Successful Schools, Stagnant Education The Dilemma of Urban Centers

Abstract

With so much focus on illiteracy, we sometimes forget the dire state
of affairs in our urban centers with regard to education. Education
in the Muslim world has increasingly regressed into an exercise of
rote learning, a mass of discrete knowledge, and a frenzied race toward
what we deem “useful” skills. By showing the ground reality
in private education in Karachi, Pakistan, this article strives to highlight
the cyclical and future-oriented trends in schools that are inimical
to the very spirit of education. In doing so, it emphasizes the
need to adopt thinking as the primary skill taught to students in
schools, with everything else encompassed within its fold. While
Karachi is a case study here, the importance of creating thinking
cultures within schools is a crucial and very relevant concept to
schools everywhere in the world, including the United States.