Online Education

Unfortunately, Pakistan is one of those countries whose education system is outdated. Quality education is very rare. Moreover, it is only affordable to  children of elite class.

No doubt, education system of Pakistan was in serious crisis even before arrival of pandemic but it has exacerbated the situation. Due to lockdown, online classes and online papers are only options for institutions to continue their activities. However, poverty and attitude of the students in Pakistan are turning this method into a futile attempt of imparting education. In future, it will produce more detrimental effects than positive outcomes.

First of all, Pakistan is a poor country its huge chunk of population do not have access to internet facilities. According to official statistics, almost 22m students were out of schools even before the pandemic. Surely, the contagion has increased these numbers by manifold. In simple words, only children of rich people in urban areas are getting education through online services and children of poor people of rural areas are compelled to say goodbye to education because of absence of internet facilities. This scenario is increasing inequality between the poor and the rich and it will produce bad impacts on economy of Pakistan in coming years. 

Similarly, online education may produce more severe impacts on higher education system. For example, before pandemic, due to flawed examination system, students got rewards of their memorising powers at the end of academic year or semester. Now, in online system, they are getting rewards of their friendly relations with  seniors of their relevant subjects and ability to search answers of different questions from Google because both these sources are easy and best ways to get good marks in exams.

Likewise, this system is more dangerous for the students who have  started their education career at university level during period of lockdown. When students take admission in university, in most cases they will have to choose subjects about which they have very little prior knowledge. Therefore, they need proper guidance of teachers in the class to understand basics of new subjects. For example, if a student wants to get admission in Geology at university  level, only proper lectures of teachers can help him to understand basic concepts of geology. Same is true for healthy understanding of other subjects which is not possible through online classes. Without proper classes, one may pass subjects either due to relaxation in paper checking or due to his strong memorizing power but he can never perform well in practical field. Hence, online education may further degrade education standard of Pakistan.

In a nutshell, one can say that online education is not compatible with the society of Pakistan at least in current arena. Lack of interest towards learning and habit of getting good marks in exams through corrupt practices make the system less conducive for the societies like Pakistan. Therefore, policymakers and students will have to adopt different approach to make the online education more beneficial. Otherwise, all of them will have to keep ready to face consequences in future.