 addition of Islamabad today on Think Tech Hawaii, I'm your host, Council Representative, and today we're going to be discussing the significance of technology in impacting social change when we talk about education in general. Now we all know that the technological revolution is taking place all across the world. You do have artificial intelligence, you have chat PPPs, you also have hybrid warfare. But what kind of impact does technology actually have on social change? When we talk about social change, education is one of the fundamental pillars to try and make sure that next generation can actually create it. I have with me CEO of Lamprow Mellon, Ms. Sababrafi. Sababrafi, thank you so much for joining me on the show. Thank you so much for having me. All right, so let's start off with the basic question here. You've worked all across the world, you've worked with education, you try to make sure that a meaningful impact can actually be realized as far as primary education is concerned. What in your view is the role that technology can play in building a generation and building up educational infrastructure all across the world? I think the best thing that the technology is doing right now is that we're creating with all the artificial intelligence platforms, we're creating a huge democratization of access to information. So that is a fundamentally huge opportunity. Second thing that it does is that over years as new and new information was being generated, it was becoming harder and harder for students to keep up with all the knowledge that was being created or facts that were being being created. And as we were amassing all this information around us, it was education essentially became regurgitation of facts or knowing facts. It moved away from its fundamental purpose, which was to look at the facts, be able to reflect on them, expound on an idea, experiment with it and create new knowledge. So with all the technology, the facts or knowledge is now equally accessible to everybody. And that gives us a whole new opportunity in the field of education to take it to the next level and take it back to the basics of creating new knowledge and creating things that will take knowledge and education and the information economy to the next level. So for me, technology is a great equalizer. Technology is also a platform to create new knowledge, but we have to be aware of the pitfalls and make sure that our education system, especially in countries like Pakistan, is keeping abreast of the changes and we prepare our students across the globe to come to terms with the new challenge. So there is a huge opportunity, but there's also a huge challenge. And only those students or those nations will come out ahead who are willing to take the challenge head on and capitalize on it rather than become a victim of the digital divide as we speak. Okay, so when we talk about you mentioned the developing world and obviously the developing world does encounter fundamental challenges, whether it's structural challenges, you talk about poverty, you talk about alienation, you talk about lack of employment, you also talk about soaring inflation rates. And that really has a great impact on the resource space that governments can actually use and utilize to try and make public policy. When you take a look at these factors in mind, how do you think you can navigate through the landscape of the developing world given that there are challenges and you also need to make meaningful change as far as technology is concerned in the educational context? First of all, I would like to highlight that finding a job is not a fundamental requirement for education because historically education is something that creates the whole landscape of how we live our lives. And philosophy, which is the mother of all sciences of the mother of all knowledge is not necessarily a means to gain employment. That being said, let me come back to something that I said earlier and expand on that idea a little. When we say that we have all these chat deputies and AI platforms that are creating this opportunity for democratization of education, one thing that the third world in particular needs to watch out for is that as these platforms are being developed, they claim to be net sum of all knowledge on a certain date. But that net sum of knowledge is being derived of a basis which are on Western. The knowledge set from where all these information is being derived does not include my narrative, does not include my history, does not take into account all the libraries that may exist in Sanskrit, Urdu, Farsi, Latin. So that is one thing that we need to make sure that as all these platforms are being developed, our narrative, our knowledge is either a part of it or we should have our own platforms so that the cumulative knowledge when somebody starts gaining, you know, gaining access to knowledge, our story is not so. To give you an example, if you were to go to chat, for example, today, when you put a question about crusades, or you put a question about 1857, you will get a certain narrative. They may be a small note at the end that says the other narrative as well. But by and large, for us to make sure that our narrative is also reflected in the new information made, we need to work in the third world actively on it proactively on it. Certainly in nations like Africa, there are a lot of knowledge is just knowledge. Likewise, music in Pakistan, that's also just knowledge. So again, we need to make sure that our narrative, our set of knowledge is somehow built into all, into the ways people access knowledge. Right now, libraries are the fund, you know, for the last few decades, that has become less important, but library, by