Lecture 6 & 7: Reading and Writing Introduction

1- Starting with Thesis Statement

Ideas that have Harmed Mankind, “Unpopular Essays”, Bertrand Russell

The misfortunes of human beings may be divided into two classes: First, those inflicted by the nonhuman environment, and, second, those

inflicted by other people. As mankind have progressed in knowledge and technique, the second class has become a continually increasing percentage of

the total in old times, famine, for example, was due to natural causes, and, although people did their best to combat it, large numbers of them died of

starvation. At the present moment large parts of the world are faced with the threat of famine, but although natural causes have contributed to the

situation, the principal causes are human. For six years the civilized nations of the world devoted all their best energies to killing each other, and they

find it difficult suddenly to switch over to keeping each other alive. Having destroyed harvests, dismantled agricultural machinery, and disorganized

shipping, they find it no easy matter to relieve the shortage of crops in one place by means of a superabundance in another, as would easily be done if

the economic system were in normal working order. As this illustration shows, it is now man that is man's worst enemy. Nature, it is true, still sees to it

that we are mortal, but with the progress in medicine it will become more and more common for people to live until they have had their fill of life. We

are supposed to wish to live forever and to look forward to the unending joys of heaven, of which, by miracle, the monotony will never grow stale. But
in fact, if you question any candid person who is no longer young, he is very likely to tell you that, having tasted life in this world, he has no wish to

begin again as a "new boy" in another. For the future, therefore, it may be taken that much the most important evils that mankind have to consider are

those which they inflict upon each other through stupidity or malevolence or both.

2- Starting with Question and Quotation

The Remaining Case for Empire, “An Era of Darkness”, Shashi Tharoor

What, then, remains of the case for the British empire in India? Alex von Tunzelmann‟s clever start to her book Indian Summer made my point

most tellingly: „In the beginning, there were two nations. One was a vast, mighty and magnificent empire, brilliantly organized and culturally unified,

which dominated a massive swath of the earth. The other was an undeveloped, semi feudal realm, riven by religious factionalism and barely able to

feed its illiterate, diseased and stinking masses. The first nation was India. The second was England.‟

The British historian Andrew Roberts rather breathtakingly claimed, given this background, that British rule „led to the modernization,

development, protection, agrarian advance, linguistic unification and ultimately the democratisation of the sub-continent.‟ We have dealt with the

suggestion that it is to Britain that India owes its political unity and democracy; we have shown the severe limitations in the British application of rule

of law in the country; we have laid bare the economic exploitation of India and the despoliation of its lands which give the lie to Roberts‟s claims of
„modernisation, development [and] agrarian advance‟; and we have dispensed with the notion that there was something benign and enlightened about

British despotism in India. (Add next paragraph)

3- Starting with Quotation and Statistics

Education and The English Languege by Shashi Tharoor

The British left India with a literacy rate of 16 per cent, and a female literacy rate of 8 per cent—only one of every twelve Indian women could

read and write in 1947. This is not exactly a stellar record, but educating the masses was not a British priority. As Will Durant points out, „When the

British came, there was, throughout India, a system of communal schools, managed by the village communities. The agents of the East India Company

destroyed these village communities, and took no steps to replace the schools; even today [1930]… they stand at only 66 per cent of their number a

hundred years ago. There are now in India 730,000 villages, and only 162,015 primary schools. Only 7 per cent of the boys and 1 per cent of the girls

receive schooling, i.e. 4 per cent of the whole. Such schools as the Government has established are not free, but exact a tuition fee which…looms large

to a family always hovering on the edge of starvation.‟

4- Starting with Example/Statistic and Question

Understanding Prosperity and Poverty, “Why Nations Fail”, Daron Acemoglu & James A. Robinson
 There are huge differences in living standards around the world. Even the poorest citizens of the United States have incomes and access to

health care, education, public services, and economic and social opportunities that are far superior to those available to the vast mass of people living in

sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and Central America. The contrast of North and South Korea, the two Nogaleses, and the United States and Mexico

reminds us that there are relatively recent phenomena. Five hundred years ago, Mexico, home to the Aztec state, was certainly richer than the polities to

the north, and the United States did not pull ahead of Mexico until the nineteenth century. The gap between the two Nogaleses is even more recent.

South and North Korea were economically, as well as socially and culturally, indistinguishable before the country was divided at the 38 th parallel after

the Second World War. Similarly, most of the huge economic differences we observe around us today emerged over the last two hundred years.

Did this all need to be so? Was it historically or geographically or culturally or ethnically predetermined that Western Europe, the United States,

and Japan would become so much richer than sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, and China over the last two hundred years or so? Was it inevitable

that the Industrial Revolution would get underway in the eighteenth century in Britain, and then spread to Western Europe and Europe‟s offshoots in

North America and Australasia? Is a counterfactual world where the Glorious Revolution and the Industrial Revolution take place in Peru, which then

colonizes Western Europe and enslaves whites, possible, or is it just a form of historical science fiction?
 To answer in fact, even to reason about these questions, we need a theory of why some nations are prosperous while others fail and are poor.

