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Education

Right Time and Right decision to improve Education and to progress the Country

Fariyal Mir

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It is never late to make decisions and implement them in a timely. Education is the basis of progress and development. When there is the quality of education in a country then it can avail anything. Indeed a good step is taken by PM Imran Khan for incentivizing education to mainstream 20 million out-of-school children.

(APP): Prime Minister Imran Khan on Wednesday said the government was focused on providing education to all children across the country and giving incentives to prevent dropouts from schools.

Addressing the launch of the Ehsaas Education Stipends program here, the prime minister said as over 20 million children in the country were out of school, efforts were underway to ensure their inclusion in the educational mainstream.

The Ehsaas Education Stipends program aims at providing financial assistance to deserving households for the education of their children at primary, secondary, and higher secondary levels.

Rolled out nationwide in 160 districts, the program has been structured to give a higher amount of stipend to girls as compared to boys.

The prime minister said ensuring education for all was a priority of the government, adding that stipends as incentives would be a step to encourage parents to send their children, particularly girls to schools.

He said an educated woman could contribute more positively towards society and lauded the policy of Ehsaas Stipends program to give higher amounts to girls.

Terming educated human resources a great asset for a nation, he said it was important to provide educational opportunities to both boys and girls.

He dismissed the impression in the western world that Pakistanis did not want to educate their girls.

He recalled that during his visits to different parts of the country, he found no such parents opposing the right of education for their daughters. However, he said the factors including distant schools or unavailability of female teachers could be a reason.

Imran Khan said it was mainly the responsibility of the government to provide facilities of education to all.

He appreciated that by the use of information technology, the stipends would be disbursed transparently after proper checking of fake entries and ghost schools.

The Prime Minister also announced a one-time Ehsaas graduation bonus of Rs. 3,000 to encourage girls to complete primary education. This award is being given to girl students completing Grade 5 from Ehsaas eligible families. The graduation bonus has been designed to encourage girls’ education till secondary level.

PM’ Special Assistant to Social Welfare Dr. Sania Nishtar said under the Ehsaas Education Stipends, the primary school boys would get quarterly stipends of Rs1,500 and girls Rs2,000; secondary school boys would get Rs2,500 and girls Rs3,000; and at the higher secondary level, boys will get Rs3,500 and girls Rs4,000 a quarter.

She said all education stipends would be paid biometrically to mothers on the attainment of 70 percent attendance of their children.

She said as part of the ‘Post-COVID-Ehsaas Strategy’, Ehsaas Education Stipends would empower deserving families to overcome financial barriers in accessing higher education.

Poverty is one of the most persistent barriers to acquiring education. Presently, there are 18.7 million children in the age group 6 to 16 who remain out of school in the country and the fall out of COVID-19 has also accentuated it.

The Education Conditional Cash Transfers are an important pillar of Ehsaas and are included in the Ehsaas framework as Policy #73 ‘Education Conditional Cash Transfers’.

The Education Conditional Cash Transfers (CCT) serve the dual purpose of socially assisting vulnerable households and at the same time reduce the number of out-of-school children, which is an important outcome for Pakistan given that there are 18.7 million out-of-school children in the country.

Pakistan has been running an Education Conditional Cash Transfer for primary school-going children called Waseela-e-Taleem since 2012 in selected districts. The program encountered a number of challenges including the high administrative costs charged by NGOs that were administering the program, high error, and fraud due to the program being paper-based, weak compliance monitoring, limited human resources to enroll students into the program, and low stipend amount being given to children.

Also, it was limited to 5th grade and not including secondary education, whereas the latter could be of high impact.

Studies reveal that school drop-out rate increases with age especially for girls in classes 5 to 8, owing to the distance from the school and other associated costs. The previously run education CCT was limited in geographic scope and lacked appropriate federal-provincial partnerships. Also,  payments to beneficiaries were being made through the old BISP payment system which was plagued by many challenges.

On the other hand, Ehsaas Education Stipends challenges is a cost-effective institutional infrastructure developed to implement the program nationwide with reliance on NGOs eliminated.

Because of this, the operational cost has been reduced from 8 to 3 percent. The end-to-end digitization of a number of processes has eliminated the space for abuse in terms of ineligible children being enrolled. The compliance monitors have been hired and a Project Monitoring Unit has been established.

Also, through an MoU with the National Commission on Human Development, additional 1000 staff members have been engaged to enroll students. The stipend amount has been doubled for primary school-going children and has been further increased for girls.

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Build Libraries and develop Reading Culture

Fariyal Mir

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Reading is the strategy to relieve you from conflicts and libraries are the guardhouses for reading. It is the best policy that can lead you everywhere. One can easily move to the history of many centuries ago and can visualize the exact scenario. It takes to the trip of imagination and far beyond. Reading allows meeting with imaginative characters. They are able to talk and walk with the products of imagination. It has the strongest power to strengthen your opinion.  I would like to quote George R.R Martin who says that: “A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies.”

Moreover, reading introduces you to an unknown world where you can find the flavor of your life. It is the best friend of escapism. Reading books bless you with the treasure of knowledge. Garrison Keillor well said about the book: “A book is a gift you can open again and again.” Reading is a culture and it has led developed countries towards their developments. So why not develop this culture among the people.

