The Daily Times, one of Pakistan’s fastest growing English dailies, has run a story today giving us the bare bones of the truth of the extremist call.

Back in April 2006, four members of the the Centre for High Energy Physics at Punjab University in Lahore were charged with copying excerpts of an article by the renowned physicist Prof. Chris Llewellyn Smith and got it published by their names in a foreign science journal titled, Science in Africa, an international South African publication without giving any reference to the original author.

Dr. Atta ur Rehman, Federal Minister and Chairman of the Higher Education Commission, took serious exception to the incident and directed the Vice Chancellor of the university to take strict disciplinary action against the four teachers.

After a meeting of the Board at Punjab University, the Director, a Professor Dr. Fazl-e-Aleem, was released from his employment at the University for being careless as head and supervisor. They also deemed that the director had failed to exercise due diligence and supervision even though he was not involved in the plagiarism. They state in their press release that “the issue of plagiarism has brought bad name to the University and resolved that whoever was found involved would be taken to task.”

Taken to task… interesting….

The 4 professors were warned and censured with 2 annual increments in salary stopped. The reason…”the syndicate observed that since there young researchers had no clear cut distinction between permissible copying and plagiarism and no awareness on the issue.” They also took into account that they have published 173 articles in international journals and had no plagiarized articles from 2002 to 2007. The syndicate (board) decided that it was better not to “deprive the students of Punjab University of these talented young faculty and budding physicists of the future.”

What? They didn’t know that copying something and publishing it as your own work was illegal??!!?!?! They what the hell are they doing teaching in a university. Is education in Pakistan so weak that our students don’t know it’s wrong to pass someone else’s work off as their own? Give me a break! Read more »

When a country is not educated, how does it make it’s decisions about social, economic and civil development? Better question, who makes the decisions? This has been one of the core problems that all Pakistanis struggle with. In Pakistan, education is provided like a business, not a national service.

Our government schools are a complete farce. In our government schools, teachers come to school infrequently at best, read the paper when they are there, rarely teach anything to the students and spend most of their time talking to other teachers about current events. Even worse, many of the government schools are just shells for the distribution of money to people. Government teachers that don’t come to work are still paid their full salaries because of special relationships (read bribes) with the right government authorities. As a result, most of our population can barely write their names in Urdu, forget English, and reading Urdu… well, that will get better over time.

On the flip side, the private schools of Pakistan are nothing more than country clubs for teachers. I have briefly taught at one and have friends/family that currently do. See, wealthy Pakistanis are bastards! They are dirty, money loving bastards that should be castrated so their future generations don’t pollute this planet! Let me tell you why….

Wealthy Pakistanis like to open schools, because there is no other business model in Pakistan that pays more for no investment. So they rent a school, hire a few people to teach (notice I did not say teachers), decide on the components of the uniform, books and steal the curriculum from any school they think is a good standard. Yes, I said steal. I have yet to find a wealthy Pakistani that will take the time and money to determine the best education standard for their school, without saying “English medium schools earn more money.” After deciding all of these things, they will go out and rent a building that can be used as a school. Now, I need to stop here for a second and clarify the definition of school in Pakistan, because it is not what you are thinking:

School (n):

An extremely small building located in a residential area unable to support the amount of traffic and parking required

Can not have a playground, activities area or anything that would allow the children to enjoy their time outside the classroom

A canteen, not cafeteria, will be provided to students with items that cost 4 times the price of the market outside the school and are completely unfit for the child to be eating

A School bus will be provided to transport your children to school but will be driven by a suicidal man who won’t treat your children with any respect unless they give him money. Also, you should be aware, the bus driver doesn’t have a license nor is he able to read

All school supplies (books, notebooks, uniforms) will be sourced from the most unreliable vendor so that the costs of getting the required materials are more than sending your child to Harvard for a semester

Teachers will be taken on an availability basis and not assessed for knowledge, ability or temperament. Leave your children at our school at your own risk

We will not assess your children fairly, but pass them every year so that you don’t complain and, much worse, stop paying us for the shabby education that we impart to your child

Due to our useless teaching standards, you will be required to place your children with an after school tutor otherwise they will never learn anything. The cost of the tutor is not included in the cost of the school fees

We assure that once your child graduates from our school they will be worse off then they would have been if you had kept them at home

Suffice it to say, these private schools are breeding the destruction of the nation, while these same wealthy Pakistanis send their children to private schools in other countries to assure that they will continue to be bastards.