ABSTRACT
‘Pakistan ranks among the countries which accord the lowest priority to education’. The modern system was introduced by the British during their occupation of India in order, according to the Pakistani Ministry of Education, ‘to create a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals and in intellect’. The classical system developed because the Muslims disliked the ideas, customs and values which were being introduced into the Indian subcontinent by the British. The cultural values of Islam, in fact Islam itself, were felt by its leaders to be in grave danger of being submerged by Western customs and concepts. Teachers have been regarded for a long time as little more than glorified clerks who, in the villages, write for everyone who needs any writing done and are regarded as authorities mainly in the transmission of factual information, because they are among the elite who can read.