Hence, to develop this culture there must a range of libraries. Libraries are the places that can motivate people toward reading culture. Building libraries do not charge that much amount but become the liveliest buildings. Such buildings are museums in themselves and engage people from reality to imagination. The walls decorated with books give the feeling of excitement and curiosity. Because once you become habitual of reading you can leave the world but not your reading habit.

Moreover, reading lets you put your feet in someone else shoes and walk on their behalf. It makes you like to feel things, to learn more, and to grasp a lot of experiences. In this way, it teaches you things before time. Foremost, it allows you to explore the world. Empower you to conquer the world through your imagination. Arouses your emotion and makes you a human being.

Every society, community, and family needs a building of books. There must be at one public library if not more than that so that the people can make their mind towards reading culture. A proper library setup can persuade most people toward reading culture. I grantee you when the people are engrossed into reading culture then there is no power to distract them. And every household will furnish their one wall for books. That would be amazing.

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Education

Father of Modern Surgery, Abū al-Qāsim al-Zahrāwī

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Early Life:

The well-known Muslim scientist Abū al-Qāsim al-Zahrāwī, also spelled Abul Kasim, in full Abū al-Qāsim Khalaf ibn ʿAbbās al-Zahrāwī, Latin Albucasis, was born in 936, near Córdoba Spain. He had his origin from the Medinan tribe of Al-Ansar. He lived most of his life in Cordoba. It is also where he studied, taught, and practiced medicine and surgery. He was a medieval surgeon of Andalusian Spain, whose comprehensive medical text, combining Middle Eastern and Greco-Roman classical teachings, shaped European surgical procedures until the Renaissance.

The Surgical Man        

Al-Zahrawi remained the greatest surgical man. He specialized in curing disease by cauterization. And invented several devices used during surgery, for purposes such as inspection of the interior of the urethra. He also used surgical devices in applying and removing foreign bodies from the throat, the ear, and other body organs. The man of cure is ranked as the first to illustrate the various cannulae and the first to treat a wart with an iron tube and caustic metal as a boring instrument. He had performed laryngotomy on a slave girl without any experience but became successful and called it not dangerous.

Moreover, Al-Zahrawi is also considered to be pioneered neurosurgery and neurological diagnosis. He is known to have performed surgical treatments of head injuries, skull fractures, spinal injuries, hydrocephalus, subdural effusions, and headache. Al-Zahrawi had given the first clinical description of an operative procedure for hydrocephalus. And clearly described the evacuation of superficial intracranial fluid in hydrocephalic children. Other than this he had written a complete code of surgical conduct that is used by modern surgeons. He had made many surgical tools that became the base for the development of advanced tools.

His Book Kitab al-Tasrif

 Al-Zahrawi’s Kitab al-Tasrif is a medical encyclopedia comprised of thirty volumes that he completed in the year 1000. It covered a broad range of medical topics, including surgery, medicine, orthopedics, ophthalmology, pharmacology, nutrition, dentistry, childbirth, and pathology. The first volume in the encyclopedia is concerned with general principles of medicine, the second with pathology, while much of the rest discuss topics regarding pharmacology and drugs. The last treatise and the most celebrated one is about surgery. Al-Zahrawi stated that he chose to discuss the surgery in the last volume because surgery is the highest form of medicine, and one must not practice it until he becomes well-acquainted with all other branches of medicine.

The work contained data that had accumulated during a career that spanned almost 50 years of training, teaching, and practice. In it, he also wrote of the importance of a positive doctor-patient relationship and wrote affectionately of his students, whom he referred to as “my children”. He also emphasized the importance of treating patients irrespective of their social status. He encouraged the close observation of individual cases in order to make the most accurate diagnosis and the best possible treatment.

The wise surgeon once said about anatomy: “Before practicing surgery one should gain knowledge of anatomy and the function of organs so that he will understand their shape, connections, and borders. He should become thoroughly familiar with nerves muscles bones arteries and veins. If one does not comprehend anatomy and physiology one can commit a mistake that will result in the death of the patient. I have seen someone incise into a swelling in the neck thinking it was an abscess when it was an aneurysm and the patient dying on the spot.”

In short, he had given complete documentation and procedure along with a description. He has made the world of surgery.

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Education

Death anniversary of poet Ahmed Faraz observed

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The 16th death anniversary of renowned Urdu poet, Ahmed Faraz was observed today.

Ahmad Faraz was born on January 12, 1931 in Kohat. The real name of Ahmad Faraz was Syed Ahmad Shah.

He started his career as a script writer with Radio Pakistan Peshawar and later joined Peshawar University as a lecturer.

Tanha Tanha, Be-awaz Gali Kuchon mian, Sab Awazain meri hai and Shab-e-Khoon are among his literary works.

He was a member of the Progressive Writers Movement.

The great Urdu poet was decorated with a number of national and international awards including the Nigar Award, Sitara-e-Imtiaz and Hilal-e-Imtiaz.

Ahmed Faraz died on this day in 2008, due to kidney failure and was buried in Islamabad.

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