Editor in Chief: Moh. Reza Huwaida Friday, March 29th, 2024

The Educational System of Afghanistan in Need of Decisive Change

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The Educational System of Afghanistan in Need of Decisive Change

Historical study of economic development and educational evolution of developed/developing countries pinpoints their strict consideration on improvement of education systems and promotion of educational organizations in the communities. Accordingly, now, in most of the countries, the change in the last educational years of high schools and diverse sections of universities has become a very important cultural/social phenomenon.
The educational systems/institutions are the most essential and infrastructural elements for the growth of economy in a country. Meanwhile, it`s the only kind of institutions to which all people are somehow connected and respect it.
Due to very specific objectives, the educational system of every country needs the very strict consideration and observation to the doctrines and circumstances.
Worriedly, Afghanistan is a country with the lowest level of educational skills in the region and even inthe world. According to the statistics given by the United Nations; 66 percent of Afghans are totally illiterate and only 34 percent are literate most of which just know the basic reading and writing. In order to compete the quick global changes in human lives, the educational system of Afghanistan must change. Education brings the opportunity to encounter social evolutions and even can generate such changes. Whatever currently exists as an educational system in our country, can`t satisfy the needs of the community. This system is neither able to nurture innovations and nor it is able to encourage the creation of a sustainable desired future.
Presently, it`s to be agreed that our educations system couldn`t yet managed its undertaken obligations and responsibilities. While, there are thousands of people in the employed in the government by the educational ministries, spending huge amounts of governmental budget.
Nevertheless, this broken educational system not only hasn`t subtracted anything from the people`s problem but has added to. Although education in other countries is an element of sustainable development, but it`s shown very ugly and worse than everhere in Afghanistan.
However, concerning extensive facilities available for today`s era, our people are living many decades back. This community is faced to tough crisis like pollutions, hunger, poverty, disease, deprivation etc. most of people are sacrificed of the old and useless institutions.
The structure of Afghanistan`s education system is as old as it can`t achieve the new objectives of today. The system which is running is a system built in back for already old objectives and the very little changes made in the recent years isn`t considerable enough.
The fact that most of graduates of the universities are jobless, suggests for the establishment better educational institution in this country. This is a very unsolved problem of our higher education system.
Professionalization of the educational system in the lower levels especially in the middle schools has a good impact, but yet, our efforts for this purpose hasn`t been successful.
The government has increased the quantities of universities and schools instead of building quality-based educational patterns. More regretfully, even the pedagogues` community of Afghanistan is opposite of changes in the system more than others. If the teachers didn`t get trained/harmonized with the modern educational system, any efforts for innovation in the education would fail.
Afghanistan has no place in academic ranking list of the world. Having no teaching methodology pattern and lack of skilled teachers/professors are the main problems that our educational system is suffering from.
In different educational periods, our students stand at the lower levels of knowledge of reading and writing and when they enter universities, they learn very hard due to their academic weaknesses.
Despite the strict situations that Afghans passed, they are so much keen to attend their higher education as well, but this purpose is more culture-oriented rather than future-oriented.
The fact that higher education guarantees the employment as an honorable means of affording family expenses; and despite changes in circumstances resulted by modern economic conditions, the Afghans still haven’t change their old mindset about higher education.
During last 13 last years, the academic system of Afghanistan has expanded in term of quantity, but with no innovation and quality to help the community with achieving their aims and objectives.
The present system of education is about generating diplomas and certificates. Therefore, the outputs of this system is to produce jobless, semi-jobless, illiterates or individuals who couldn`t be utilized. So far there has been no effort to modernize the current higher education so that the educated individuals can satisfy the demands of the job market.
Unfortunately, any measures taken to reform of the current educational system has yet faced to strict opposition.
In the higher education system, especially among the teachers/professors, and at a lower level between all the employees, such an organized tendency exists which lets not the current system to change by any mean/anyhow.
Now it`s necessary to verify the educational institution systems in order to rescue the young generation from illiteracy; and develop the country. In recent years, our educational institutes have grown collaterally with the other institutions in the country. But unfortunately, this growth has happened just in term of quantity. In term of quality, the governmental sectors and private sectors both have failed due to lots of shortages. Now, the academic institutions need to be upgraded and developed to dynamic educational system. It should be upgraded to both quality and methodology.
Besides upgrading the academic institutions, another important factor that should be considered is to attract the skilled and experiment teachers/professors. But regretfully, the higher education system isn`t free of corruption in both the governmental or private sectors and this obscenity has been shown in several instances. Existence of discrimination and illegal relations is one of the barriers led to lack of quality based-growth of the educational system. These teachers/professors teaching in either government or private universities must be assessed, whether they are qualified or not?
Indeed, the academic conditions of the universities in Afghanistan, matches no any fixed academic standards globally. All the private universities are like literacy courses and most of them have just one principal as the only cadre of the institutions. Most of universities don`t have the needed academic cadres; or they lack faculties, departments and even they may have no specified buildings. The owners of these universities are mostly those who were previously armed fighters during the civil war, or they are the sellers of lands. Hence they may just think of their financial profit rather than academic standards. Another painful point to be mentioned is that the students are also inattentive to this condition and have no objections, but additionally, they themselves pass their credits by forcing or cheating. This is why both sides (the educational system and the students) are blameful against the future of this country.

Thus, rebuilding the educational institutions in the country is a very tough and long-run obligation for both the government and the people. But it`s to sacrifice for the great objectives. Our community will not achieve the real sustainable development unless every individual of this country benefits from all academic facilities, development, and innovation; and to understand the objectives of their lives.

Mohammad Erfani is the permanent writer of the Daily Afghanistan. He can be reached at thedailyafghanistan@yahoo.com.

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