Learning to innovate
By Alison Zaman
The hugely well-attended Children’s Literature Festival in Lahore recently provided a valuable opportunity for children to experience drama, puppet shows and storytelling, making learning fun. However in the data sets and analyses of how to accentuate and augment business innovation, insufficient attention is perhaps being given to how minds develop and habits form at a much earlier stage of learning.
Why is it that Pakistan with a population three times the size of the UK, produces so little scientific and technological innovation? In 2005, the most recent statistics available, Pakistan produced 368 scientific and journal articles, compared with 48,288 by the UK.
Pakistan has a huge untapped potential in its population of 185 million people. The educational statistics are appalling. The average number of years schooling of adults in Pakistan is only 3.9 years. In 2004, Pakistan had the worst record in the world for children out of school, with more than 6.5 million children not receiving an education. Of those who enter education, the dropout rate before the end of primary school is almost 50 percent, and only 24 percent of girls continue to class 10. However these global statistics only skim the surface. What about the quality of education that is being provided?
The government education statistics report on the availability of electricity, latrines and drinking water, which are essentials taken for granted in most countries. Children need to be physically comfortable in order to learn well. Half of rural primary schools have only one or two teachers. The average teacher pupil ratio in primary schools is 38 to 1, often in cramped classrooms, which make pupil involvement and active learning difficult.
Experience of working in a school in a poor area of Karachi, reveals that teaching in the early years relies on rote learning, with the children being drilled until everyone in the class has retained the information. There is a strong emphasis on compliance. The contrast with education in the UK and Europe where preschool education is play based is stark. There is an erroneous assumption that by starting teaching literacy skills at 3 years the children will do better, but this is at the expense of their speaking and listening skills, and confidence. Developmentally many three year olds do not have the physical coordination skills to control a pencil well, cognitively they may not yet be drawing recognisable objects, yet they are drilled to write letters.  Because children are not ready to do these tasks it takes them longer to achieve them, which may leave them worried and anxious. There are lots of tears and few smiles.
In art children are shown how to draw an apple and colour it red. I have been struck that colouring is seen as art, whereas it is a manual skill. Art should be about creativity and free expression. It is a means to order ideas and express feelings. Give a child who has been trained to draw an apple and colour it red, a piece of blank paper and ask them to draw anything and they tend to draw a red apple but in reality apples come in different shapes, sizes and colours. There are also many more things to represent. Even young children taught in this way need immense encouragement to break free and express their own ideas on paper.  It is important that early experiences of education should be positive, so children want to attend school and see learning as interesting, motivating and fun.
Young children in Karachi's top schools, who have every privilege, smaller teacher pupil ratios, and a more interesting curriculum are said to be "ahead" of their European counterparts. Yet they lack the confidence and independence of children following more child-friendly, play based early years curricula. It is through play that children develop their social skills. They learn to share, take turns, resolve differences. They also develop their communication skills as they have to listen to each other, and express their ideas. The best predictor of academic success in preschool children is their speaking and listening skills, in particular their ability to break words into their constituent sounds and blend sounds into words, not their knowledge of the alphabet, or ability to write.
What relevance does early years education have to the production of academic papers?  Our formative educational experiences teach us what is expected, and how to learn.  If individual thought and creativity are not allowed then we learn that compliance is valued and important.  Rote learning is not suitable for a rapidly changing world. Young people today need to learn how to find information and evaluate it, they need to learn the tools to solve problems and ultimately they need to learn to think effectively. Most of us work in teams, so social skills, the ability to present ideas and to listen and discuss are also important. 
With commitment it is possible to combat illiteracy and improve education standards. Pakistan can learn from countries like Vietnam, which improved its literacy levels dramatically over a short period of time. The time is ripe for true commitment to a good standard of education for all children so that Pakistan is able to play its part in science, technology, art and design.
The writer is an educational