The Bestest: School, Student, Advice, Interview Part 1

KGS crest

Good is only ok. It is good, however, to be better, and even better to be best, but bestest by far beats the rest. In a world in which hyperbole’s crown adorns anything from pet food to political figures, it’s hard to find trustworthy sources of what stands atop almost anything. Today, I have a couple of nominees. One is a school and the other a person. In the first part of a multipart interview with Eman, you will hear about one of the best schools in the world. It might surprise you to know where it is. But after you have read the words and insights of  Eman, you should be convinced that he is among those few who see that nuanced views of country and education.

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Can you tell us a bit about your background? Where did you grow up and where did you go to school?

I was born and raised in Karachi, Pakistan, the world’s fourth largest city. It has Pakistan’s wealthiest people and, like any mega-metropolis, Pakistan’s poorest. You can, in a very short drive, go past some of the most amazing homes you have ever seen and, one turn later, see one of the world’s poorest slums.

These communities exist side-by-side and, frequently, in a manner in which one services the other. In general, Pakistan is what Anthropologists describe as rating “high” on the Power-distance scale i.e. there is a huge difference between the “top” man and the “bottom” man. Whereas, for instance, the US is a low power-distance place (or it used to be), where the top and bottom man are not too different insofar as their standing in society. But I think we all know that’s changing, or has already changed.

Karachi has taken a significant turn for the worse over the last two decades (my lifetime basically) due to civil strife-- a turf war between a few major political parties jostling for control over the city’s resources. The different political parties usually represent the different ethnic groups in Karachi. So, in a nutshell, imagine New York City a couple hundred years ago. Imagine the Irish immigrants had a party with a mafia-like wing, and a neighborhood that was purely Irish, along with every other ethnic group (The Italians or German-origin Americans). Over time, thanks to a somewhat “uniform” public schooling-system, the needs of modern business (to hire whoever can do the work correctly, regardless of ethnic-origin) and the Rule of Law you can overcome those differences to a great extent. And that is true in a lot of places in Karachi, too. Any decent employer would do his/her best to ensure that these differences are overcome.

I’m also not suggesting that Karachi is culturally backward. It has certain cultural strengths that would greatly benefit any corner of the Western world, but insofar as urban development, establishing the rule of law, tackling crime and disorder, building functioning public institutions, In these terms, Karachi can and should grow by looking at other global role-models where the challenges associated with big cities have been addressed successfully.

Having said all this, I have perhaps made Karachi sound fairly awful.  Let me also make sure I balance the picture here. The creative potential in this city would, as anyone who has visited will strongly affirm, parallels or surpasses any city anywhere in the world. I am talking, obviously, about the creative potential of the people here.

Karachi

Karachi is a coastal city, and I grew up next to the beach (YES, readers, Pakistan is not a desert). There was recently a feature that ran in Dawn (Pakistan’s biggest English paper), showing what Karachi was like thirty-to-forty years ago. Before the global politics (Afghanistan, the Soviets, 2 million refugees moving to Pakistan, etc.), Karachi was a major destination on the “hippie trail”. In fact, an (American) Alum from my university that I met told me that she celebrated her 19th birthday by travelling to Karachi, and loved it.

About me: I have spent my entire life in Karachi before I came to the US to attend a highly selective research university. I attended the same school, Karachi Grammar School (KGS), all the way from the first grade through my A-levels. For those who are not familiar with A Levels, these exams have long been used in the British education system or selection to the most prestigious schools like Oxford and Cambridge.

Can you describe your school for those who may not know it? It is regarded as one of the best in Pakistan and is known to top universities around the world.

Karachi Grammar School, usually just called “KGS” (and students who attend are called “Grammarians”) is a private school that was set up by the British during their colonization of the Subcontinent, to instill some good ol’ Western education and, I suspect, English manners into the local population. I believe it’s one of the oldest schools in Asia. Like a lot of old and traditional English based schools, KGS has four houses named after some illustrious English colonialists  (For those Harry Potter fans out there, you will get the point.). If you research most of these guys, you find out that their greatest achievements were things like “subduing the tribes of the Sindh”.

But the truth is that when you attend KGS you don’t really experience that historical complexity. It has, in many ways, been localized. Our teachers are Pakistani and most of the students are Pakistani.

                                                         KGS student wins world debate championship

The other thing that the readers should know is that a private school in Pakistan isn’t exactly the same as a private school in America. The KGS school fee makes the education affordable to many people, not simply “elites”. The crucial point here is that Pakistan’s public schooling system is all but non-existent. So anyone who values education, and can afford to pay for a good one, will try to have their children in a school that is “private”. But readers shouldn’t imagine illustrious campuses spread out over acreage here. It’s also true that the “rich and powerful” do their best to send their children to the best schools, but there are plenty of people who come into KGS from lesser well-known schools, attend for only the last two years, and use KGS as a platform to enhance their own opportunities to study at elite universities internationally. Many of the students who did really well in my high school graduating class were not the stereotype of the rich Grammarian. They attend the best US universities thanks to a great deal of need-based assistance.

The other sad and noteworthy point that I want to make is that KGS student admissions to the top schools in America fell in half the very next year after 9/11. Students who had worked their whole lives with the justifiable expectation to make it to a top University were simply rejected. We covered this in my school magazine. These are all the unknown costs of the so-called “War on Terror” that never make it to the US media. It’s very sad and I am not sure what the thinking is in Admissions offices between that. If you can share some of your insights here, that would be very interesting. Why would 9/11 affect KGS students’ acceptance rates so dramatically?

For many people in the West, Eman’s words will likely come as a surprise. Most do not know anything about KGS. The students from this school combine exceptional academic preparation with a cultural awareness that few of us have. They are skilled in living in multiple languages—not just literal languages. They have great understanding of what the world is like in the US, The UK, and other places around the globe. Unfortunately, this fluency is often in short supply by most who live in the US.

Our media depicts Pakistan is stark terms, mostly in the negative. The negative reaction of US schools after 9/11 to KGS students underscores the ways in which an entire country can be painted in broad bush strokes out of fear and misunderstanding. It is ironic and sad that those students who are mostly likely to promote positive change were denied the opportunity to study at tip schools in the US.

Eman’s words demonstrate that issues have multiple approaches. He understands the need for complexity and subtle distinctions when it comes to politics, education, and life. In this he is far wiser than most students I have met over many years in education.

But the words here are just a warm up for the insights he will share in the upcoming posts on the topics of adjusting to a new culture while immersing himself in the liberal arts tradition of critical thinking.