and large, remained that access point. Now, there will be other access points. Technology is putting that information on my fingertips on a cell phone. And people may not spend time to go to the libraries and further research on those ideas. So the way we archive our history, the way we archive our news, the way we make sure that our set of knowledge becomes part of the information economy, that is an important part, a point to ponder for, in particular, for the third world. And especially those economies in particular African nations, where documentation is not our strong point. Right, so let's just center this on maybe Pakistan for that matter. I mean, when you talk about Pakistan, what kind of challenges did you actually encounter when you actually reached policymakers? Because obviously, if you take a look at your career, a significant portion of it is to try and make sure that you can leverage technology to try and make meaningful impact on primary education in Pakistan for that matter. So was there any resistance that you encountered? And if there was resistance, what kind of resistance was it? I think the fundamental resistance comes from the fact that our policymakers are, pardon my saying so, are maybe not knowledgeable enough. They're not knowledgeable enough, they lack the vision. And they may be mired so much into day to day affairs. See, education is something that is part of nation building. And I would like to highlight that whatever problems we have today are because of lack of it. And what is the solution we may devise will be when we make it accessible to our population. Pakistan remains from the bottom, number two, in terms of our school children. And those who are educated are either underemployed or unemployed. Okay, so we have to first recognize our policymakers, unfortunately, when they come out in public forums or even in private forums, because they are worried about election cycles and because there's a fundamental instability in the political cycle. So even your election term is not fully served ever. So people would like to pretend and would like to say that we've done a lot of things. In reality, we haven't. We're still throwing away a lot of our money on teacher training, in which we try to teach them a pedagogy of which they have no knowledge or no capability to go back to apply. So we in Pakistan are still grappling with the fundamentals of education. We are still living with the left overs of a colonized system of education, which was wrote memory-based, which was based off of selective study. Even whatever our curriculum is outdated in primary school, pre-K to 12th grade, measurably on all indices, Pakistan's education system is 80 years behind the first one. Private schools may be 35 to 50 years, but by and large, we are really, really behind the curve in terms of how and what children are taught across the globe, in particular the first one. So if that is the delta, without even articulating what the issue is and failing to form a clear policy, we are not going to go anywhere. Now the way the education field is changing so fast, the world has moved to inverted education models, and we still haven't perfected the basic one. So to me, the basic difficulty is to even explain to the policymakers how far behind we are, because they see that as a statement on performance. And it is not politically exigent to recognize the failure or to articulate the failure, because I'd like to stand up on a podium as a politician and say, I did this, I did this, I did this. In reality, we have done next to nothing, in particular Punjab, which used to be a little bit ahead previously, with the introduction of the single national curriculum, we are going to fall behind. And nobody is willing to talk about it. Nobody is willing to talk about it. Under the ambit of whatever is called single national curriculum, we have pushed back Punjab's education system by at least two decades. And so rather than catching up, we're falling behind. Take an example, how many hours do kids spend in a school in a first world environment? 8 o'clock in the morning to 3 o'clock. Yeah, 8 o'clock in the morning, yeah. We keep our kids in school till 1. So already we're not even covering the basic curriculum. Now you add to it the, the owners of Nazra. Literally what we have done is that we've made the yellow schools, as we call them, the Pila school, is the public system. We've literally turned our Pila school into Madrasas. And rather, and it took us decades to go over the hump and try to mainstream the Madrasas. But the single national curriculum, we've pushed it back. People have to lie. Even, you know, good private schools are struggling. They have to lie and say, we're following it. In reality, we can't. We simply cannot. It is but the criminal to charge people money for what is being taught under the essence. So to be very honest, that was one thing. Another thing that they did is that they made the medium of instruction Urdu, which again was a step back. Either we should have had the political will and the courage because what is the nag? I understand that there are a lot of studies which talk about that teaching kids in their mother tongue enhances the learning outcomes. Guaranteed and agreed and agreed. But then as when we say my mother tongue, does my mother tongue have enough information in the libraries? Do we have enough research material published in our language? I may become an engineer and I will not be able to offer anything for IEEE simply because I would not be able to access all the research material that is out there. Nations that have taken it upon themselves to make their national language. The language of instruction have also had the