence of Allah imprints an implicit denial.
This education provides a secular view of the
world from a Western perspective and the
subservience and abject inferiority of our
own civilization. The system is the essential
fountain from which the secular elite of
Pakistan have fed and grown on.
From being dressed in Western attire at a
young age every morning, sometimes tie and
coat included, our children are being
brainwashed into accepting an alien culture
and serve to be transformed into an elite
that neither understands nor respects its
culture and roots and instead is in awe of the
Western civilization. These elites then serve
as the agents of the foreign power in keeping
control over the country, a new and
sophisticated form of vassalage, yet vassalage
to the same or greater degree than ever
before.
The second form of education is the
diametric opposite – madrasah education
given to the lower classes where the Quran
Insaf Research Wing
 Insaf for our Children
is recited and memorized but without
comprehension, reflection and analysis.
People still are devoted to the Quran, but
their love of the book is not one of
reflection and understanding, but of
formalistic and ritualistic reading, learning by
heart and a complicated science of
pronunciation. What are produced are
people who can recite, memorize and obey
commands, but neither understands Islam,
their active role in Islam, or their position in
the greater scheme of things.
The third form of education is government
sourced and involves a heavy dose of rote
learning similar to the madrasahs, but just
enough practical curriculum to be able to
function in various jobs and roles that any
state and economy inevitably needs. These
typically serve the middle classes.
Our education system is broken and
astoundingly there is no government that is
willing to fix it. For the 60+ years Pakistan
has been without any fundamental rethink of
what the British left her with. How can we
create an improved state of affairs when the
fundamental building block of the system –
the Pakistani Individual - is not educated,
aware and enlightened but brainwashed to
believe their inferiority? As with any system:
garbage in, garbage out.
 Page 5
Committee on Education
3. The Great Mistake – A Historical
Perspective of the Degeneration of
Islamic Education Systems
Our present education crisis did not start
now; our particular garbage has taken
considerable time to rot and perhaps
coincides with our decline. Brother Mahathir
Muhamad points out in his blog CheDet that
in the 15th century we decided to separate
worldly knowledge from religious knowledge
and focus on the latter1. It was this that he
attributes as a key element to our downfall.
Perhaps the issue started even earlier when
the Asharite School started using reason and
logic only defensively and Imam Ghazali
debated those influenced by Greek
philosophers. However, the victory seemed
one not only against the philosophers but
against the use of reason and logic itself.
Thus, the doors of ijtihad were closed and
Muslims moved increasingly to taqlid, or
imitation. Logic was carted off to be used
only defensively in support of established
theology. Ibn Khaldun in Al Muqadimah sheds
much light upon the use of logic by what he
describes as “recent scholars”:
“In time, the science of logic spread in Islam.
People studied it. They made a distinction
between it and the philosophical sciences, in that
logic was merely a norm and yardstick for
arguments and served to probe the arguments
of the (philosophical sciences) as well as (those
1
Taha Jabir Al-Alwani
writes similarly in his
work Ijtehad, IIIT.
Insaf Research Wing
 Insaf for our Children
of) all other (disciplines).
“(Scholars) studied the basic premises the
earlier theologians had established. They refuted
most of them with the help of arguments
leading them to (a different opinion). Many of
these were derived from philosophical
discussions of physics and metaphysics. When
they probed them with the yardstick of logic, it
showed that they were applicable only to those
(other disciplines and not to theology, but) they
did not believe that if the argument were wrong,
the thing proven (by the arguments) was also
wrong. This approach differed in its technical
terminology from the older one. It was called
“the school of recent scholars”. Their approach
often included refutation of the philosophers
where the (opinions of the) latter differed from
the articles of faith, because, in most respects,
there is a relationship between the opinions of
the innovators and the opinions of the
philosophers.
“The first (scholar) to write in accordance with
the new theological approach was al-Ghazzali.
He was followed by the imam Ibn al-Khatib. A
large number of scholars followed in their steps
and adhered to their tradition.
“The later scholars were very intent upon
meddling with philosophical works. The subjects
of the two disciplines (theology and philosophy)
were thus confused by them. They thought that
there was one and the same (subject) in both
disciplines, because the problems of each
discipline were similar.
“The theologians most often deduced the
existence and attributes of the Creator from the
 Page 6
 Committee on Education
existing things and their conditions. As a rule, this
was their line of argument. The physical bodies
form part of the existing things, and they are the
subject of the philosophical study of physics.
However, the philosophical study of them differs
from the theological. The philosophers study
bodies in so far as they move or are stationary.
The theologians, on the other hand, study them
in so far as they serve as an argument for the
Maker.
“In the same way, the philosophical study of
metaphysics studies existence as such and what
it requires for its essence. The theological study
(of metaphysics) on the other hand, is concerned
with the existentia, in so far as they serve as
argument for Him who causes existence.
“In general, to the theologians, the object of
theology is (to find out) how the articles of faith
which the religious law has laid down as correct,
can be proven with the help of logical
arguments, so that innovations may be repulsed
and doubts and misgivings concerning the
articles of faith be removed.
“If one considers how this discipline originated
and how scholarly discussion was incorporated
within it step by step, and how, during that
process, scholars always assumed the
correctness of the articles of faith and paraded
proofs and arguments (in their defence), one will
realize that the character of the subject of this
discipline is as we have established it, and one
will realize that (the discipline) cannot go beyond
