The secrets of an Oxford classroom

[Music]

i have been very lucky to get educated

in this institution government college

university lahore

where my dr

was a student

and i’m

extremely privileged

to lead this institution now

another experience that i always cherish

in my

life is

to be a student at oxford university

and and many of you who

aspire to go to oxford

would like to

get a sense why oxford

why institutions like oxford like

cambridge harvard

what is it

in them

that

helps their students to stand out

not just lead their nations but lead the

world

become global leaders

and

even more important question

for you

would be

why can’t we have such institutions in

pakistan

what is it that we need to do

to actually make institutions like

government college university

an oxford like student

and and this question

never goes out of my mind

while doing out the mundane tasks

every day

and in my

thinking and in my discussion and my

experience of two years of leading this

institution

and working across the world i have been

a professor at london school of

economics

i have been a professor at seoul

national university

south korea

and

all that experience

behind me and studying in the best

institutions of the world as well

and and this question keep coming back

what is it that we need to do to make

institutions great like

university of oxford

and i think three things

i have been able to

put them together put all those thoughts

into three aspects

and if we are able to

bring about that change bring about that

reform

in which we could

actually

bring those three changes in our system

then

we will be able to i have no doubt in

saying that

we will be able to have

institutions like oxford in in pakistan

the first

and that is the most important aspect

we need to have

a system an assessment system

a teaching system

and a class

attitude class behavior of students and

teachers

in which we could have we could tap

the diverse talents of our teachers

in pakistan what we do

we set you

we put you in a single subject

and then in that single subject we

define a curriculum

and we say that you are a successful

student

only if you fulfill that

single well-defined path of talent

there is no doubt there is lots of

talent required in memorizing

some information

but that’s all

we seem to do

in our system that we

give credit to those who can actually

memorize

their subject

we need to come out of it and if we need

to

aim and aspire

to have institutions like

oxford

then we need to come up with an

assessment system

a class system

a classroom lecture system

in which we could look into diverse

talents that students have amongst

themselves

that’s first aspect

the second aspect

is

to have

a an interaction between students and

teachers

which could actually

create curiosity about the subject

and again going back to the first point

where we are looking for diversity in

your talent

the curiosity should not be just about

that very aspect which is taught on that

day

or taught in that silo subject that we

have boxed you in

but the curiosity should be about

wider aspects of the knowledge curiosity

should be about

interdisciplinary aspects and not about

single disciplines

unfortunately

in our pursuit of respect for teachers

we have elevated them so much that

students are not

at all encouraged to ask questions

and questions lead to crosstalk

we need to break that

that

ice cold

behavior

that we have in the classrooms a

dictator

dictating

the

pupils

what they need to learn and if they

learn that they are good students we

need to break that we need to bring

about interaction between students and

teachers in a manner

that curiosity could be built in that

classroom

in oxford very often despite the fact

that we had high respect for our

teachers

we were calling them with first names

and it

very often we were having coffee or

lunch over a stale sandwich

with them

and that was breaking that ice

that we should not refrain from asking

any question

in the classroom that

comes to our mind

another way we can actually break their

eyes

and that’s what since i have arrived in

in government college university

i’ve been trying to do is through

extracurricular activities

and through those extracurricular

activities

engaging students with teachers

if they go on hiking and mountaineering

uh trip

uh and and spend couple of days together

they’re more likely to engage themselves

and be interactive with each other in

the classroom as well

similarly the summit we organized of

student societies the whole purpose was

that through this interaction of

students and teachers

we

ask them to strive for excellence and

excellence can only be achieved through

an interaction of a learner

master your teacher and the

people so that’s the second aspect in

which we

aim to create curiosity in our

classrooms

third is the most important and

especially if you want to become a

nation

which would lead other nations

if you want to have the aspirations to

have institutions like oxford and from

those institutions global leaders emerge

then we need to have innovation

that the knowledge we have learned in

our classrooms knowledge we have learned

through not just our own discipline but

from

other disciplines through

extracurricular activities we should be

able to use that knowledge to innovate

to create new ideas

only then you will be able to stand out

amongst other students

and amongst other nations

we are very fortunate to have china as

one of our friendly country and through

cpec

we will be seeing a revolution in the

use of science and technology in

pakistan

but do we want only chinese coming

and doing that

applications of science and technology

in in our country

and and we not benefiting from that

revolution that is happening in science

and technology that can only happen

if our students become so competent

that they

stand shoulder to shoulder to those

chinese and be able to also

dictate

their knowledge of science and

technology only then our country would

truly benefit from this partnership with

a great country like china

so what we want to really do

is to make a 360 degree

transformation in our system

in which we

move away from this

dictator type

teacher

to

a very obedient subservient student

we want interactions between students

and and teachers

we want to move away from this system of

examinations

in which only one

type of ability

of memorizing

your your lessons is tested in fact we

want to get to a new system of

examinations in which we could tap into

diverse talents that our students have

and then put the onus on you

students

that you take that

good education

from

higher education institutions

and and be innovative in your work be

creative be be the creators of the new

ideas which could bring about positive

change in the society which could make

you the most competitive in the

competition in the global competition of

science and technology

and i have no doubt uh talented students

that i have been meeting

in government college university and

other institutions

that we have the highest

potential we as educators as the

administrators as the leaders of the

higher education have the responsibility

to identify

how we can change the system of

examinations how we can bring about

improvement in the education experiences

in the classroom out of the classroom in

the campuses

and and then put the owners back on the

students to use that

knowledge to

creativity and innovation i hope i have

made sense and i hope

this talk is useful

if we are really committed to this task

i have no doubt

that we can see that change

during my lifetime i’m not talking about

some reforms that would take

centuries

to change government college university

into an oxford style institution i’m

talking about

within my lifetime of 10 15 years of

continuous struggle with the positive

intentions to bring about those changes

and i’m

absolutely certain if

not

this generation

certainly the next generation will have

all institutes like oxford in pakistan

thank you so much

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