Literacy: The Glass is Half Full Literacy is the bedrock and lifeblood of development. Without it, Pakistan will remain an impoverished and weak Third World country. With it, rapid economic growth and a stable democracy become inevitable. It is unclear whether one should be an optimist or a pessimist 54 years after independence, but if the optimist sees a glass as half full while the pessimist believes it to be half empty, then we are faced with precisely that situation. The last census in 1997-1998 in Pakistan provided a wealth of data on the state of mass education. Overall, the literacy rate reached 45%, and today is probably about 49%. Since 1990, there has been a substantial rise from 35%, and the trend shows improvement at about 1.3% a year in the headline rate. However, although the overall rate is just about 50%, there are 4 sharp dividing lines in the country that mask pockets of strengths and pockets of great ignorance.
One of the great dividing lines is between the genders. While male literacy is now about 60%, female literacy is only 36%. There has been sharp progress among women, with the national rate rising from 16% in 1980 to 21% in 1990 and jumping to 33% in 1997. In the 1990’s, an increased emphasis on female education pushed the female literacy rate up by 1.5% per year, a rate somewhat faster than for males. But since there was such a gap to start with, there remains a huge disparity. Pakistan has among the largest gender gaps in literacy of any country in the world. Despite that, there has been a major improvement in female education in the 1990’s.
Another dividing line is between urban city dwellers and rural villagers. Urban literacy jumped from 47% in 1981 to 65% in 1997. Rural literacy has risen from 17% to 34% in the same period, and even in 2001 remains below the urban rate of two decades ago. Urban settings are easier to provide social services, and NGOs operate more extensively in urban areas providing educational opportunities for those unable to access a government school. Rural areas are trapped by their remoteness, lack of transport links, and lack of interest by those who run the country. The process of urbanization, by which many villagers move to the cities, is actually making it easier to provide education to the entire population.
A third dividing line is age. The literacy rate is defined as the percent of population over age 10 that can read. Among the young adult population (age 15-24), the literacy rate is substantially higher than for older adults. That at least augurs well for the future. For young women, the literacy rate is 43% in 1997, and for men it was 67% nationwide. The overall rate is 55%. Hopefully, those in this age group that did not access formal education as children will get a second chance to learn to read. If not, they will be condemned to a lifetime of unskilled labor and impoverished status.
The final dividing line is provincial. Punjab is the most literate province in Pakistan, while Balochistan is the least. Punjab’s rate in 1997 was 47%, with the urban rate at 66% (male 73%, female 57%). In contrast, NWFP’s rate was 37%, and Balochistan was only 27%. The young adult literacy rate in Punjab is 70% for males and 50% for females. Sindh has an overall literacy rate of 46%, just below Punjab, but it contains some very sharp disparities not found in Punjab. While Sindhi urban rates are as good as Punjab’s, the rural rates are atrocious. Only 39% of Sindhi male villagers are literate, and an amazingly few - 13% - of female villagers can read. These numbers are worse than the NWFP rural numbers (48% males and 17% females). It seems that the Taleban are in charge of education in rural Sindh. The only hope many of these families have of educating their children is to move to Karachi.
Actually, the low rural education level in Sindh is the product of the feudal landlord system, which has its greatest hold in that province. Another surprising fact is how well the NWFP has done in male literacy. The overall male rate is 53% (72% urban and 48% rural), which is not far from Punjab’s 59%. But the gender gap in NWFP is huge, with female literacy only 21% (43% urban, 17% rural). This good performance on male literacy combined with a huge gender gap may be a product of the large number of religious schools that mainly provide education to boys.
Pakistan has made impressive strides since independence in the field of education. Less than one million students were enrolled in schools in 1947, and now 12 million school- age children are enrolled. But another 8 million are not. Universal primary education is still not a reality. The recent census tallies in China and India show that Pakistan is substantially behind the two large Asian nations. China’s literacy rate is near 90% and India has reached 65%. Pakistanis need to do better.
(This is the first of 3 articles on literacy and education in Pakistan). Comments can reach the author at Nali@socal.rr.com
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