it. However, the two approaches have been
mixed up by recent scholars. The problems of
theology have been confused with those of
philosophy. This has gone so far that the one
Insaf Research Wing
 Insaf for our Children
discipline is no longer distinguishable from the
other.” (underlining is superimposed)
Further along in his book, he confirms that
this mixing of the two is fatally wrong and a
mistake:
“The only thing that caused the theologians to
use rational arguments was the discussions of
heretics who opposed the early Muslim articles
of faith with speculative innovations. Thus, they
had to refute these heretics with the same kind
of arguments. This situation called for using
speculative arguments and checking on the early
Muslim articles of faith with these arguments.
“The verification or rejection of physical and
metaphysical problems, on the other hand, is not
part of the subject of speculative theology and
does not belong to the same kind of
speculations as those of the theologians. This
may be known, so that one may be able to
distinguish between the two disciplines, as they
have been confused in the works of recent
scholars. The truth is that they are different from
each other in their respective subjects and
problems. This situation called for using
speculative arguments and checking on the early
Muslim articles of faith with these arguments.
“The verification or rejection of physical and
metaphysical problems, on the other hand, is not
part of the subject of speculative theology and
does not belong to the same kind of
speculations as those of the theologians. This
should be known, so that one may be able to
distinguish between the two disciplines, as they
have been confused in the works of recent
scholars. The truth is that they are different from
 Page 7
Committee on Education
each other in their respective subjects and
problems.
“The confusion arose from the sameness of the
topics discussed. The argumentation of the
theologians thus came to look as though it were
inaugurating a search for faith through (rational)
evidence. This is not so. (Speculative theology)
merely wants to refute heretics.”
Thus, logic was confused, pushed aside by
the political success of the theologians and
philosophy itself removed to a portion
merely of speculative theology.
The consequence of this was manifold, and
like a dynamo through history, knocked
down many pillars. Firstly, education
increasingly discounted the teaching of logic,
and subjects such as mathematics that
develop that critical element of the brain.
Instead, we started to focus on
memorization. Secondly, our valuation of
knowledge changed and this caused what we
earlier described from Dr. Mahathir
Muhamad as the separation of knowledge.
With the end to ijtihad and an education
that eliminated from the bud the intellectual
capacity of the Ummah, the Muslim mind was
chained, collared and imprisoned.
Mysticism aided this process, and it is
interesting that it was also Al Ghazali who
instituted the legitimacy of this practice. It
was as if the traditional theologians and the
mystics worked as a tag team to create a
new artificial consensus. Describing the Sufi
practice, Ibn Khaldun notes:
Insaf Research Wing
 Insaf for our Children
“The Sufis are very much concerned with
achieving this great joy through having the soul
achieve that kind of perception. They attempt to
kill the bodily powers and perceptions through
exercise, and even the thinking power of
the brain. In this way, the soul is to achieve the
perception that comes to it from its own
essence, when all the disturbances and
hindrances caused by the body are removed.
(The Sufis) thus achieve inexpressible joy and
pleasure.”
And again:
“The arguments and proofs belong in the
category of corporeal perceptions, because they
are produced by the powers of the brain, which
are imagination, thinking, and memory. The first
thing we are concerned with when we want to
attain this kind of perception is to kill all
these powers of the brain, because they
object to such (perception) and work against it.”
Together, they perpetrated a static view of
the world, an end to ijtihad and the beginning
of taqlid, and created an education system
that perpetrated this system. Centuries later,
from the intellectual stupor of the Ummah,
we can only guess that these great geniuses
succeeded! Dissent was seen as an enemy,
and the intellect was seen as the cause of
the dissent. What better way than to create
zombies to hold the Ummah in a perpetual
state of conformity, and keep the world in a
perpetual static relic of the past? But the rest
of the world moved on unfortunately for the
Ummah.
Social-psychological diseases often manifest
 Page 8
 Committee on Education
themselves in very peculiar ways.
Confucianism erred towards perfectionism
and, over the centuries showed itself in the
degenerate form of Chinese foot binding; it
was believed that women having small feet
was a desirable quality and Chinese families
started putting children into small wooden
shoes that they would be forced to wear. It
was said that every small feet required a
bucket of tears. Thus a philosophical-
theological error manifested itself in a
ghastly manner that was clearly visible to the
Chinese. For Muslims however, we cannot
see the damage we are doing to our children,
yet it is far more profound than the foot of
those poor Chinese girls; for a brain is far
more part of being human than a foot could
ever be.
There is in fact one case where the full
manifestation of this stranglehold on the
intellect became clearly visible; in Pakistan
there is a Sufi shrine where people go to
pray for various desirables to the dead
“saint”. In one such shrine, known as Dawlay
Shah, people sometimes go to ask for
children, in case they have fertility problems.
Perhaps they have not heard about fertility
clinics. If the couple then have children, they
are supposed to give their first born to the
shrine. The child’s head is supposedly put
inside a metal helmet-like enclosure and the
child grows up with a small brain. Such small-
brained individuals are then used to serve
the shrine, begging and doing other income-
generating activities. They are then known as
Dawlay Shah dey Chuhay or Dawlay Shah’s
rats.
Insaf Research Wing
 Insaf for our Children
How else did this great blunder come about?
Malek Bennabi in his book The Question of
Ideas in the Muslim World points out that the
impetus to the mysticism mentioned above
came from a Muslim society that reacted to
an increasingly materialist order within itself
by an increasing indulgence in the rejection
of the material. So the Sufis originally where
attempting to balance an original imbalance
