Educational institutions: need stressed for enhancement of extra curricular activities

Speakers at a meeting of Shura Hamdard Karachi chapter stressed upon the need of enhancement of extra curriculum activities in educational institutions and importance of students' unions in obtaining future leadership.
The meeting was held on Thursday on the subject of "Role of higher education in producing the leadership", presided over by former diplomat, Qutubuddin Aziz at a local hotel. Mrs Sadia Rashid, President, Shura Hamdard Pakistan was also present at the meeting.
Speaking on the occasion Professor Dr Pirzada Qasim, Vice Chancellor, University of Karachi said that failure of Pakistan in some fields was not the failure of Pakistani public, but of leadership. For the success of political leadership it was necessary that the leaders should be experienced, prudent and highly qualified with impressive personality.
They must have knowledge and ability to understand the problems of changing world and use of modern methods to solve those problems. Positive mindset and power of decision-making and resource planning were also needed for durable and sustainable progress of the country, he added.
"Our people understand what the definition and picture of democracy is painted by our leaders. Therefore people take democracy only as an advancement of political process while democracy is a system of whole social process", he said adding that previous governments did not keep education in their priorities, which resulted in backwardness of education in the country.
Stressing on extra curriculum activities he said there was a dearth of those activities in students, which was very necessary to produce future leaders in every walks of life.
If there was no students unions, there must be some alternative, he said adding that we should encourage interaction among students and teachers, between student and teacher not only in class but outside the class and among students and students which was very essential, he said and added: "These method can produce leaders we direly need as required leadership can be produced through this process only".
This process was being adopted in some places and good results are being surfaced, he said. Haq Nawaz Akhtar said that existence of students' unions in educational institutions was useful, but they should be restricted to the academic atmosphere and their respective institutions as some students unions became subsidiary to the political parties.
Syed Sabir Ali Jaffery, M.A. Sabzwari, Colonel Mukhtar Ahmed Butt (Retd), Mohammed Saeed Siddiqui, Dr Mirza Arshad Au Beg, Sarshar Siddiqui, Islamuddin Agha, Khalid Ikramullah Khan, Professor Afaque Siddiqui and Mrs Maryam Farooqui also spoke.-PR