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Public debate about Pakistan’s schools revolves around the same list: millions of out-of-school children, low enrollment and retention, poor teacher-to-teacher ratios, poor teaching staff and a centralized, dated curriculum. Then there is the wide gap between formal education and employment. The numbers back up that claim: In 2023, nearly three-quarters of 10-year-olds in Pakistan could not read and understand a short, age-appropriate text. The World Bank calls this learning poverty. Our reforms continue to follow the same logic, leading to curriculum reforms, more curricula, more learning outcomes, tougher tests, tougher uniformity – as if learning were a matter of inscription. This anxiety points to a deeper, largely unexplained premise: We treat the child as a blank slate on which to write. This assumption, as much as any in the National Curriculum, determines how we design classrooms, assess progress and define success.
The habits of our system rest more on cultural inheritance than formal theory. During the Enlightenment, the image of John Locke as a tabula rasa – a blank slate to be written on – was first developed. Gradually he entered the zeitgeist. Translated into school education, this became a simple transmission model: minds are containers. Teaching is full. Twentieth-century behaviorism reinforced this with drill and practice, reward and punishment, and the idea that learning is a series of conditioned responses. Layered on top of this was colonial and post-colonial social engineering, which treated academic education as a tool to standardize administratively competent urban citizens: uniform curricula, centralized testing, tightly scripted “schemes of work” and an official answer key. What began as a philosophical and administrative facility evolved into a pedagogy.
The resulting belief is not so much in infinite instability as one in the idea that with enough discipline and sacrifice, any child can be fitted for any role. From the earliest stages of schooling, students are often treated as passive recipients of knowledge, rather than individuals with distinct perspectives and capacities. While routine and discipline are important, the way they are enforced prioritizes curiosity over control. Importantly, structure is no accident. It is the theory architecture that makes the basic assumptions about what a learner is and how to learn. For example, at the university level, students are rarely allowed to chart their own paths—not able to freely add/drop courses, build interdisciplinary tracks, or adjust/adjust their learning pace based on evolving interests. The idea of education as a collaborative process is overshadowed by top-down delivery mechanisms that leave little room for dialogue or adaptation.
If the child is considered a blank slate—an empty vessel waiting to be filled—then assessment naturally becomes a measure of how fully and accurately that vessel has absorbed the prescribed material. In such a system, the goal of education shifts from arousing curiosity to assessing compliance. Thus exams, assignments, and grading rubrics are not designed to explore or promote independent thinking, but rather to conform to a fixed body of knowledge. Success in this model means aligning oneself with externally defined responses. Deviance is punished, not checked. Creativity, different interpretation or novel application are seen as risks – signs of incomplete instruction rather than deep understanding. Much of the assessment structure then reflects and reinforces the underlying belief that students must be made, not discovered.
Parents – often with the best of intentions – begin to mirror the rigidity of the system when guiding their children’s futures. In education and career decisions, their hopes are rarely tinged with malice. They are mostly driven by the desire to see their children safe, respected and stable. But often, these expectations are shaped by external pressures, ie job markets, social comparisons, etc. In this framework, ability is often treated as a disadvantage, unless it conforms to societal expectations.
I once mentored a student whose interests clearly leaned toward the humanities—he was engaged in discussions about literature and ethics, had a natural flair for writing, and an intuitive understanding of human behavior. Yet he was being pushed towards a career in medicine because it was considered more ‘safe’. We all know that this is not an uncommon phenomenon. It sounds like a plot out of a Bollywood movie – and for good reason. This is a defining characteristic of South Asian households. His parents, not unintentionally, simply did not see the arts as a viable return on their investment. What they missed was that their daughter’s strengths weren’t abstract ideas—they were measurable, visible qualities that, if allowed to grow, could form a meaningful, fulfilling path.