in society. One pole of extremism attracted
the other, and destroyed the middle way. The
subordination of reason and logic and the
mysticism that thus established a foothold
has had cascading consequences upon our
society. Muslim society has been trapped
between the two poles of materialism and
mysticism ever since.
Today we can see the results before us; the
materialism-mysticism polarization and the
anti-logic religious tendency tendencies
invariably leads to secularism, whose very
core is the separation of “religious” and
“secular” knowledge, to give each polarized
group its own domain. Long before the
bayonets of the British showed up to force
this separation upon us, we stabbed
ourselves with our own Damascus blades.
 Page 9
Committee on Education
4. The Advent of Mass Schooling
As we noted in the beginning of this paper,
the present global education system we are
calling “Mass Schooling”, started in Prussia
and spread throughout Europe and thereby
to the colonies of the Europeans and the
United States, becoming a world standard to
mimic by a progression of lesser nations.
The system was designed to create a stable
workforce that is technically competent to
the degree required (and no more) and
willing to sell their labour for wages. The
system was also designed to provide mass
consumerism to buy the products that
centralized industrial mass production was
designed to create.
We earlier left of in 1843, when Horace
Mann helped propagate the system from
Europe to the United States. This is the
same Horace Mann who explicitly states that
school is the best jail – “a jail you sentence
the mind to is harder to escape than any
iron bars”. Orestes Brownson was publicly
denouncing what he termed as the
Prussianization of American schools as far
back as the 1840s. Adam Smith’s publisher,
William Playfair, noted that “proper”
schooling teaches “negatively” and only
allows the poor “to read sufficiently well to
understand what they do read”. That if they
were educated any better, the “ladders of
privilege” would collapse and the children of
the elite would not be able to hold their
privileged positions. Even further back in
history, a similar policy was pursued in China
called "The Policy of Keeping People Dumb”.
Insaf Research Wing
 Insaf for our Children
Perhaps one of the most influential people of
the 20th Century, James Conant was
president of Harvard for twenty years, WWI
poison-gas specialist, WWII executive of the
atomic bomb project, high commissioner of
the American zone in Germany after WWII,
among other laurels. Gatto notes that
Conant was one of the key individuals who
brought Prussian Mass Schooling to its full
bloom. In The Child, the Parent and the State,
he noted that the modern school today was
the result of a “revolution” between 1905
and 1930. He directs readers in his book to
Principles of Secondary Education (1918) by
Alexander Inglis where “one saw this
revolution through the eyes of the
revolutionary”.
Inglis, after whom Gatto notes that an
honour lecture in Harvard is named, makes
it clear in his book that the purpose of this
modern education was to act as a fifth
column to the democratic rise of the lower
classes who increasingly wanted to play a
greater and more Insaf based role. Gatto
summarizes Inglis’ views in the following
words:
“Modern, industrialized, compulsory
schooling was to make a sort of surgical
intervention into the prospective unity of
these underclasses. Divide children by
subject, by age-grading, by constant
rankings on tests, and by many other
more subtle means, and it was unlikely
that the ignorant mass of mankind,
separated in childhood, would ever re-
integrate into a dangerous whole. Inglis
breaks down the purpose - the actual
purpose - of modern schooling into six
 Page 10
 Committee on Education
basic functions, anyone of which is
enough to curl the hair of those innocent
enough to believe the three traditional
goals of education listed earlier:
I. The adjustive or adaptive function.
Schools are to establish fixed habits of
reaction to authority. This, of course,
precludes critical judgment completely. It
also pretty much destroys the idea that
useful or interesting material should be
taught, because you can't test for
reflexive obedience until you know
whether you can make kids learn, and
do, foolish and boring things.
2. The integrating function. This might
well be called “the conformity function”
because its intention is to make children
as alike as possible. People who conform
are predictable, and this is of great use
to those who wish to harness and
manipulate a large labor force.
3. The diagnostic and directive function.
School is meant to determine each
student's proper social role. This is done
by logging evidence mathematically and
anecdotally on cumulative records. As in
“your permanent record” Yes, you do
have one.
4. The differentiating function. Once
their social role has been “diagnosed”
children are to be sorted by role and
trained only so far as their destination in
the social machine merits – and not one
step further. So much for making kids
their personal best.
5. The selective function. This refers not
to human choice at all but to Darwin's
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 Insaf for our Children
theory of natural selection as applied to
what he called “the favored races” In
short, the idea is to help things along by
consciously attempting to improve the
breeding stock. Schools are meant to tag
the unfit – with poor grades, remedial
placement, and other punishments -
clearly enough that their peers will
accept them as inferior and effectively
bar them from the reproductive
sweepstakes. That's what all those little
humiliations from first grade onward
were intended to do: wash the dirt down
the drain.
6. The propaedeutic function. The
societal system implied by these rules
will require an elite group of caretakers.
To that end, a small fraction of the kids
will quietly be taught how to manage
this continuing project, how to watch
over and control a population
deliberately dumbed down and
declawed in order that government
might proceed unchallenged and
corporations might never want for
obedient labor.” (Gatto, Weapons of
Mass Instruction)
All this is not some conspiracy theory but
happened in full public view and is very
extensively recorded in history, for those
who are willing to spare the time to search.
These are policies and decisions made by
managers and executives of the West’s
education system and as such are
documented in their writings and works.
Some other big names of the time involved
include George Peabody, Andrew Carnegie
and John D. Rockefeller.
 Page 11
Committee on Education  Insaf for our Children

