Why students in Pakistan's schools and colleges are scared of studying science

[Irfan Baloch]

I don't know why, but it surpirsed me to see you are agreeing on it sir.
You know what? Japanese speak Japanese, German speak German, Chinese speak their launaguge and so on. But Pakistan has so many lanagues and many people don't even know much of their Urdu and it's just like English to them. And English is mandatory subject in Pakistan. So why not just teaching sciences subjects in English. Repeating myself, just science subjects.

I agree with you too and there is no contradiction here. the word I used is "native tounge" NOT our offical country language

I agree there are places in the country (I belong to one of them) where Urdu is as foreign as English. @DESERT FIGHTER and @TaimiKhan will tell you about some Pashto dialects in Tribal areas where you need a translator to speak to them ..even if you are a native Pashto speaker from settled areas of Pakistan
lets not lament over the diversity & abundance of dialects of our regional languages. but actually celebrate it for the richness that it brings and diversity of ideas and unique knowledge. as for education and teaching the higher levels of any subject which is currently only available in English. What needs to be done is same principle Urdu translation for the urban cities, translation into regional languages starting from regional hubs . Of course you wont achieve 100% mark and its wasteful anyway but hitting a large percentage is what matters.

do you know the 80-20 rule? You are more knowledgeable and articulate than I am so please forgive me if you find my post condescending. But for the rest of the readers let me explain what I mean by this. Go for the regional languages that are spoken the most, cover the most area and have more cross overs to other regional languages slight similarities & are among the multi-lingual population. and then target them as the bases for conversion. so what you are aiming to achieve is to get about 80% result from about 20% most spoken and understood by people ,including multi lingual people (pastho-urdu, urdu-punjabi, punjabi-pashto, hindko/punjabi-pashto , farsi-urdu, balochi-urdu, pashto-balochi etc.).

you see, the way brain works is that it thinks in its native lounge, so for the basics .. It is essential that you teach it in its native tongue. take the example of Computer programming.. its more like the computer language. Do you know that computer doesn’t understand our ABC and signs etc? it speaks binary (1,0). a program works much better when it is written in lower level language, the reason C language (and its derivatives) became popular was that that it was easy to understand and write for us people and the computer to interpret what a programmer is talking about. (you can bet someone will quote a bit of this post and educate me with levels of computer languages).

In their peak days of, Arabs translated the work from the east and west (Greeks, Roman, Chinese etc). And so did the western rising empires who translated the work of the ancients and other empires. None of them found it a hindrance to learn that acquired (translated) knowledge in the native tongue .. so neither should we.

I wish our respected Indian friends can join this debate. they face the similar challenge at much larger scale.

 

[TaimiKhan]

I agree with you too and there is no contradiction here. the word I used is "native tounge" NOT our offical country language

I agree there are places in the country (I belong to one of them) where Urdu is as foreign as English. @DESERT FIGHTER and @TaimiKhan will tell you about some Pashto dialects in Tribal areas where you need a translator to speak to them ..even if you are a native Pashto speaker from settled areas of Pakistan
lets not lament over the diversity & abundance of dialects of our regional languages. but actually celebrate it for the richness that it brings and diversity of ideas and unique knowledge. as for education and teaching the higher levels of any subject which is currently only available in English. What needs to be done is same principle Urdu translation for the urban cities, translation into regional languages starting from regional hubs . Of course you wont achieve 100% mark and its wasteful anyway but hitting a large percentage is what matters.

do you know the 80-20 rule? You are more knowledgeable and articulate than I am so please forgive me if you find my post condescending. But for the rest of the readers let me explain what I mean by this. Go for the regional languages that are spoken the most, cover the most area and have more cross overs to other regional languages slight similarities & are among the multi-lingual population. and then target them as the bases for conversion. so what you are aiming to achieve is to get about 80% result from about 20% most spoken and understood by people ,including multi lingual people (pastho-urdu, urdu-punjabi, punjabi-pashto, hindko/punjabi-pashto , farsi-urdu, balochi-urdu, pashto-balochi etc.).

you see, the way brain works is that it thinks in its native lounge, so for the basics .. It is essential that you teach it in its native tongue. take the example of Computer programming.. its more like the computer language. Do you know that computer doesn’t understand our ABC and signs etc? it speaks binary (1,0). a program works much better when it is written in lower level language, the reason C language (and its derivatives) became popular was that that it was easy to understand and write for us people and the computer to interpret what a programmer is talking about. (you can bet someone will quote a bit of this post and educate me with levels of computer languages).

