Role of Education and Critical Thinking

Education is one of the leading key factors in the development of society as it enhances human capital. No nation can make progress in any sphere of life without smart and up-to-date educational means. Particularly, in the context of Pakistan, we often hear people criticizing our educational system because of the unemployment rate with respect to degree holders. How labor market hires and fires are beyond the scope of this article. I would like to mention non economical educational crises of our system.

Lack of critical thinking in the youth which constitutes about 100 million is the leading cause of this crisis. There are millions of people who have access to the internet in Pakistan and they waste their time on social media trolling and scrolling instead of consuming any intellectual or thought-provocative content. As most people don’t know how algorithms that recommend content as per consumer choice work, they often fall into the trap of political and religious conflicts and some serious psychological neurosis. They don’t even know if what they are believing true consciously or unconsciously is merely an illusion for them and as a result, someone in other parts of the world gets some benefit, perhaps monetary, just because of their traditional and non-scientific thinking. While consuming social media, such people just like, comment, and share any useless person without knowing whether he or she has contributed to society. Similarly, when they go to any political gathering, they just want to rise slogans of their political party and don’t want to critically examine if what the person is saying can be true or not. More than ninety percent of our population claims to be Muslim. On Friday, during the Khutba of Imam sb, no one really cares about what they are being told in that holy gathering is in whom’s interest. People getting emotional and rising religious slogans even on weak interpretations of the Holy book. Hence, critical thinking covers almost every dimension of our life and cannot be undermined, and should be focused upon seriously, especially, when we are told “Pakistan aik nazuk daur se guzar rha hai“.