Space does not allow us to go further to
provide evidence, I instead point you to John
Gatto and am myself available for those
curious to further delve into the evidence.
To sum up, the Western education system
we seem so enamoured with, has a horror
movie back-end and a purpose and meaning
that we must understand before we start
replicating them wholesale upon the tender
minds of our children, so full of potential,
dreams, hopes. Even if we were evil enough
to do this to our people (and I hope we are
not), we must understand that the system is
designed for a mass production society and
not for the kind of country Pakistan, or
much of the Muslim world is.
Europe, we will always lag behind the
West as it has to go through the same
steps that the West has already long
passed.
With that in mind, let us now look at how
we can move our children to the world of
ideas, to reach their full potential, instead of
turning them into the jackasses Pinocchio
and his friends were to be turned into by the
circus, i.e. the mass education system.

The West mistakenly believes they are the

first to have discovered education as a
means of pacifying the people and turning
them into a dumbed down human resource,
but if the reader has read the section on our
legacy of the Islamic education system then
we can see a clear parallel. Our system may
just have been even more effective; it
managed to freeze history, if that is anything
to be proud of. So many centuries later the
West is now crawling towards a similar end
– “The End of History”.

I have described the problems of the Islamic

and Western education systems. The
situation of Pakistan and the Ummah is aptly
stated by Malek Bennabi in the following
manner:

The Muslim world today is at a risk of

being overwhelmed by the West, at the
very moment that the West is in decline.
If we seek to follow in the footsteps of