In their peak days of, Arabs translated the work from the east and west (Greeks, Roman, Chinese etc). And so did the western rising empires who translated the work of the ancients and other empires. None of them found it a hindrance to learn that acquired (translated) knowledge in the native tongue .. so neither should we.

I wish our respected Indian friends can join this debate. they face the similar challenge at much larger scale.

Just to share my small experience, when i used to be living in quetta, i would go out with my dad to his friends, who were pathans of balushistan / Afghanistan, they were pashto speaking and i was pashto speaking, but 70% of the times i won't understand what they were saying. LAMO . When i would ask something from them or their children, they would say "Ya Ya" ---- "Ya Ya', and i would think they are agreeing or saying yes yes, but when got home and asked dad that they were saying yes yes to everything i said or asked them, my dad laughed and said Ya Ya in their pashto means NO NO.

And same for the different dialects of pashto in KPK.

 

[Irfan Baloch]

Just to share my small experience, when i used to be living in quetta, i would go out with my dad to his friends, who were pathans of balushistan / Afghanistan, they were pashto speaking and i was pashto speaking, but 70% of the times i won't understand what they were saying. LAMO . When i would ask something from them or their children, they would say "Ya Ya" ---- "Ya Ya', and i would think they are agreeing or saying yes yes, but when got home and asked dad that they were saying yes yes to everything i said or asked them, my dad laughed and said Ya Ya in their pashto means NO NO.

And same for the different dialects of pashto in KPK.

HAHAHA

you nailed it brother. both Pastos are similar yet different in so many ways.

 

[randomradio]

Every single country in Europe educates its children in its own language. Not one educates its children in English.

Japan, Korea, China and just about every other country in the world.

You don't need English for basic sciences, but you need it for advanced sciences.

Really?

Then why doesn't that stop every country from teaching in its own language?

English speaking teachers are extremely expensive in those countries.

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Most of Europe speaks English. At least 51% of the population have sufficient skills.

 

[DESERT FIGHTER]

Just to share my small experience, when i used to be living in quetta, i would go out with my dad to his friends, who were pathans of balushistan / Afghanistan, they were pashto speaking and i was pashto speaking, but 70% of the times i won't understand what they were saying. LAMO . When i would ask something from them or their children, they would say "Ya Ya" ---- "Ya Ya', and i would think they are agreeing or saying yes yes, but when got home and asked dad that they were saying yes yes to everything i said or asked them, my dad laughed and said Ya Ya in their pashto means NO NO.

And same for the different dialects of pashto in KPK.

Pashto of Baluchistan is much softer than the one spoken in KPK.. While the one spoken in FATA is the rougher than both.... I can understand KPKs Pashto much easily than the ones spoken by Kakars or Orakzais...

I.E: one day me and couple of Pashtun friends were sitting at McDonalds Bahria -RWP..and there were a bunch of girls speaking a little unusual language... The Nowshehra friend claimed they were Farsiwan .. they were speaking in Bannu dialect..

@Irfan Baloch Sand goes for Balochi... Different dialects... Heck It's harder to understand Sistani dialect ...

 

[unbiasedopinion]

Every single country in Europe educates its children in its own language. Not one educates its children in English.

Japan, Korea, China and just about every other country in the world.

Exactly, the main issue with children at such an age is that they need to first learn and understand the language in which science is tought to them and then comprehend the meaning of what is written. In this complicated process, many children looses interest and starts running away from these subjects.

 

[NP-complete]

Science is about anticipating possibilities. Which requires a good imagination. Pakistanis are one of the least imaginative people in the world. Of course they will struggle with science. If we take a look we will see that nations that are good at science produce a lot of fantasy and fiction. Pakistan should also enhance the creative aspects of its citizens.

 

[A.P. Richelieu]

Hooters or Big'uns?

Get Real
Airfix Magazine...

A program works much better when it is written in lower level language, the reason C language (and its derivatives) became popular was that that it was easy to understand and write for us people and the computer to interpret what a programmer is talking about. (you can bet someone will quote a bit of this post and educate me with levels of computer languages).

Yes, Here we go.
Got a non-working piece of assembler program (real low level), which produced 700 bytes of object code.
Rewrote the code in C, fixed the problem, increased the functionality, and the resulting program was 400 bytes.
The higher level code was more efficient.

An even better example is Python, which combined with the packages You can import
makes it much better than lets say a C++ program.

 

[prashantazazel]

in my opinion, the easiest way is to let the technical terms remain in English-and the rest of the sentence/ instruction can be in local language.
basic English is quite easy, and the educators from the subcontinent need to Work on developing a neutral accent.

( sorry about the grammar- typing on a windows phone is hell)