How schools destroy self-esteem

The school that made you feel worthless

The episode opens with Emad Bukhari describing the psychological atmosphere of his school years in a way that is blunt and specific. The dominant culture of the institution, he explains, was one of threat. Teachers and administrators created situations designed to make students feel that any misstep - any wrong move - would result in expulsion, public humiliation, or permanent damage to their futures. “Itna zyada pressure school mein develop kiya tha logon ke” (“They had developed so much pressure inside people at that school”), he says, describing how fear became the primary motivating force rather than genuine interest in learning.

What made this particularly corrosive, in Bukhari’s telling, was not the academic difficulty but the message embedded in the environment: that the student’s voice did not matter. “School ka sabse bada masla yeh tha ke aap ki koi nahi sunta” (“The biggest problem with that school was that no one listened to you”). He is careful to note this was his specific school, not a universal claim - but the pattern he describes will be familiar to many.

Muzamil draws out the detail here, pressing Bukhari on what this actually felt like from the inside. The answer is that it felt like living inside someone else’s rules, moving through a life that had been designed for you rather than by you.

A specific incident and what it revealed about institutional power

Later in the discussion, Bukhari recounts a concrete episode from his school years that illustrates how institutions protect themselves rather than students. A physical altercation involving another student led to Bukhari being sent to the principal’s office. Both sets of parents were present. The principal’s response was not to investigate what had happened but to manage the situation in a way that minimised institutional liability.

What stayed with Bukhari was not the incident itself but his mother’s reaction - seeing her distressed was, he says, something he could not bear. “Main apni maa ki aankhon mein aansu nahi dekh sakta” (“I cannot watch tears in my mother’s eyes”). The school had produced a situation where a child’s emotional energy was consumed not by learning but by navigating institutional politics and protecting his parents from distress.

The deeper point he makes is about accountability. Schools charge parents fees. The parent is the customer. But the product - the child’s development - is not what the school is actually optimising for. “Hum ko paise dekar apne hi karwa rahe hain” (“We are paying money and having it done to ourselves”) is how he frames the fundamental contradiction.

Degrees, experience requirements, and the years that disappear

Muzamil raises the question of formal education’s return on investment, and Bukhari’s response is arithmetical. A student completes school, enters university, finishes a four-year degree, and is now 25 or 26 years old. Most job markets then require two years of prior experience before they will consider a candidate for a meaningful role. The person is nearly 28 before they are genuinely employable in the conventional sense.

Bukhari’s argument is not that education is worthless - it is that the sequencing is wrong and the opportunity cost is invisible to most families. The years spent inside a system that does not teach practical skills, commercial thinking, or self-direction are years that cannot be recovered. “Agar woh bacha kar leta hai ke woh apne college mein apni kitaabon ke ilaawa kuch life mein kar leta” (“If that child manages to do something in life beyond just his college textbooks”), the outcome is dramatically different.

He is particularly pointed about what universities do not teach: how to sell something, how to understand a customer, how to create value for another person. These are the things that determine whether someone gets hired or builds something - and they are almost entirely absent from formal curricula.

What actually gets you hired

The conversation shifts to a practical question: what separates the person who finds work quickly from the person who cannot? Bukhari’s answer is direct. “Jisko value provide ki jaati hai woh 2 minute mein naukri karta hai” (“The person to whom value is provided gets a job in two minutes”). The inverse is equally true: if you cannot explain what you offer, no credential compensates for that absence.

He describes a pattern he has observed repeatedly - a young person walks into a room and, when asked what they can do, has no answer beyond listing qualifications. The businessperson on the other side of the table does not need qualifications listed. They need a problem solved. The gap between what schools train students to present and what employers or clients actually need is, in his view, one of the central failures of the system.

Muzamil pushes on this, and Bukhari extends the point to entrepreneurship. Someone who wants to start a business but cannot articulate what they are selling, to whom, and why that person should care, is not ready - regardless of how much capital they have access to.

The content economy, Pakistan’s audience, and the problem of production value

A significant portion of the conversation addresses the digital content landscape in Pakistan. Bukhari, who has been building a YouTube presence alongside his other work, describes a tension he has not fully resolved: he invests heavily in editing and production quality, but the Pakistani audience on YouTube does not consistently reward that investment. “Ek ladka coat lagao aur video laga do, lekin woh banda interesting hai” (“A guy just puts on a coat and posts a video, but that person is interesting”) - and that person outperforms someone with far higher production values.

His observation is not a complaint but a structural one. The platform rewards personality and consistency more than craft, at least in the current Pakistani market. He is honest that this creates a dilemma for him personally: he cares about the quality of what he makes, which means he makes fewer videos, which limits growth.

Muzamil notes the broader dynamic - that the first generation of Pakistani YouTubers created a space, and the second and third generations are now competing in a more crowded environment where differentiation is harder and the economics are thinner than they appear from the outside.

Shortcuts, crypto, and the psychology of fast money

By the end of the conversation, Bukhari returns to a theme that runs through the whole discussion: the Pakistani cultural appetite for shortcuts. He uses cryptocurrency as a recent example - when prices rose sharply, everyone wanted in. When they fell, the same people blamed the people who had introduced them to it. “Jab shortcut girta hai to Waqar Zaka ko galiyaan padti hain” (“When the shortcut collapses, Waqar Zaka gets the abuse”).

His point is not about crypto specifically. It is about a pattern of thinking that seeks fast returns and assigns blame externally when they do not materialise. The alternative - sustained effort, building something real over years, accepting that compounding takes time - is less exciting but more durable. “Agar aapne itne saalon ki mehnat hogi to oopar wala baitha hai woh aapko zaroor dega” (“If you have put in years of real effort, the one above is sitting there and will definitely give you your due”).

Muzamil asks about Pakistan in 2050, and Bukhari’s answer is measured. He sees genuine potential - smart people, a young population, access to information that no previous generation had. But he also sees a society that has not yet learned to convert that potential into sustained output. The young generation, he argues, is the first in Pakistan’s history with access to multiple simultaneous sources of information and the tools to act on them. That is an advantage. Whether it gets used is a choice.

His own choice - to stay in Pakistan rather than take a scholarship abroad - is framed not as sacrifice but as strategy. “Main chahta hoon ke main apna dimag apni country mein lagaon” (“I want to invest my mind in my own country”). The knowledge he has built about how things work here, he says, cannot be rebuilt from scratch somewhere else.