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 Committee on Education
5. Moving Our Children to the World of
Ideas
Bennabi describes the great crisis of
civilization as the cultivation of humanity
moving from the world of people and
objects to the world of ideas. He describes
the critical age when our children begin to
enter this world of ideas as starting from
seven to eight years, as supported by
cognitive development theorists such as
Piaget and Case. We are doing the greatest
harm to our children when we are forcing
them to block out the development of the
thinking process and instead make them
memorize endless texts, whether in our
religious schools or our “secular” ones. We
may be producing zombies.
It may be that we are forcing our children
into boxes out of which they cannot grow, as
we earlier noted with the example of
Chinese foot binding. Our situation may be
worse for we cannot observe by sight the
damage that we are doing to our children.
Pity the child whose mind is being raped by
being forced to memorize endless text she
does not understand. Who is banished from
asking questions. Who is taught to detest
what was to be loved. And who will face this
whether in a madrasa or in the average
school. If she is “lucky”, and her parents are
wealthy enough to send her to an elite
Western school, she would be robbed of her
Islam in all but name.
Such children can never have the energy,
passion, intellectual strength to make a
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difference for Pakistan or the Ummah. They
have been drained of these in a systematic
manner. Severity to our children and
strictness in instruction also zaps them from
their spirit and energy, that vital power that
can make them individuals that can change
the world. Ibn Khaldun notes:
“Severe punishment in the course of instruction
does harm to the student, especially to little
children, because it belongs among (the things
that make for a) bad habit. Students, slaves, and
servants who are brought up with injustice and
(tyrannical) force are overcome by it. It makes
them feel oppressed and causes them to lose
their energy. It makes them lazy and induces
them to lie and be insincere. That is, their
outward behavior differs from what they are
thinking, because they are afraid that they will
have to suffer tyrannical treatment (if they tell
the truth). Thus, they are taught deceit and
trickery. This becomes their custom and
character. They lose the quality that goes with
social and political organization and makes
people human, namely, (the desire to) protect
and defend themselves and their homes, and
they become dependent on others. Indeed, their
souls become too indolent to (attempt to)
acquire the virtues and good character qualities.
Thus, they fall short of their potentialities and do
not reach the limit of their humanity. As a result,
they revert to the stage of “the lowest of the
low”.
“That is what happened to every nation that fell
under the yoke of tyranny and learned through it
the meaning of injustice. One may check this by
(observing) any person who is not in control of
his own affairs and has no authority on his side
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to guarantee his (safety). One will thus be able
to infer (from the observable facts) that things
are (as I have stated). One may look at the Jews
and the bad character they have acquired, such
that they are described in every region and
period as having the quality of khurj, which,
according to well-known technical terminology,
means "insincerity and trickery." The reason is
what we have (just) said.”
Ibn Khaldun’s words, written so many years
ago, ring true as if written for Pakistan today.
“When laws are (enforced) by means of
punishment, they completely destroy fortitude,
because the use of punishment against someone
who cannot defend himself generates in that
person a feeling of humiliation that, no doubt,
must break his fortitude.
When laws are (intended to serve the purpose
of) education and instruction and are applied
from childhood on, they have to some degree the
same effect, because people then grow up in
fear and docility and consequently do not rely on
their own fortitude...”
If Pakistan has had one thing, it has been
fortitude and a vital energy of character. This
is where bending over to the US, allowing
drone strikes and accepting the murder of
Pakistani citizens and soldiery is so critically
damaging to the national psyche. But the
education system is also perpetrating this –
students at madrassas or secular schools are
punished severely by people who have no
right to do so, nor are the students treated
fairly during such punishments. This injustice
or zulm is exactly against the principle of
insaf or justice that the PTI stands for. It is
creating the greatest damage to our children.
Furthermore, Islamic religious education
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originally did not have this impact. In this
regard, Ibn Khaldun notes that:
“It is no argument that the men around
Muhammad observed the religious laws, and yet
did not experience any diminution of their
fortitude, but possessed the greatest possible
fortitude. When the Muslims got their religion
from Muhammad, the restraining influence
came from themselves, as a result of the
encouragement and discouragement he gave
them in the Quran. It was not a result of
technical instruction or scientific education. The
laws were the laws and percepts of the religion
that they received orally and which their firmly
rooted belief in the truth of the articles of faith
caused them to observe. Their fortitude
remained unabated, and it was not corded by
education or authority. Umar said, “Those who
are not (disciplined) by the religious law are not
educated by God.” Umar’s desire was that
everyone should have his restraining influence in
himself. His certainty was that Muhammad
knew best what is good for mankind.”
Clearly, the pretended orthodoxy of the
present religious institutions is in reality a
monstrous deviation from Islam. We cannot
bring our children into the world of ideas as
long as these issues persist. As a basic
premise, to think about ideas, one has not to
be constantly afraid of whether the religious
instructor with the stick will hit you if you
break-off to think about what you’re
reciting.
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6. Open Source Learning confinement

Student's own Forced learning

Now that we understand the problems in autonomous learning
great detail and had a glimpse of some
Sharpen personal Depend on institutional
solutions, let us look at a new paradigm for
feedback loop feedback through
the education of our children built on what grades
Gatto calls Open Source Learning.
Incidentally, this form of learning is very Real life orientation Classroom orientation
through out-of-class
similar to how the companions of the
activities
Prophet (peace be upon him) learned from
him. Let us look at a brief comparison of Personalized curriculum Mass uniform
Open Source Learning and Mass Schooling: tailored to student curriculum

Family and nature as School friends &

Open Source Mass Schooling
centers of meaning colleagues as centers of
Learning
meaning
Free market in learning Monopoly of centralized
Taught by competent Taught by wage
learning
adults teachers
Focus on producing Focus on consuming
Create independent Produce wage slaves
knowledge knowledge
thinkers with self- and consumers without
Students are active Students as passive knowledge and self- sales resistance
initiators receivers control

Mixed-age and Herding children Encourage imagination Destroy the imagination

heterogeneous society together to keep capacity of children
perpetual or extended (Fitche, Spinoza)
childhood
Teaches the way Artificial learning
Let people manage Manage populace children learn naturally counterintuitive to
themselves through habit and children
obedience training

Mistakes as central Mistakes are Let us briefly explain a few of these points as
process of learning reprimanded severely brevity does not allow us here to go into all
(Robert Kiyosaki) by grading of them. Making mistakes is a central part of
Let children grow at Make perpetual children learning as it allows an individual to get real
their own pace feedback and then experiment with
(Children want to grow correcting his or her actions. Imran Khan for
up fast) instance, found that his style of bowling was
Flexibility and diversity Long-term, cell-block not going to help him be a fast bowler and
of learning environment style forced through his personal feedback loop, he
corrected this bowling action, something