political will and their financial bear with all of converting all information in libraries into the mother tongue and making it accessible to their students. So their students are not left behind in in an information age where new information is being generated. We still haven't translated all the data there or the knowledge that we have in the libraries right now. Forget about translating it live when new information comes out every every year. So our kids would be left behind in all of it if we do not have the political will or courage to implement the national language in a way that it fulfills all the requirements of language as we and you know we talked about early about employability. Yeah well if you're so to be very honest if our kid is not relevant to the 21st century he may be educated in language A, B, C or D that language has to be the lingua franca of most people in the world for it to be for them to be relevant. So limiting people's access to language may make it easier for us politically to sell narratives but it will not make them productive citizens of the world. Alright so let's come to Africa now we can talk about because you've dealt a lot with the developing world. Africa has the toxic history of colonial history and history over there I mean of many African students and many African institutions would argue that history over there is written by the conqueror not the conqueror. So when you talk about the colonial history that many developing societies have actually gone through how difficult is the challenge to try and make sure that technology can be leveraged to try and indigenize the system or trying to make sure that the system responds to indigenization given the colonial history that actually exists in many African states. That is a problem that that we talked about for all of us. You know if you think about it when we formed the Aligarh College the literature that was translated was mostly the one that was palatable to the colonizer's narrative. So the bulk of your history or my history still remains in Persian and Arabic language even that has not been translated and Bindi made Urdu as the language of you know as a medium of instruction we did not create enough new material in that language. Now Africa's problem is a step further away because the traditional African way of teaching was just knowledge that has never been documented. So we face one set of problems which is a huge set of problems because our language of instruction or our language Urdu that we speak does does not have enough research material, enough political thought, enough philosophical thought in it. But African problem is far more complex because their history, their narrative, their knowledge has not even been documented in their own language. So their problem is far more and when we talk about you know to be very honest if education is about regurgitation of facts then you will have a problem with colonization and education is enlightenment of mind, your capability to reflect a set of facts, your capability to reflect on a set of facts presented to you. That itself will clear out the problem of colonization. So give me an example when I was young one of the nuns at my school she taught me because she was Irish and we were being taught let's say church history. Now when we read church history and we read British history you will see the same set of facts being presented in two different ways. When you study park studies and you do British history again you see facts same set of facts being explained in two different ways. So at an early age we were taught that truth is somewhere in between and you know you could read French history and English history. So what you can develop is a good reading habit which is a good research etiquette don't take one set of facts and take that as if it's a word of God it's not. If you all understand so maybe it is how we and in the new information age where chat gpt's are available where information is available reading multiple set of facts and driving your own conclusion and having a good research etiquette having a good reflection etiquette having a good way to come to your own conclusion is something that so it's the way we teach the colonizer may have left a legacy but how we teach will undo that legacy and that is an important part that all third world Africa, South Asia, China everybody included we need to deal with it. US was able to undo it I mean US itself was a colonized nation but as they went on their education system they made their education which is reflection based. Sometimes a lot of people in Pakistan have this wrong impression that maybe the US education system is not rigorous and maybe it's not rigorous from the point of view that they don't load you up with a lot of homework but they load you up with a lot they load you up with a lot of way to come to independent decision. So to me education is only education if it gives me the etiquette of obtaining facts obtaining multiple threads of facts being able to experiment with them being able to to think about them to reflect on them and then come up with an idea I always like to give an example that suppose if education was just regurgitation of facts if the apple fell from the from the tree Newton would have said well that's how it all this is. It is his capability to reflect which gave birth to the concept of gravity likewise Archimedes going into a bathtub if you were to just not have the habit of reflection you would always just say yeah that's how it is you go in a bathtub and water is displaced it was only his capability to reflect on it that he could he was able to solve. So education is about critical thinking education is fundamentally has to be about