There is a sudden tapping at your window, where you see a small child selling trinkets, desperation in his face. He is wearing ragged clothes and has a sense of urgency. You drive by in your Lexus with the windows down. What do you do? If your response is to roll up your window and move your eyes to the road ahead, you are like most Pakistanis. This is the plight of many children in Pakistan, they are ignored and looked past. No one takes the time to find out why these children are doing this work, where their parents are and why they are not in school? There is no protection under the law for these children either. These children in this time of their lives should be playing and learning. However due to their circumstances they are suffering and no one is paying them any attention. Their plight needs to be understood and tackled and these children need to be helped. These children are the future of the nation and at this point the future does not look so bright.
The first and foremost problem faced is lack of education. Without an education, you can not find work and thus can not provide for your family. Only 71% of children attend primary school in Pakistan. This means that 23 million children are deprived of education. Since these children do not get the chance to have an education they do not have the chance to succeed in the future. They are not being giving the right basis or platform to begin with. Therefore, they cannot get good jobs and they will not be able to set the right example for their own kids either. Then there is also some gender bias that is still prevalent among the villagers who don't understand importance of educating their daughters.
State of Educational System in Pakistan
By: Urwah Ahmad
However there are girls who are born into well-educated families whose families do not know the value of education either. Involved in this factor is the fact that the government only allocates 1.8% of its national budget to education, which is clearly insufficient considering the need. Teachers are very under-qualified. Some of them are just the regular women from the villages who are unable to teach the children past what they themselves know. Therefore there is a difference between the quality of the education the children in villages get as well. My uncle has recently opened a Madrassa, close to our house in the village. This is an educational institution which has a focus on religion. Most of the Madrassas are privately run by people in order to help provide education not only for schooling but also religious learning for those people who are neglected in such villages. He, with the help of other villagers and people, wants to educate the children who do not know about basic things like hygiene. In the beginning in order to get them to attend he had to give them incentives like providing them with food, sometimes clean clothes and more. These children do not have the time to think about his since they are only worried about surviving. However after a couple of months the difference in the children could be seen as well. Most of them had begun to come on their own and were enjoying learning.