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ublic debate about Pakistan’s schools predictably circles around the same list: the millions of out-of-school children, low enrolment and retention, poor teacher-student ratios, underqualified staff and a centralised, dated curriculum. Then there is the widening gap between formal education and employability. The numbers bear out this assertion: in 2023, roughly three-quarters of 10-year-olds in Pakistan could not read and understand a short, age-appropriate text. World Bank calls this learning poverty. Our fixes continue to follow the same logic, generating more curriculum reform, more syllabus, more learning outcomes, tighter exams, stricter uniformity—as if learning were a matter of inscription. That reflex points to a deeper, largely unexamined premise: we treat the child as a blank slate to be written upon. This assumption, as much as any national curriculum, determines how we design classrooms, assess progress and define success.
The habits of our system rest on a cultural inheritance more than a formal doctrine. In the Enlightenment era, John Locke’s image of the individual as tabula rasa—a blank slate to be written on— first became formulated. Slowly it made its way into the zeitgeist. In translation to schooling, this became a simple transmission model: minds are containers; teaching is filling. Twentieth Century behaviourism reinforced this with drill-and-practice, reward and punishment and the idea that learning is a series of conditioned responses. Layered onto this was colonial and post-colonial social engineering, which treated schooling as an instrument for standardising subjects into administratively legible citizens: uniform syllabi, centralised testing, tightly scripted “schemes of work” and a single official answer key. What began as philosophical and administrative convenience ossified into a pedagogy.
The resultant belief is not one in limitless malleability so much as one in the idea that with enough discipline and sacrifice, any child can be fitted to any role. From the earliest stages of schooling, students are often treated as passive recipients of knowledge, not as individuals with distinct perspectives and potentials. While routine and discipline are important, the way these are enforced tends to prioritise control over curiosity. Crucially, the structure is not an accident; it is the visible architecture of the underlying presumption about what a learner is and how learning happens. At the university level, for instance, students are rarely allowed to chart their own paths—unable to add/ drop courses freely, build interdisciplinary tracks, or adjust/ adapt their learning trajectory 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 adaptability.
If the child is presumed to be a blank slate — an empty vessel waiting to be filled — then evaluation naturally becomes a measure of how completely and accurately that vessel has absorbed the prescribed content. In such a system, the purpose of education shifts from awakening curiosity to evaluating compliance. Examinations, assignments and grading rubrics are thus not designed to cultivate exploration or independent thought but to test conformity to a fixed body of knowledge. Success, in this model, means aligning oneself with externally defined answers; deviation is punished, not probed. Creativity, divergent interpretation or novel application are viewed as risks — signs of incomplete instruction rather than deeper understanding. The very structure of evaluation, then, reveals and reinforces the foundational belief that students must be made, not discovered.
Parents — often with the best intentions — begin to mirror the system’s rigidity when guiding their children’s futures. In education and career decisions, their hopes are rarely rooted in malice; they stem mostly from a desire to see their children secure, respected and stable. But too often, these hopes get shaped by external pressures, i.e., job markets, social comparisons, etc. In this framework, aptitude is often treated as an inconvenience, unless it aligns with social expectations.
I once counselled a student whose interests clearly leaned toward the humanities—she lit up in discussions about literature and ethics, had a natural flair for writing and possessed an intuitive understanding of human behaviour. Yet she was being pushed toward a career in medicine simply because it was perceived as more ‘secure.’ We all know this isn’t a rare phenomenon; it sounds like the plot to more than one Bollywood film—and for good reason. It’s a defining feature of South Asian households. Her parents, not ill-intentioned, simply didn’t see the arts as a viable return on their investment. What they missed was that their daughter’s strengths weren’t abstract ideals—they were measurable, visible qualities that, if allowed to grow, could shape a meaningful, fulfilling path.
Crucially, students are not offered the tools to understand themselves because the system never presumed that such understanding was necessary in the first place. Introspection is neither taught nor encouraged. Instead, students are trained to orient themselves around external metrics. There is often little space to ask: What am I good at? What kind of work excites me? What does success mean to me personally? Without the language or frameworks to explore these questions, students default to seeking validation through grades, ranks and recognition.
Over time, this absence becomes internalised. The system’s logic — that effort must yield measurable outcomes, that deviation signals failure — begins to shape how students understand their own worth. They learn to equate their potential with performance, their identity with output. Those who do begin to recognise the system’s structural flaws may grow deeply disillusioned by the disconnect between what is taught and what truly matters; many grow sceptical of the utility of conceptual inquiry, seeing it as detached from lived experience or materially unrewarding. Classrooms that once had the potential to ignite curiosity instead become spaces of alienation. This resignation is perhaps the most profound casualty of the system. Not only does it fail to cultivate potential, but it actively devalues the pursuit of knowledge as an act 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: minds arrive with structure and disposition and they grow through active construction. A system that treats students as blank—or infinitely plastic—will miss both truths. Noam Chomsky dismantled the blank slate theory in linguistics through his concept of “universal grammar,” asserting that children are born with an innate capacity for language. Jean Piaget’s constructivist theory similarly exposed the fallacy of passivity, revealing that children construct knowledge actively, not absorb it passively—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 students must be filled up, rather than sparked into thought?
Building on this, personality psychology—particularly the Five Factor Model (commonly referred to as the Big Five)—offers 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 (organisation, self-discipline, goal-directed behaviour); extraversion (sociability, assertiveness, energy levels); agreeableness (empathy, cooperation, social harmony); and neuroticism (emotional sensitivity, anxiety, mood regulation).
These traits—relatively stable and partly heritable—shape how individuals process information, respond to feedback and navigate school and life. Their predictive power spans a range of life outcomes, from job performance and academic success to mental health and interpersonal relationships.
In the context of education, this has profound implications. A student high in conscientiousness may thrive in structured, rule-bound classrooms that reward diligence; another high in openness may flourish in more exploratory, inquiry-based environments; and an introverted learner might prefer independent study. Rather than treating these differences as obstacles, we can treat them as tools, indicators that help shape more individualised, responsive systems of teaching and guidance.
Some educators are already moving in this direction. Tools like personality tests and self-authoring programmes, which ask students to reflect on their values, goals and personality traits, are being piloted in forward-thinking institutions globally. These approaches help students carve a path by understanding both the world they live in and who they are. They offer both a vocabulary and a mirror for students to better understand themselves, why they think and act the way they do and where their strengths lie. This self-awareness becomes especially critical during the higher secondary years, when career decisions begin to crystallise and questions of purpose and identity take centre stage.
Schools and universities, too, stand to benefit immensely from this. These tools offer a more robust and holistic lens through which to understand their students—not just as test scores or CVs, but as individuals with unique dispositions, motivations and challenges. In doing so, educators can better tailor support systems, pedagogical strategies and mentorship opportunities. This can not only lead to better learning outcomes but also to a more meaningful and humane educational experience. Importantly, such approaches are not resource-intensive or idealistic abstractions. They are practically viable, already being piloted in various forms across the world—from personality-informed advising models to reflective writing programmes that help students explore their identity and values.
It is absolutely necessary to give students the tools and, in particular, a vocabulary and framework to understand and contextualise themselves beyond just transcripts. Rather than merely sorting students into predetermined paths, education should empower them to chart their own. In a society obsessed with outcomes, perhaps the most radical, relevant and realistic intervention is to start with reflection.
The reviewer is a researcher and counsellor at the Trinity School and co-founder of Cicero Counselling, specialising in guiding students through their academic and career journeys. He can be contacted at sarangaamir405 gmail.com