Corruption 101: Curriculum Revision for Pakistani Higher Education Institutions
By
Dr. Fayyaz Minhas
(Notice to the reader: Parts of this article are satirical in nature)
The moral code laid down for us states that we are a nation who, when we see an evil, are required to stop it with our hands or our words or, if these fail to do the trick, make ourselves believe in our hearts of it being an evil so that we do not start liking it. Looking around, or under the carpet if you are curious, reveals that we are not implementing this value system either deliberately or by inaction. I have often wondered where does corruption come from? How does it get to grow and prosper and get transferred from one generation to another? This is particularly surprising to me as I have, in my years working with DNA sequences, never found genes that are scientifically proven to be responsible for the genetic transfer of deceit or corruption from ancestors to offspring. These monstrous bundles of cuteness we call Children are innocent. How and when do they learn to grow up to be corrupt without any formal education on the subject? It is even more surprising because the subject matter taught in our schools contains hardly any notion of how to be corrupt. Teachers, for the most part, teach us to be gentlemen and ladies and expect us to maintain a high standard of discipline, truthfulness, honor, dignity, uprightedness and faith. At least those were some of the qualities my school evaluated on in addition to academic grades. Children are reprimanded for lying, cheating in exams, for stealing, for hiding the truth, for soiling their uniform, writing love letters, stealing library books*, etc. Our schools and universities even issue "Character Certificates" to whom and whosoever it may concern proudly attesting the high moral standards of almost everyone who holds any office in Pakistan. If these certificates were true and the intellectual output of our spiritual parents was what is stated on paper, then we would not have any bribery, thievery, manipulation or other vices in our society. There wouldn't be any need of audits or tax collectors. The cases of land ownership that go pending for generations in our legal system would be decided overnight. Our police would just be there to watch over and provide meals to people who turn themselves in after committing an honor killing. There wouldn't be ghost schools or electrical "kundas". People would be more accepting of other religions and wouldn't use a verse in their scripture to nail their neighbor to the cross to occupy his land. Pakistani researchers would be doing top notch research without any need of Dr. Hoodbhoy writing boring articles titled "Enough PhD's, thank you!" and sounding like a broken record. There wouldn't be any child kidnappings or stolen body organs. Swiss banks would be dry. Our alcoholics, on the way back from the bar, would go and get themselves whipped not to satisfy their kinks but their conscience. Our military wouldn't need to regularly rescue our nation from the edge of a precipice and, of course, our media would have nothing to question! No province or parts of the same province would complain of being treated unjustly and we may still have some road signs in Bengali. But I have not seen these. There must be something wrong.
If all you have is a hammer then everything looks like a nail. Being an academic with some experience in curriculum design, I feel that whatever the underlying problem is with us -- it can be solved by education. Our institutions have been inculcating moralities in their students both directly and indirectly. Direct approaches include courses such as Professional, medical or engineering ethics in our higher education institutions. Indirect methods include penalizing students for immoral behavior, negative grading of copied assignments, etc. However, these "soft" techniques have had little success. I am of the opinion, and I believe that others would agree too, that moral training in schools actually has an undesired effect that students who take these lessons too seriously become too "qanooni" or "by the book" or unrealistic and then suffer at the hands of others in our society. It is commonly seen that such righteous or stalwart (read foolish!) people end up bitter and lonely with few "salams" given to them. They may end up retiring to a small house that may or may not own. They are mighty proud but aren't much liked by those around them. Our Pak and pure society spits such people out like one does when he or she accidentally eats a piece of paper sticking to candy. Parveen Shakir says in her poem "Misfit" that most of our offices require as a precondition for appointment that we resign our soul and conscience. People who oppose on principle are cast aside, put behind bars or they may go missing altogether. All this potential is wasted. This calls for a revision of our curriculum to make it more inline with our societal requirements and to improve our human resource potential by improving its effectiveness and performance in life as it is lived here.
I propose that we replace the outdated ethics and morality course in our curriculum and excise out such components from other courses as well with more hardcore methods given in this article. I do not claim that the proposal made in this article can solve each and every problem we have but I do feel that it would go a long way in addressing some of these. My proposal is to introduce a set of LIFE courses in our higher education institutions. The objective of these courses is to enable our youth to survive, thrive and carry on with our moral legacy that we have inherited from our great forefathers.
