Education in Pakistan has Negative Impact on the Social Cohesion of Youth

Social cohe­sion is the feel­ing and man­i­fes­ta­tion of uni­ty and sol­i­dar­i­ty among var­i­ous social groups. Accord­ing to this con­cept, peo­ple feel they are part of one com­mu­ni­ty where they face same chal­lenges, share hap­pi­ness and sor­row, and are bond­ed in a linked net­work. Tra­di­tion­al­ly edu­ca­tion plays a para­mount role in fos­ter­ing social cohe­sion by gen­er­at­ing col­lec­tive con­science and increase the sense of social respon­si­bil­i­ty. Edu­ca­tion sys­tems have a huge respon­si­bil­i­ty of forg­ing social sol­i­dar­i­ty.

Gov­ern­ments can use edu­ca­tion for either pro­mot­ing or erod­ing social sol­i­dar­i­ty, both of which have occurred world­wide. War­ring coun­tries were suc­cess­ful­ly turned into strong­ly knit nations with the help of edu­ca­tion. On the flip­side, nations liv­ing in peace for cen­turies came into tur­moil because of the biased nature and unequal struc­ture of edu­ca­tion­al pro­vi­sions delib­er­ate­ly designed by the pow­er­ful inter­est groups with­in a state. Edu­ca­tion sys­tems in the devel­op­ing world have fre­quent­ly failed in ful­fill­ing their respon­si­bil­i­ties ade­quate­ly, result­ing in repeat­ed break­outs of civ­il strife. Pak­istan is one such exam­ple where edu­ca­tion has failed to pro­mote social cohe­sion as proved in a recent study.

In a quan­ti­ta­tive research con­duct­ed by this author in dis­trict Swabi of KPK, a com­par­a­tive study of edu­cat­ed and une­d­u­cat­ed youth, aged 16–29 years, was car­ried out. Social cohe­sion lev­els of young­sters of both these cat­e­gories were mea­sured to see which group per­forms bet­ter. The pur­pose was to see if edu­ca­tion has impact­ed social sol­i­dar­i­ty pos­i­tive­ly or neg­a­tive­ly. A total of 120 respon­dents, with 60 males and 60 females equal­ly dis­trib­uted between the cat­e­gories of edu­cat­ed and une­d­u­cat­ed, were sur­veyed for the com­par­a­tive analy­sis. Ques­tion­naire and face-to-face inter­views were employed as research tech­niques in order to col­lect data, lat­er to be ana­lyzed using SPSS.

For the pur­pose of the research, une­d­u­cat­ed means some­one who can­not read and write any­thing while edu­cat­ed means those who have been to pub­lic or pri­vate edu­ca­tion­al insti­tu­tions of any lev­el. Pri­vate insti­tu­tions also include madrasas, mosque schools and for­eign insti­tu­tions, apart from local schools. In order to mea­sure the lev­el of social cohe­sion, the respon­dents were asked ques­tions about their habits and per­cep­tion of law abid­ance, fes­tive and polit­i­cal par­tic­i­pa­tion, help­ing oth­ers, receiv­ing help, exchang­ing gifts, feel­ing of one­ness, shared val­ues, strength of par­al­lel rela­tions, per­son­al sac­ri­fice, and befriend­ing vary­ing indi­vid­u­als despite dis­sim­i­lar­i­ties.

The result of this research is quite unex­pect­ed indeed; the edu­cat­ed young­sters have a low­er lev­el of social cohe­sion as com­pared to the une­d­u­cat­ed ones. Not just the social rela­tions, the edu­cat­ed young­sters have low­er polit­i­cal par­tic­i­pa­tion in com­par­i­son with the une­d­u­cat­ed ones. More­over, the edu­cat­ed per­sons were far behind in trust and reci­procity. There­fore, it is inferred that edu­ca­tion in Pak­istan is erod­ing social cohe­sion.

The find­ings of the study could not be more shock­ing. Instead of the une­d­u­cat­ed being less­er social­ly har­mo­nious and inte­gra­tive, it is the edu­cat­ed youth that is most like­ly to dis­play this behav­ior. They have also accu­mu­lat­ed a greater amount of social cap­i­tal than the lit­er­ate group. Low­er social cohe­sion of lit­er­ate youth is the result of low qual­i­ty edu­ca­tion which has failed to ful­fill its social cohe­sion func­tion. Edu­ca­tion in Pak­istan is hav­ing a neg­a­tive effect upon macro-lev­el soci­etal inte­gra­tion among var­i­ous seg­ments. Both the unequal struc­ture and provoca­tive cur­ric­u­la are to be blamed for this.

In Durkheimi­an terms, we can argue that in Pak­istan, the edu­cat­ed youth have a lack of “col­lec­tive con­science” and com­mon nor­ma­tive foun­da­tion. The edu­cat­ed young­sters also have weak­er social ties, dimin­ished sense of shared iden­ti­ty and less­er feel­ings of belong­ing­ness and inter-con­nect­ed­ness. To bor­row from French soci­ol­o­gist Pierre Bour­dieu, the edu­ca­tion sys­tem is also involved in “social repro­duc­tion” of insti­tu­tion­al­ized inequal­i­ties in the form of haves and have-nots, reduc­ing mutu­al social inte­gra­tion. The result­ing low cohe­sion sit­u­a­tion applies to not just the research uni­verse but to the whole coun­try, as the caus­ing fac­tors of divi­sive nature and unequal struc­ture of edu­ca­tion are found through­out Pak­istan.

