Opinion: The Necessity of English

In this era of ever-changing and competitive world, one cannot gainsay the importance of the linguistic skills for the individuals in the process of making them march ahead in their respective career paths.

It is a melancholic occurrence that the educational sector of our endeared Republic has perpetually been underfunded by the government since the outset. Particularly, the dire need to linguistically educate the preceptors and the learners has been brushed aside, which ought to have been the paramount priority for ‘the greater interest of Pakistan’.

Due to this very reason, a grievous issue has arisen, which is that of the poor spoken and written prowess of English of the students, which hinders their career progression and growth. The manifold learners tend to become fossilised in having their message across in English due to a lack of emphasis given upon the subject by their teachers at their educational institutions due to their own unsatisfactory grasp over the subject of language.

Be it private or public educational institutions, the poorly constructed discourse in English of pupils manifests the lack of competence and interest of their educators in enhancing their knowledge of the subject, which contributes to the budding frustration of learners, who have been failing academically, socially, and linguistically in the lingua franca, namely English.

No matter what the field of study (major) a learner pursues, he must possess an intellectual grasp over English to attain the long-lasting triumph in his academic and professional life. Apart from the national language Urdu and other regional languages like Punjabi and Balochi, all other courses have generally been taught and expected to be learned and fathomed in English, and not being conversant in it can sharply diminish a student’s chance of having access to the multifarious vocational opportunities.

I have been contacted by professors and research scholars of a plethora of branches of knowledge to assist them in the acquisition of English language skills for furtherance and progression in their careers.This is richly indicative of how abysmal the educational system has been, wherein even the hyper-literate class has been struggling to apprehend a subject, which has been mandated by the state since time immemorial.

Another gravamen is that of the aspiring educators, who have not been getting rigorously examined and assessed before their induction into service in schools, colleges, universities, degree awarding institutions (DAIs), and coaching centres of private and public domains. No specific benchmark of the appointment of preceptors has been established by the concerned authorities so as to gauge the faculty of preceptors in the art of delivery of expositions (lectures) before their pupils.

It has been observed that due to readily and cheaply available access to the internet, the current generation of the underprivileged youth tends to be well aware, ambitious, and desirous of bringing a social change by securing coveted positions of the civil bureaucracy with the intent to serve the Republic; however, they have been facing a major obstacle in the process of doing so since these rural dwellers, the urban middle and upper-middle class students, fail to even acquire the passing marks in the compulsory subjects of the competitive examination of the CSS namely, Essay and Précis and Composition.

The major contributing factor behind this is that of dim comprehension of English, inadequate lexical resource, eloquence in expression, poverty of thought, germane ideas, and lack of knowledge of grammar. However, it would be unjustified, should we single handedly blame these aspirants; the driving force behind their dilemma is also that of their teachers, who themselves have a dearth of pedagogical (teaching) skills to impart erudition to them due to their own ignorance of the language, and their unwillingness to self-study the very subject to enhance their ken.

It is a sad state of play in the endeared homeland of ours, which should have been nipped in the bud during the incipient stage of its liberation from the British Raj.