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Committee on Education
many experts thought was not possible for
him to achieve. This is a perfect example of
the open source learning that Imran Khan
mastered, knowingly or unknowingly.
Children learn through interaction with
others, if these others are predominantly
children, they will continue to remain
children perpetually. Fifty years ago a man
was made at age 13-16, today you have an
increasing number of 30 year olds who are
still living in childhood. This is a deliberate
attempt and Gatto writes:
Dr. Inglis knew that if children could be
cloistered with other children, stripped of
responsibility and independence,
encouraged to develop only the
trivializing emotions of greed, envy,
jealousy, and fear, they would grow older
but never truly grow up. In the 1934
edition of his once well-known book
Public Education in the United States,
Ellwood P. Cubberley detailed and
praised the way the strategy of
successive school enlargements had
extended childhood by two to six years
already, and forced schooling was at that
point still quite new. This same Cubberley
was an intimate colleague of Dr. Inglis:
both were in charge of textbook
publishing divisions at Houghton Mifflin -
Cubberley as chief of elementary school
texts; Inglis of secondary school texts.
Cubberley was dean of Stanford's
influential School of Education as well, a
friendly correspondent of Conant at
Harvard.
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 Insaf for our Children
This serves to not only create a docile and
child-like populace that perpetually looks up
to authority with child-like reverence, but
also a population that is easy to market
meaningless consumer products to. Open
source learning will seek to keep the
environment mixed-age and heterogeneous
to enhance children’s ability to learn and
grow up, as is natural – a child always seeks
to copy his or her elders, sons are frequently
seen copying their fathers, this is natural and
the way children learn to grow up and must
not be artificially inhibited.
It is my belief that Pakistanis survived the full
blast of the Mass Schooling system simply
because of the dysfunctional nature of
schooling in Pakistan and because of cricket.
Cricket has taught Pakistanis what the Mass
Schooling system has attempted to destroy.
An interesting anecdote concerns Dr. Zafar
Altaf, one of the key individuals behind
Pakistan’s Silent Green Revolution of the
1990s in agriculture and a long-term
manager of the Pakistan cricket team. Dr
Altaf, under whom I have studied, related to
me how he was able to finish his PhD from
the London Business School in 18 months,
without having any academic background for
decades. He noted that his ability to
concentrate on the pitch (Dr. Altaf is a
former test cricketer) allowed him to focus
for long stretches, sometimes 8-18 hours at
a time, something his tutors at the London
Business School found astonishing. No doubt,
it also helped him accomplish his feats at the
Ministry of Agriculture.
Let us judge the impact of cricket on Gatto’s
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 Committee on Education
Harvard, Cambridge campus brochure for
nine qualities that students need to have to
deal with the international economy of
today:
1. The ability to ask hard questions of
data, whether from textbooks,
authorities, or other "expert"
sources. In other words, do we teach
dialectics?
2. The ability to define problems
independently, to avoid slavish
dependence on official definitions.
3. The ability to scan masses of
irrelevant information and to quickly
extract from the sludge whatever is
useful.
4. The ability to conceptualize.
5. The ability to reorganize information
into new patterns which enable a
different perspective than the
customary.
6. The possession of a mind fluent in
moving among different modes of
thought: deductive, inductive,
heuristic, intuitive, et al.
7. Facility in collaboration with a
partner, or in teams.
8. Skill in the discussion of issues,
problems or techniques.
9. Skill in rhetoric. Convincing others
your course is correct.
Points 7, 8 and 9 are self-evident and needs
no further discussion. The Pakistani paradigm
of cricket helps point 2, in that street cricket
seeks to find innovative ways to look at
specific issues. For instance the reverse swing
or Saqlain Mustaq’s “dusra” or looked to
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 Insaf for our Children
define the problem of defeating the batsman
in a very different way than was
conventionally understood in cricket. Such
innovations are to be found in a great variety
and to diverse degrees in street cricket
throughout Pakistan. Point number 1 is
shown in the example earlier of Imran
Khan’s bowling action, by which Khan,
through a dialectic method evolved his
action. Many similar processes are constantly
taking place in the streets and gullees of
Pakistan.
However, cricket is but an ad hoc manner in
which Pakistanis are learning what schooling
should have helped them learn. The question
we come back to is how we can design a
schooling system that can actually help
rather than hinder our children. How can we
implement open source learning? How can
we use education to uplift Pakistan? Let us
attempt to answer these meaningful
questions.
Firstly, we must de-legitimize the system of
credentials and certificates. Secondly, we
must focus on activity-impact. Thirdly, we
need to take the venom out of the poorly
mimicked Mass Schooling system. By de-
legitimizing the system of credentials and
certificates, we mean to say that
matriculation and FSC grades should not be
the basis for college enrolment. Instead,
colleges should have a basic test of
mathematics, sciences and language that
assess the minimum needed to cope with
college-level education. The corridors of
privilege and power that cause safarish can
then be removed further by choosing
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Committee on Education
