Education must develop entrepreneurs, not just job seekers

Twenty Years Chasing the Wrong Goal

Muzamil opens the conversation by noting that education has become controversial in Pakistan, though he says it shouldn’t be. Umair is his former A-level physics instructor, now deeply embedded in education research and institutional design. “I did engineering and I did my master’s,” Umair explains. “And then quickly, teaching was my passion. I started teaching from early years. So all the way I came up to A-levels.”

But teaching alone wasn’t enough. In 2012, he pursued a certification from Oxford. In 2014, he studied instructional leadership at UMass Amherst. Then advanced education leadership from Harvard. “Meanwhile, I worked as an educational researcher,” he says. All the while, he studied how education systems actually work. He spent time in American schools, then studied the Singapore model, South Korea. The pattern was clear. “Teaching is in blood. You can never leave it.”

The Entrepreneurship Problem Pakistan Won’t Name

Muzamil mentions a conversation with someone from the Ministry of Finance, who said Pakistan’s biggest problem is simple. Kids are following their fathers’ paths, choosing careers based on what they’ve seen, not what the future needs. The answer, Umair agrees, is entrepreneurship and thinking outside the box. “The basic purpose of education is that you don’t have to learn about children today. This time is over.”

But entrepreneurship in Pakistan has a problem. “So there are two types of people in Pakistan,” Umair says. “One has a job, the other is the entrepreneur.” But many confuse having an idea with being an entrepreneur. The real issue cuts deeper. “In Pakistan, there is a solution before and there is a problem later. So now it comes to market and we think about what we’re doing. That is not start-up, that is not entrepreneurship.”

He gives an example from UMass Amherst, where any student can take a course called Project Icon. Students from different departments come together, not to build a product, but to solve an actual problem. “We open newspapers in the morning and newspapers are full of problems. So we just pick the problem and we start working on it.” That’s the difference.

Thinking Schools: Building the Alternative

Umair decided to build an alternative. In 2015, he founded Pakistan ASCD (an affiliate of the US-based Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development), which trained 60,000 teachers on modern instruction practices. But working inside existing institutions has limits. “When you’re working with an organization, with a company, they have their own policy, their vision or mission. They match you or don’t do it.”

So he and his team spent three years planning a school network. They received a license for Thinking School International. Now they operate two campuses in Islamabad, one in Peshawar, and six in Balochistan, with 133 planned across Pakistan.

“Thinking school is meant for developing the students as entrepreneurs,” he explains. The curriculum includes media studies from grade one. “Our aim is that when a child reaches grade eight, by grade eight, when he reaches his e-commerce system launch his product, sale and start dealing with real world economy.” Most schools produce job seekers, then suddenly at age 16, expect them to become entrepreneurs. That’s backwards.

The Real Curriculum Problem

The curriculum debate in Pakistan is heated, particularly around the single national curriculum. “The word ‘Single’ is the problem,” Umair says. “When the state performs its curriculum, it is open. It is not open. Our agenda is our state’s mission and vision.”

His concern isn’t ideological. It’s practical. Most people confuse curriculum with textbooks. “Curriculum is a document. Curriculum sets the lines and the pathways for a nation for 40 years, for 50 years.” These children will carry that curriculum’s assumptions into their adult lives. A diverse society learns from different perspectives. A uniform curriculum can close those doors.

He points to a paradox in Pakistan’s private schools. “I have seen a private school chain, Pakistan’s biggest, they have foreign authors, outside publishers. Only one book, Islamiyat, which is local. And the children hate it. Because if your curriculum can’t engage, if your book can’t engage, there is no benefit.” Policy matters less than implementation, less than teacher quality, less than whether the content actually connects.

The Colonial Inheritance Nobody Wants to Fix

Vocational training in Pakistan carries stigma. “This colonial mindset is the problem. India, Bangladesh, the same problem.” Umair notes that Singapore broke this pattern. It was also a colony. “But they brought a revolutionary change at the school level.”

In Pakistan, basic services suffer because nobody studies them. “We talk about higher education, we make PhDs. But in basic things, unfortunately, it is not our people. The electrician, the plumber, these are all quacks.” There’s no quality standard, no certification, no respect for the craft. Yet these people shape daily life more than most engineers do.

He gives an example from his wife’s photography business. Good photography isn’t magic. It’s architecture, basic principles, discipline. A construction worker who understands line and proportion builds differently than one who doesn’t. “It’s not much educated. It’s a very healthy worker. He is so smart that he says, if I have to put bricks, then I will be afraid of line. It will not be ours, it will not be our face.”

What Schools Should Actually Teach

Umair makes a plea that goes beyond curriculum. “Children should understand policy making, understanding, in our situation.” Most Pakistanis don’t understand how bills become law, how committees work. Financial literacy is missing. Home economics, accounting, tax policy. “Everyone votes. No one knows what the regime. No one knows how the law making.”

People message him saying they have $300,000 to save and don’t know where to invest. Their only idea is land. “That’s the extent of, and that’s unfortunately the reason why our productivity crisis is a crisis. I will say the money crisis is not so much. The productivity crisis is all making money.”

The Future Remains Unclear

By the episode’s end, the conversation turns to technology and post-COVID learning. Umair is cautious. Schools rushed to online learning without understanding it. “Technology was a way to use. You have social media apps, you have to study tools. But when you use the tools? Google Hangout used to use or zoom or …” Most schools tried different platforms, never settled on why.

His larger point holds. “The problem is not with the technology. The problem is with the ethics and education, which is the norms.” That’s a harder problem to solve than buying smart boards.