critical thinking about giving kids and adults whoever is getting that education the etiquette for authentication and verification of facts the capability to reflect on them and create new set of knowledge minus that education is not education it is basically the same as going to a library and just getting or going to a chat gpt platform and getting a set of facts getting a set of facts and knowing what to do with them are two different things and until an endless education goes back what is the socratic way of teaching the father of education as we know today only taught kids how to ask good questions and in our way of teaching today we teach kids how to answer questions not to have new answers and so that's an important part. Absolutely we talk about critical thinking and reflections obviously important to critically analyze societies as well when we talk about societies in general in developing worlds female literacy rates tend to be you know they're pretty abysmal as compared to you know their bell count. What what roles can technology play in trying to make sure that they can bridge the gap as far as female education is concerned you mentioned high school dropout rates in Pakistan and elsewhere as well and you know we ranked the second worst as far as that is concerned what about female illiteracy and women's inability to actually get access to quality education how can technology aid in that regard? You know surprisingly in Pakistan you see a lot more women in universities and colleges now and there there is a renewed focus on making sure women are educated but there may also be a policy by the way Hamza because a lot of times you know in my work in Africa I realized that as outside donors we focus so much on women education that we forget about local law so for example in Africa and and I'm not trivializing the thing will come back to the real issue of female literacy and why it is important for empowerment but you know sometimes a little isolated pockets of problems exist in the following way. In African nations and some African nations there is a bright man so men and young kids able-bodied young kids write about when they hit puberty they are pulled out to work on the fields lot more than women because women with a some degree or you know maybe even high school will fetch better bride money so her brothers can get better brides right so the systems work in reverse and likewise in Pakistan I see the problem that girls go to colleges or schools simply to get better brishdas honestly that is sometimes and you will see a lot of girls do medical college you will see a lot of girls go through engineering colleges you will see them go through so many different fields but you don't see them reflected in the same way as they are in colleges in the workplace primarily because the moment they get married they essentially lose interest in using that knowledge and because in Pakistan college education is subsidized by the government I see that as a huge disservice to the nation that we take public money and invest it on individuals who do not wish to be part of the economy so there has to be a way in policy making to enforce participation in workforce in the same numbers as we see in colleges and universities at least for publicly funded programs rest you and I cannot make the social change that being said the main problem still remains for women empowerment in neighboring nations and in villages where women are almost forbidden to to go to college in Afghanistan as we speak women are not allowed to work women yes the latest regime I mean when you talk about the Taliban they have a very very you know ambivalent attitude towards women going to school so that's again a challenge even that is coming at the official level yes and the sad part is that as Pakistan's economy continues not to do that well people have started even quoting Afghanistan as a nation that is seem to be doing better than Pakistan we emulate success so a lot of people do say regressive things about women education and quote Taliban as an example so you know some of the negative impact of woke movement in Pakistan have been that they've worked for disadvantage of women empowerment as opposed to true empowerment which we felt a few years ago maybe we were headed that way so and you cannot take 50% of the population and not keep them educated but what type of education that is important if it is education to get a job for boys and to get hand in marriage for women then we're focusing on the wrong end of the problem so that to me also remains a problem for at least Pakistan and some other South Asian countries nations that have overcome that problem now that those are the ones that we should emulate when you see countries like China that have actually moved the poverty needle measurably measurably in just two decades 200 million people in two decades that's a lot of people you do see that those are nations that do not discriminate that do not and I cannot say that China was any less misogynistic in the 40s and they have overcome all there and it was a very patriarchial society and yet they have overcome poverty only after overcoming these attitudes towards women and towards patriarchial systems so if we have to emulate we should look at these examples and make sure that women when they do get educated they're also as much a part of the economic milieu as they are of the education system absolutely that's a lot of faith thank you so much for joining on the show thank you so that's all that we have from Islamabad today on things like Hawaii a very enlightening discussion that we have at this point in time for further updates you can follow us on our social media pages until next time take care