Crucially, students are not offered the tools to understand themselves because the system never assumed such an understanding was necessary in the first place. Anarchy is neither taught nor encouraged. Instead, students are trained to orient themselves around external metrics. There is often little room to ask: What am I good at? What kind of work excites me? What does success mean to me personally? Without the language or framework to explore these questions, students are destined to seek validation through grades, ranks, and recognition.
Over time, this absence becomes internalized. The logic of this system—that effort must yield measurable results, indicative of deviant failure—begins to shape how students perceive their own ability. They learn to equate their ability with performance, their identity with output. Those who begin to recognize the structural flaws of the system can become deeply disillusioned by the disconnect between what is taught and what really matters. Many people become skeptical of the utility of theoretical inquiry, seeing it as detached from lived experience or materially disjointed. Classrooms that once had the potential to spark curiosity have instead become places of alienation. This resignation is perhaps the deepest casualty of this system. Not only does it fail to develop capacity, it actively undermines the acquisition of knowledge as a process of empowerment and meaning-making.
The problem lies not only in what the system produces, but in what it assumes about the learner. Contemporary research makes this balance empirical: brains arrive with structure and temperament, and they grow through active construction. A system that treats students as empty — or infinitely plastic — will miss both truths. Noam Chomsky overthrew the blank slate theory in linguistics with his concept of “universal grammar”, stating that children are born with an innate capacity for language. Jean Paget’s constructivist theory exposed a similar fallacy, revealing that children actively construct knowledge, not passively absorb it—that they are not empty vessels, but engines of discovery. So, why, in the face of this overwhelming evidence, do we still design schools as if they should fill students, rather than worry them?
Based on this, personality psychology—specifically the five-factor model (commonly referred to as the Big Five) makes a compelling argument against one-size-fits-all educational paradigms. The model identifies five broad, empirically validated dimensions of human personality: openness to experience (creativity, curiosity, intellectual engagement); Conscientiousness (organization, self-discipline, goal-directed behavior); Output (sociability, assertiveness, energy level); consensus (sympathy, cooperation, social cohesion); and neuroticism (emotional sensitivity, anxiety, mood regulation).
These trait-realistically stable and partly inherited shapes how individuals process information, respond to feedback, and navigate school and life. Their predictive power spans a variety of life outcomes, from job performance and academic achievement to mental health and interpersonal relationships.
In the context of education, this has profound implications. More conscientious students can thrive in structured, rule-bound classrooms that reward diligence. In a more exploratory, inquiry-based environment another high in openness may emerge. And an introverted learner may prefer independent study. Instead of perceiving these differences as obstacles, we can treat them as tools, indicators that help create a more individualized, responsive system of education and guidance.
Some teachers are already moving in this direction. Tools such as personality tests and self-authoring programs, which ask students to reflect on their values, goals and personality traits, are being piloted at forward-thinking institutions worldwide. These approaches help students navigate both the world they live in and who they are. They offer both words and mirrors for students to better understand themselves, why they think the way they do and how their strengths are found. This self-awareness becomes especially critical during the upper secondary years, when career decisions begin to crystallize and questions of purpose and identity take center stage.
Schools and universities also stand to benefit immensely from this. These tools offer a more robust and comprehensive lens through which to understand your students—not just like test scores or CVs, but as individuals with unique quirks, motivations, and challenges. By doing so, teachers can better develop support systems, instructional strategies, and mentoring opportunities. This can lead not only to better learning outcomes, but also to a more meaningful and humane educational experience. Importantly, such approaches are not resourceful or idealistic abstractions. They are practically viable, having already been piloted in various forms around the world.
Giving students the tools is absolutely essential and, in particular, a vocabulary and framework to understand and contextualize themselves beyond mere transcripts. Rather than simply sorting students into predetermined pathways, education should empower them to chart themselves. In a society that suffers from consequences, perhaps the most radical, relevant and realistic intervention is to start with reflection.
The reviewer is a researcher and counselor at Trinity School and co-founder of Cicero Counseling, which specializes in guiding students through their academic and career journeys. He can be contacted at sarangamir 405@gmail.com
