FAISALABAD: President of Faisalabad Chamber of Commerce and Industry (FCCI) Dr Khurram Tariq has said stakeholders should focus on producing better, passionate and more responsive teachers who could inculcate critical thinking in students.
Dr Nazia Parveen and Dr Sabahat of the Faisalabad campus of University of Education visited the FCCI offices and discussed education-related matters with Dr Tariq.
Dr Parveen is currently running a six-month training course under a US-funded project to enhance the creativity of students.
During the meeting, the FCCI president underlined the importance of quality teachers who could equip students with the capacity to resolve emerging issues by offering out-of-box solutions.
He said that Saudi Arabia is going to be digitalised soon and it needs 20,000 IT experts. “We must avail this opportunity and produce high-calibre experts within the next ten years,” he said.
If sufficient numbers of such experts are produced, many of them could be absorbed within the country while the highly talented ones could launch their own companies. The remaining ones could be exported to Saudi Arabia and other markets abroad.
Pakistan could earn an additional $10 billion from the remittances of experts working abroad. “We need teachers who could have deep footprints on our society and play a major role in producing productive youths capable of serving in the fast-changing IT world,” said Dr Tariq.
Giving an example, he said a 200-page textbook for students requires a 3,000-page resource book for teachers. The objective of a guide book is to produce stereotypical students while the resource book promotes critical thinking among students.
He expressed the desire to meet the students who complete the six-month course in order to assess their creativity as compared to other students.
Dr Parveen said that a meeting of the alumni is scheduled to be held on May 21 and hoped that industrialists would participate in the event to meet their future human resource requirements.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2023