The once high social sol­i­dar­i­ty in Pak­istan has been laid to waste through exclu­sivist edu­ca­tion, reli­gious intol­er­ance and eth­nic sep­a­ratism. Edu­ca­tion has been unequal­ly dis­persed and the cur­ric­u­la have seri­ous­ly dis­tort­ed nation­al his­to­ry. This has fueled frus­tra­tions upon lin­ger­ing edu­ca­tion­al depri­va­tions, as well as reli­gious hatred, even­tu­al­ly lead­ing to the break­down of social cohe­sion. A divid­ed and polar­ized soci­ety has come into exis­tence where­in those young­sters receiv­ing edu­ca­tion had in fact low­er social inte­gra­tion than their illit­er­ate fel­lows.

One of education’s most impor­tant func­tions is to pro­vide social cement to hold the soci­ety togeth­er, but with the rise of edu­ca­tion, the Pak­istani soci­ety is get­ting frag­ment­ed. In the mod­ern age of the 21st cen­tu­ry, het­ero­gene­ity in soci­eties all around the world as well as in Pak­istan is on the rise. This grow­ing diver­si­ty can be cap­tured eth­ni­cal­ly, reli­gious­ly, denom­i­na­tion­al­ly, social­ly, cul­tur­al­ly, demo­graph­i­cal­ly, polit­i­cal­ly, his­tor­i­cal­ly and eco­nom­i­cal­ly. Owing to such vari­abil­i­ty in the social fab­ric, it is essen­tial that a com­mon ide­o­log­i­cal under­pin­ning is pro­vid­ed to all the peo­ple of the state through edu­ca­tion or else con­flict could result. Parts of the world rang­ing from South Asia to East Africa to the Mid­dle East have had a bloody his­to­ry of civ­il war due to lit­tle tol­er­ance and peace­ful co-exis­tence, based on flim­sy eth­nic, reli­gious, sec­tar­i­an or polit­i­cal grounds. In these instances states them­selves were impli­cat­ed in fan­ning under­ly­ing his­tor­i­cal ten­sions, through divi­sive cur­ric­u­la. They also rekin­dled hos­til­i­ties through repro­duc­ing not just edu­ca­tion­al but also socio-eco­nom­ic inequal­i­ties, by means of unequal dis­tri­b­u­tion of the edu­ca­tion­al oppor­tu­ni­ties and resources. It can be inferred that such soci­eties lacked the fun­da­men­tal social cohe­sion required to hold them togeth­er in peace and har­mo­ny, to which edu­ca­tion sys­tems should have con­tributed ade­quate­ly.

Where to bring such essen­tial­ly need­ed cohe­sion from, which could pre­vent fur­ther mis­eries inflict­ed upon human­i­ty? The best and most over­looked social insti­tu­tion for this pur­pose is none oth­er than ‘edu­ca­tion’! Edu­ca­tion can pro­mote the demo­c­ra­t­ic norms required for build­ing a plu­ral­is­tic, tol­er­ant, peace­ful, har­mo­nious, coop­er­a­tive, inclu­sive, and moral­ly root­ed soci­ety. It can pro­mote a healthy cul­ture of dia­logue and nego­ti­a­tion, encour­ag­ing young peo­ple to over­come their dif­fer­ences through the use of lan­guage and com­mu­ni­ca­tion rather than phys­i­cal vio­lence. It can shape pro-social behav­ior of stu­dents who have the poten­tial to become respon­si­ble cit­i­zens of a demo­c­ra­t­ic poli­ty. It can nur­ture greater inclu­sion and cohe­sion at all lev­els in the soci­ety, through fair and non-dis­crim­i­na­to­ry insti­tu­tion­al prac­tices. Edu­ca­tion has the pow­er to bring erst­while acri­mo­nious com­mu­ni­ties clos­er togeth­er and mod­er­ate their rad­i­cal­ized feel­ings, or add fuel to the fire through inflam­ma­to­ry text­book con­tents like the clas­sic exam­ples of Sri Lan­ka and Bosnia. In short, edu­ca­tion can make or break a nation depend­ing on how well it brings about social cohe­sion.

The above find­ings, although dis­mal, are mere­ly a mir­ror of decades of ensu­ing gov­ern­men­tal neg­li­gence of the colos­sal­ly vital sec­tor of edu­ca­tion. Social chaos expe­ri­enced by the nation is much to the cred­it of the edu­ca­tion­al sys­tem. This can only get worse if fed­er­al and provin­cial edu­ca­tion author­i­ties do not pay any atten­tion to the weak­ened social cohe­sion caused by edu­ca­tion, of which there is clear evi­dence. The right kind of edu­ca­tion for male and female, rur­al and urban youth can play a vital role in a nation’s sol­i­dar­i­ty and is inescapable for progress.