randomly (via a computer) from those that
pass such a qualification test. All such tests
must ensure that they are not repeated with
same or similar questions, a problem which
perpetuates the route learning tragedy
Pakistan so deeply suffers from. People will
also not be rejected based on their age –
whether it is a 9 year old or a 90 year old.
We do not know where talent lies and when
they bloom. Certificates and other
paperwork need to be delegitimized at every
level of the education system.
In focusing on activity-impact, I mean that
the government must engage in what is of
most importance to the country, with the
highest impact. Norman Augustine, one of
America’s most distinguished leader in
industry, in government, engineer, academic
and business leader, who holds 23 honorary
degrees and was selected in who's who of
American Library of Congress of 50 great
Americans, has the following to sum up in a
talk titled Re-engineering Engineering about
what had the most impact for the United
States:
In America its basic research that
creates the new knowledge, then it's
engineering that takes that new
knowledge and translates it into useful
products and services. It's the working
together of engineers and business
people that takes those products and
services then through entrepreneurship,
introduces them into the market where
they create jobs for other people, not
engineers or scientists or business
people.
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 Insaf for our Children
Indeed the race for prosperity today is
really a race for leadership in science
and engineering. There have been eight
different studies that I'm familiar with
conducted in recent decades that have
indicated that public investment in
science and technology produces a
societal rate of return of between 20
and 67 percent. There have been a
number of other studies that have
shown that somewhere between 50 and
85 percent of the growth in gross
domestic product in this country in the
last half century is attributable to
advancements of science engineering.
And the Federal Reserve Board
concluded that about two thirds of the
increase in productivity in this country in
the last two decades is attributable to
advancements in science and
engineering.
This has also been emphasized by many
prominent individuals and institutions;
including Alan Greenspan and brevity causes
me to move on and accept the point that
science-engineering is the key sector of
importance for Pakistan to take up, and for
government to be involved in. Augustine
wants innovative, creative engineers, not the
route-learned, zombified beings we are
churning out. And he notes the dependence
of the US in importing such engineers to
remotely keep its edge over other nations.
Both Augustine and Greenspan note the
internal crisis the US is facing in creating a
good supply of innovative and creative
engineers. If you’ve read the above section
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 Committee on Education
on Mass Schooling that is compulsory (by
force of the police) in the US, you may know
why that may be.
To emphasize science-engineering and
technical education, Pakistan needs to focus
on creating polytechnics and engineering
colleges and universities and then properly
funding research and development
institutions. Pakistan needs such colleges to
provide the best possible and cutting-edge
education to create not line-men but the
kind of innovative, creative engineers that
Augustine wants. Space does not allow us to
go into exactly what such a cutting-edge
engineering and scientific education should
be and on what lines to reform the present, I
instead point the reader to a close scrutiny
of Norman Augustine’s 16 Laws of Re-
engineering Engineering2.
Research and development is a critical
element in then utilizing the graduates
produced, unless our aim is to send them to
the United States where they desperately
need such men; it is vital to make sense of
the entire Education-R&D-Development
cycle. When a nation does not have money
for engineers, it makes little sense to
produce them in the first place. Managing an
effective R&D effort is a very difficult
program to master, however, and takes us
beyond the scope of this paper. I would
suggest a read of his paper on defence policy
2
SPIE Defense,
Security and Sensing
symposium in April
2009, “Re-engineering
Engineering.”
Insaf Research Wing
 Insaf for our Children
for more insight on this issue.
The reader will wonder why I am focusing
on technical and scientific higher education.
Another big portion of higher education is of
course the human sciences and the
managerial and actuarial sciences. I believe
that the managerial and actuarial sciences are
well established in Pakistan; Pakistan for
instance produces excellent accountants, as
does India. Managers are also not built in
MBA factories but the best managers are
made from practical experience. The
problem of the Human sciences is one that
the East has been unable to master
effectively. Teaching and creating truly
effective and competent Human Science
graduates is a very complex affair and one
well beyond the structural capabilities of
public institutions. What ends up happening
is creating graduates in the Human Sciences
who have no real skills to speak of. I suggest
the PTI government simply focuses its
meagre resources instead on engineering and
the natural sciences.
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Committee on Education
7. Importance of K-12 Education
A vital and important part of any education
to benefit national development is to focus
on K-12 education, something spoken of by
Ibn Khaldun, who in particular talked about
early educational instruction. It is also
emphasized by men such as Alan Greenspan
who has focused a major portion of his
effort in trying to make K-12 education
more effective, particularly the kind of
education that can produce good scientists
and engineers. Gatto notes some important
aspects that an education should be able to