This theory needs to delineate both the factors that create and retard prosperity and their historical origins. This book has proposed such a theory.

5- Starting with Quotation and Question

On Education, “Fallen Leaves”, Will Durant

Herbert Spencer, in a pugnacious little book on education, once challenged the scholastic world with the question: “What knowledge is of most

worth?” He resented the devotion of youth‟s years to dead languages, ancient cultures, and the weary-tramping muses of eighteenth-century England;

such a training, he argued, fitted a man for nothing but an aristocratic boredom cluttered with classical quotations. Trained as an engineer, living in the

heyday of the Industrial Revolution, hearing the call of machinery for competent men, and witnessing with pleasure the rise of the middle class to

economic leadership and political influence, Spencer demanded a schooling that would prepare a man for modern life, that would ground and equip

him realistically for the problems of technology and trade.

Today our educators, who once bravely led the way toward the scientific and technical emphasis in America‟s schools, are disturbed by the

completeness of their victory, and stand in sorrow before their accomplished dream. They do not quite regret their efforts, or retract their aims; they

know a modern nation must choose between industry and vassalage, to meet the competition of an industrializing world; these things are not matters of
choice, for nations do not live in a vacuum of freedom or peace. But our conscious educators perceive that, after generations of scholastic effort, they

are failing to produce either educated men or gentlemen; that the lavish equipment of our schools has not availed to diminish political corruption,

sexual irregularity, or violent crime; that certain virtues once prominent in our forbearers seem to have lost standing with a generation skilled beyond

precedent in unmoral cleverness; and that the emphasis on science has brought no peace to the soul. These conditions are due rather to economic

changes than to pedagogical carelessness; but the educator begins to wonder whether the schools have not surrendered too completely to the charms of

the intellect, and offered too mild a resistance to the forces of disorder and decay. When Spencer asked what knowledge is of most worth, he betrayed

his secret assumption that education is the transmission of knowledge. Is it? What education is of most worth?

That education is of most worth which opens to the body and the soul, to the citizen and the state, the fullest possibilities of their harmonious

life. Three basic goods should determine education and define its goals: First, the control of life, through health, character, intelligence, and technology;

second, the enjoyment of life, through friendship, nature, literature, and art; and, third, the understanding of life, through history, science, religion, and

philosophy. Two processes constitute education and unite in it; in the one, the race transmits to the growing individual its profuse and accumulated

heritage of knowledge, techniques, morals, and art; in the other, the individual applies this inheritance to the development of his capacities and the

adornment of his life. In proportion as he absorbs this legacy he is transformed from an animal into a man, from a savage into a citizen. Perhaps, if his

digestion is good, he is transformed from a simpleton to a sage. Education is the perfecting of life — the enrichment of the individual by the heritage of
 the race. Let this vital process of transmission and absorption be interrupted for half a century, and civilization would end; our grandchildren would be

more primitive than savages.

In his essay, On Education, Will Durant asks a question that after echoing in the corridors of educational
seminaries for centuries has now taken a strange turn: “What education is of most worth?” He unites two processes in
education: the transmission of knowledge and its absorption. In the Covid world, it is the “transmission” of knowledge
— not its absorption — that bears a question mark.
(This excerpt is taken from The News article A hypo-digital solution? written by Fatima Batool)

6- Starting with Anecdote

Society and Technology, “Sociology”, John J. Machionis

Sididi Ag Inaka has never sent a text message. He has never spoken on a cell phone. And he has never logged on to the Internet. Does such a

person really exist in today‟s high-technology world? Well, how about this: Neither Inaka nor anyone in his family has ever been to a movie, watched

television, or even read a newspaper.

 Are these people visitors from another planet? Prisoners on some remote island? Not at all. They are Tuareg nomads who wander over the vast

Sahara in the western African nations of Mali and Niger. Known as the “blue men of the desert “for the flowing blue robes worn by both men and

women, the Tuareg herd camels, goats, and sheep and live in camps where the sand blows and the daytime temperature often reaches 120 degrees

Fahrenheit. Life is hard, but most Tuareg try to hold on to traditional ways. With a stern look, Inaka says, “My father was a nomad. His father was a

nomad. I am a nomad. My children will be nomads.” The Tuareg are among the world‟s poorest people. When the rains fail to come, they and their

animals are at risk of losing their lives. Perhaps some day the Tuareg people can gain some of the wealth that comes from mining uranium below the

desert across which they have traveled for centuries. But whatever their economic fate, Inaka and his people are a society set apart, with little

knowledge of the larger world and none of its advanced technology. But Inaka does not complain: “This is the life of my ancestors. This is the life that

we know.”

