The Pakistani football team \u2018Better Future Pakistan\u2019 from Karachi\u2019s Lyari neighbourhood won this year\u2019s Norway Cup in Oslo, Norway, in the Under-15 category. It is one of the world\u2019s largest youth football tournaments, this year featuring over 30,000 players and 2,000 teams from 35 countries worldwide, and thousands of spectators. Most participants are boys, but more and more girls\u2019 teams participate in the annual tournament that began in the early 1970s. It is indeed a colourful event, changing the atmosphere of the Norwegian capital during the summer week at the end of July and beginning of August, a couple of weeks before the schools reopen. Warm congratulations to \u2018Better Future Pakistan\u2019 for doing so well, making everyone proud, especially the large community of Pakistani-Norwegians.
\nI believe such events are very positive, especially for youth and their leaders, who meet football players from different locations and countries, different classes and ethnicities, using different languages, and so on. It is an opportunity for all to meet and make friends with youth from other places. Norway Cup is about sports, but it could have any common denominator and cause. The most important thing is not to win and do well in the matches, although that gets focus too. Yet, the most important is the exposure and fun, and the realisation of likeness in spite of differences. I hope such events will spread and be many in future, around sports or other themes.
\nI remember some time ago, in the 1980s, when I worked in East Africa, a Kenyan team from a shanty town neighbourhood in Nairobi became the winner of a main category in Norway Cup. A Kenyan government minister who was in Scandinavia for another programme at the same time rushed over to Oslo to grace the award-winning ceremony. Imagine how proud she must have been, and how proud the youngsters and their leaders were, creating memories for life for all. Again though, the most important thing is not to win, but all the other things around the event\u2014the joy and some disappointments too when not scoring the goals one had hoped. Events like Norway Cup are informal learning arenas, in many ways better than school classes and other educational activities.
\nThat brings me to the topic of education, now as a new school year is beginning. Lucky are those children and youth who have the opportunity to go to school, even if the curriculum and content are not always right. In Pakistan, many children still do not have the opportunity to go to school, now almost eight decades after Independence. Sometimes too, also in schools in the West, the students are not looked after as well as they should be, and some go to school for years without learning the basics of the 3Rs: reading, writing, and arithmetic. In many countries in the West, one-fifth or up to one-third of the students fail in basic tests at the end of primary school, and they will have major difficulties being admitted into further secondary education and getting a job. We should note that in our time, education and paper qualifications have become necessary to do well in life\u2014even if it is usually the school, not the child, that has failed when a student doesn\u2019t learn the basics. Special education competence is necessary in all schools, and much of the competence is common sense and the ability to observe by the teachers, and being concerned about each student, even in big classes with high demands on the teachers.
\nIn Pakistan, an international NGO called \u2018Right to Play\u2019 has worked for about fifteen years, first mainly for Afghan refugees and girls. It focuses on sports and play and things that can take away thoughts and worries about everyday issues and difficulties, and refugee children, poor children, and other girls and boys have many worries. Learning to cooperate and respect everyone is central in RTP\u2019s work\u2014and of all schools.
\nLet me repeat today something I have drawn attention to in some earlier articles, namely that schools and educational facilities should first of all help build students\u2019 self-respect and feeling confident and satisfied in their own skin. Moral education is more important than scoring high in tests and exams, and respecting oneself and others\u2014things that children know when listening to the \u2018inner voice\u2019 and conscience. I fail to understand why we often forget this in our schools; we seem to overlook the pedagogical foundations of learning, namely that the students should feel good about themselves and the people around them. From the right environment, we can grow and enjoy the schoolwork and the learning processes. A student who has some special social or learning issues will then also be willing to talk with the teacher about such things, and the teacher will also have a better chance to see such issues in students who need special help.
\nThe youth in Norway Cup and RTP perform well in their efforts in sports and play because they enjoy what they are doing, and when they feel confident, they are also able to enjoy meeting other youth and leaders, and including others in their own groups. This is important everywhere and at all times. It also provides opportunities to learn other things, including the curriculum and content that is less fun to learn.
\nI have touched upon it before, but it needs to be addressed more deeply in future, namely that we must reduce the curriculum and content in schools, especially at secondary level, and also reduce the number of lessons that students must attend. It doesn\u2019t give the results it should, many dislike the situation, and it is very costly due to teachers\u2019 salaries and more. In future, schools should, to a large extent, be places where students can work individually and in groups, with teachers as advisers rather than traditional classroom teachers and lecturers. Also, in future, much of the learning can be via the Internet and \u2018old-fashioned\u2019 books with exercises, including correspondence elements. The teachers should be advisers and help the students in their work, and encouragement should be given to students to help each other. For example, if one student is particularly good in some math content, he or she could help another one who has difficulties with it. In today\u2019s schools, we seem to emphasise the teacher\u2019s lecturing more than the student\u2019s actual learning. After all, knowledge is individual, and it is what the student learns that counts.
\nI hope that researchers in pedagogy, sociology, philosophy and financing of education, teachers and students at teacher training colleges, and parents and ordinary school teachers, will take up the main issues I have mentioned, and other issues, with emphasis on moral education and learning through exposure and play, so that we can move towards new concepts of education, schooling and learning. The current system is outdated\u2014yes, much of it hundreds of years old. As a matter of fact, the moral education issues were given more attention before, but not always in the democratic, open-minded and tolerant forms that we want in today\u2019s world and for the future. But for the time being, now at the beginning of a new school year, we should make the best out of the system we have, and we should appreciate that we are lucky if our children can indeed go to school and that they are happy at school.+<\/p>\n
The writer is a senior Norwegian social scientist with experience from university, diplomacy and development aid. He can be reached at atlehetland@yahoo.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Pakistani football team \u2018Better Future Pakistan\u2019 from Karachi\u2019s Lyari neighbourhood won this year\u2019s Norway Cup in Oslo, Norway, in the Under-15 category. It is one of the world\u2019s largest youth football tournaments, this year featuring over 30,000 players and 2,000 teams from 35 countries worldwide, and thousands of spectators. Most participants are boys, but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-495530","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-article"},"yoast_head":"\n