will
be at a great disadvantage compared to his or her competitors.
For Pakistanis this is an even more crucial skill as
they prepare to enter workforces that involve communication
with internationally-based counterparts and colleagues,
presenting papers at international forums and conferences,
and reporting in written format (e-mails, memos, papers,
etc.) to heads of corporations that may be situated
in English-speaking countries
Students need to develop critical
thinking abilities – the ability to “solve
problems, examine ideas carefully… (and) the ability
to incorporate and synthesize information”, as
Brenda Sully puts it in her excellent Web article on
Writing Across the Curriculum. Whether a student is
strong in mathematics, biology, languages, or history,
critical thinking is key to the student being able to
be an active, rather than passive, participant in his
or her own education. We all agree that in Pakistan
rote learning, or the memorization of myriad facts and
dates and numbers, is the way to produce a generation
of parrots who cannot think beyond what is taught to
them in the textbooks. What Pakistani educators need
to do is nurture and develop critical thinking skills
in their students in order to break out of the trap
of rote memorization, which is about as useful to students
these days as learning Egyptian hieroglyphics.
Critical thinking skills allow
students to take what they have learned and go several
steps further with that information, manipulating it
in their minds and applying it to situations that they
will encounter in further education and later on in
their careers. Writing is just such a way to
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