B – Introductions on Topics from Past Papers

I. Quotation – Gender Equality is a Myth

“How important it is for us,” asserts Maya Angelo, “to recognize and celebrate our heroes and she-roes!” Notwithstanding the fact that the role

assigned to women is more demanding than the obligations associated with men, she deserves to be appreciated as rigorously and frequently as men.
She-roes are as important for the prosperity of a society as heroes. It is sad that most societies take the achievements of women for granted. Their

unpaid labor goes unappreciated. They are supposed to work in offices and homes to make up for their biological deficiencies. Exploitation of women

is a reality across the world. However, the condition of women grows worse when the focus shifts to the third world. Pakistan, being a developing

country, needs to empower Pakistani women in a way that they could play a role in making the country prosperous. The only way to stabilize the

economy is to empower women and to maintain their empowerment through long-term plans and sustainable policies. This essay explores the status of

women, particularly Pakistani women, in a society, and discusses the grievances of the weaker-gender in a way that could lead to an all-encompassing

solution, addressing both the demoralized women and the weakened economy. It also emphasizes that women need to be empowered today so that the

gender gap could be abridged in years to come.

II. Supposition – The Alarming Situation of Global Warming

The last blind dolphin of Indus River breathes its last breath; another name goes into the long, agonizing list of extinct species. Flocks of birds

that used to take refuge in the fertile shores of River Indus are not to be seen anymore. Fear of Rachael Carton, who wrote “The Silent Spring” in 1962,

is becoming a reality. She feared a world devoid of chirping birds. Lifeless, scanty flow of Indus as well as the rising sea level is an evidence of

excessive human intervention in the ecosystem. It speaks aloud about the human insensitivity and inefficiency in assessing, preserving and controlling
the menace of global warming. Though global warming is a global issue, each country, particularly Pakistan, must understand its role and share in

creating, controlling and reversing the alarming situation. Although geographical location has been a great advantage in its strategic position in world

politics, it could also prove fatal for Pakistan in days to come if the country fails to take the changes in its climate seriously. Discussion on the

parameters and statistics of global warming, theories on global warming, behavioral changes on personal and national level, suggestions on revising

national and international policies and long-term plans on rectifying the pressing issue are included in this essay.

III. Questions – Gender-based Violence

Why is it important to empower women? Is it because they are physically weak or because they are mentally feeble? Or is it a question of

giving half of the world population the right to self-assertion? Women are not as insignificant as they are often portrayed or as weak as they are

presumed to be. Unfortunately, most of the women do not even understand that their rights are being usurped, be it on their bodies or in their inherited

properties. Sadly, many a times a female fetus is not even given the right to life, the opportunity to born, as it becomes a victim of sex-selective

abortion. It is a shame that in their lifetime, one in every three women is likely to experience physical and/or sexual violence. The situation grows
worse in developing countries like Pakistan where more than two in every three women suffer from different forms of violence. Globally, every day,

some 830 women die of preventable medical causes related to pregnancy and child-birth. The health and social workforce, across the world, comprises

of 70 percent female health care workers, yet half of women‟s contributions to global health is unpaid, some USD 3 trillion per year. Unfortunately, in

countries with a conflict zone, women are supposed to suffer more as rape and other types of sexual violence are weapons of war. Their health suffers

more in areas of displacement as the health care system gets disrupted.

Half of the world population, more than 3.5 billion women, suffers every day because it belongs to the inferior sex. A condition which is not

only unjust but also inhuman. The condition of women cannot change unless the social tags of superiority and inferiority are removed from biological

makeup of a human being. Social constructs and social roles are important in the effective running of a society, but they must not become determinants

for a person. This essays explores the development of social constructs of gender; the transformation of matriarchal societies into patriarchal societies;

the social, economic and political marginalization of women; the use of violence as a weapon to tame women; and the steps that can be taken to

improve the status of women.

IV. Statistics – Gender Equality is a Myth

 Gender, the social construct, becomes a problem when sex, the biological self, is taken as a determiner of an individual‟s value. It becomes even a

greater problem when half of the human population gets discriminated because of its biological features. Of the seven billion people who live on this

planet, more than 3.5 million are women, while some 10 million are queer, e.g., inter-sex. Man who make up half of the earth‟s inhabitants dominate

the other half only because they are born with those biological characteristics that the society hails. These biological „differences‟ lead to

„discrimination‟ which further leads to „disapproval‟ in a patriarchal society that believes „some are more equal than others‟.

In a third world country like Pakistan where 207 million people reside, gender becomes more significant than any other social status. Not only

are wealth and welfare distributed but also rights and responsibilities determined by the biological makeup. As a result, more than ten million women

and one million inter-sex people get socially and psychologically victimized by the dominant sex, not to maintain the physical abuse that most of these

have to face on daily bases. As a matter of fact, statistics shared by Tribune shows, more than two in every three women becomes a victim of physical,

sexual and domestic violence in Pakistan. More than 2/3 of the female population means some seventy million women are victimized by the male

members of their families. The condition of inter-sex community is worst as they are considered profane, filthy and queer; thus, they live as

unrecognized, unassimilated, outcast bodies that deserve all types of physical, sexual and verbal abuse.