A break down of LIFE courses is given at the end of this paragraph. During bachelors, students will be required to take two courses per semester from this set. I am quite confident that such skills, if taught correctly, will significantly improve the earning potential of our graduates.
Year-1
LIFE101: Fundamentals of Corruption: Aims to introduce how to be corrupt and how to slow poison the conscience. This course should preferably be taught by an experience corrupt person.
LIFE102: Basics of Hypocrisy:The only clear thing about this course is its title. It's aim is to introduce how to say what we do not mean or plan to do.
LIFE103: Information Manipulation: Aims to introduce information hiding from others and preventing transparency in organizations. Examples can include hiding labor laws, service rules, or rights from future employers or how to lie to your boss.
LIFE104: Politics: No description needed. A moron can do this.
Year-2
LIFE201: Legal Corruption: I must admit that the title of this course does not say what the course is about. It does not talk about corruption in our legal system as that is against the law. Instead this course aims to introduce how to be corrupt without violating any laws.
LIFE202: Managerial Manipulation: This is a course for future bosses. It aims to introduce how can one manipulate and exploit his or her employees. It will also focus on how to use official positions for personal gains -- from employing office sweepers and drivers at home to submitting project proposals that do not given the country anything but guarantee an extension of service. It can also involve things like how not to delegate and take credit for everything even if it has been done by someone else.
LIFE203: Exploitation Patterns: This is a study of existing patterns of exploitation of vulnerabilities in both systems and people.
LIFE204: Advanced Politics and Lotacracy: Again, no description needed. Just needs an imbecile.
Year-3
LIFE301: Money Laundering: How to ensure that your kids are billionaires before they can count to 10 -- not that they need to count at all!
LIFE302: Bribery and kinship: How to make personal connections and money to work for you! How to benefit your family by getting them jobs without regard to merit or get one for yourself.
LIFE401: Interpersonal skills for future corruptors: Teaches personal communication skills so you know people who matter if you could not become one yourself. Special emphasis on "TC" and bottom-kissing.
LIFE420: Tax and Audit Evasion: How to exploit loopholes in the tax and monetary systems. Example applications include how to get people to pay more than they should. How to double or even triple tax? How to force leasees or consumers to pay your taxes for you.
Year-4
LIFE430: State Corruption: How to maintain our state corruption culture. How to spend state exchequer for personal gains. Examples include how to sell state provided X-ray films to private X-ray machine operators in black or getting funds for a project that the country cannot pay for and may not require just to further your own service.
LIFE440: Publishing and Research in Corruption: Specialized towards research paper publishing. How to write good research articles that are not captured as plagiarized articles or how to form citation rings or force authors of a paper you review to cite your papers and other tricks of the trade.
LIFE450: Teaching methodologies for corruption: Preparing teachers who can teach corruption -- both directly by lessons and by personal example.
LIFE495: Domestic Corruption: How to lie to your spouse and exploit him or her or each other's families. How to ask for dowry and how to keep a smiling face to Khala Sosan whom everyone despises.
LIFE666: Thesis Research in Corruption or Internship
Examination and Grading Criterion for LIFE courses and Certification
The students will be required to pass these courses in a very competitive exam. However, only those students will deserve an A who pass without appearing in the exam by using their knowledge of the skills taught in these courses.
Each course should include assignments and quizzes. Plagiarists who are not caught should be given bonus marks.
A higher education institute should issue a calligraphic diploma of these courses to all those who pass instead of the aforementioned and meaningless "Character Certificate" in addition to a strong letter of reference for all A graders!
The author would welcome your criticism and addition or modifications in the proposed curriculum and wishes all the students good luck!
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* The write was once "caught" for allegedly writing a love letter to one of his class fellow in 7th grade. The writer denied any such activity and, to this day, stands by this statement though he did have a crush on her. Another time was when he was caught for stealing library books. He proudly admits that he first came across the opening statement of this article in an Urdu book he stole from his school library.