accomplish. He calls it the Real Learning
Index. These include:
1. Self-knowledge
2. Observation
3. Feedback
4. Analysis
5. Mirroring
6. Expression
7. Judgment
8. Adding value
To this we add a 9th – ethical and Islamic
values. These nine points should form the
basis of any real education system. It is with
great surprise that we sometimes find
individuals supposedly religious but have
very poor ethical and moral applied practice.
This theme is endemic and a systematic
problem, the evidence of the latter being
that it is present across the Islamic Ummah
and not just a characteristic of Pakistani
society. Perhaps the main problem lies in a
distortion of the original practice of how
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 Insaf for our Children
Islam was taught; during the time of the
Prophet (peace be upon him) and the
sahaba, students would read a portion of a
surah, reflect upon it, apply it, and lastly
memorize it. Today, we have skipped all the
steps except the last, destroying the value of
our faith and turning it into a meaningless
prattle. This has to be corrected both at the
schools and at the madrassas. And in one
stroke we can create an Islamic renaissance,
insh’Allah.
Bringing proper Islam and replacing the
mullahs at the local madrassas will take a lot
of grit and determination to achieve, with
“liberal” and US-backed groups trying to
manipulate such reform to further their
purposes, and at the same time ultra-
backward groups trying to hold on to what
they have. The best way to deal with this is
to create a genuine committee of world-
renowned scholars and Muslims. Men like
Nouman Ali Khan, an American of Pakistani
origin, respected by all groups and sects (at
least the major ones). Men like Yusuf Islam
(Cat Stevens) who single-handedly built the
best Muslim educational school-chain in the
UK, so much so that the demand for a place
in his schools outstrips the supply. Men like
Zakir Naik, who has done similar education
projects in India and whose stature and
argumentation can shut any dissenting
voices. Some other names include Dr.
Totonji (a founder of the MSA), Hamza
Yusuf, Yusuf Estes, Nuh Ha Mim Keller,
Hakim Murad, Abdur Raheem Green. Yes,
they are from diverse backgrounds and this
will make them possibly fight with each
other, but as long as the platform is given,
they should be fully capable of (insh’Allah)
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 Committee on Education
hashing out a compromise, which in theory
should create the best, most balanced plan.
Real consensus is always hard to build, but
the payoffs are equally potent.
The big secret about education is that it is
not trying to achieve some immense
greatness; it is really about stopping damage
and damage control. We need to ensure
that the Chinese foot binding equivalent of
brain damage on our children does not
continue. We need to ensure that children
are given proper schooling where they are
encouraged to think, reason, understand,
discuss and apply effectively and practically,
whether it is the Quran or the sciences.
The earlier the age, the more critical the
damage done and conversely, the more
powerful and effective the impact of the
education can be. The first aspect to learn
for a child is language, whether PTI decides
that include Urdu, English, Arabic or even
C++. Mathematics is the language of
engineering and also must be taught, perhaps
immediately after conventional language(s).
The important aspect here is not to make
children hate school and be taught language
through painful classroom lessons in
grammar and syntax. The progression and
manner of early education is captured by Ibn
Khaldun in the following words:
“In his Rihlah, Judge Abu Bakr b. al-
'Arabi made a remarkable statement
about instruction, which retains (the best
of) the old, and presents (some good)
new features. He placed instruction in
Arabic and poetry ahead of all the other
sciences, as in the Spanish method,
Insaf Research Wing
 Insaf for our Children
since, he said, "poetry is the archive of
the Arabs. Poetry and Arabic philology
should be taught first because of the
(existing) corruption of the language.
From there, the (student) should go on
to arithmetic and study it assiduously,
until he knows its basic norms. He
should then go on to the study of the
Qur'an, because with his (previous)
preparation, it will be easy for him." (Ibn
al-'Arabi) continued: "How thoughtless
are our compatriots in that they teach
children the Qur'an when they are first
starting out. They read things they do
not understand and work hard at
something that is not as important for
them as other matters." He concluded:
"The student should study successively
the principles of Islam, the principles of
jurisprudence, disputation, and then the
Prophetic traditions and the sciences
connected with them." He also forbade
teaching two disciplines at the same
time, save to the student with a good
mind and sufficient energy.”
Now, I am not certain if I want my children
to study principles of jurisprudence, but the
general lay-of-the-land that Judge Al-Arabi
sketches seems astute and an effective early
education. Certainly, poetry, rhymes and
songs can work to make language so much
more meaningful and fun for children, and
mathematics is critical to develop a logical
and analytical mind, not to mention its
critical importance to the sciences and
engineering.
The last point to be raised is that the
children’s development should be seen more
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Committee on Education  Insaf for our Children

holistically, and focuses on Mind, Body and

Spirit. Education should not merely be about
the first, but be about each of them in
balance.

With that we end our paper on Insaf for our

Children, with the hope that the paper
insh’Allah is in some way helpful to create a
new Pakistan under the leadership of Imran
Khan and the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf.

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