Pakistan has to export a lot of uneducated people, many of whom have become infected with the most barbaric reactionary ideas.
Interpretation
This quote highlights the challenges faced by Pakistan regarding education and the consequences of a poorly educated populace.
Christopher Hitchens' quote reflects on the impact that a lack of education can have on society, particularly in Pakistan. He suggests that the export of uneducated individuals not only hampers personal and national development, but can also lead to the proliferation of dangerous and reactionary ideologies. This observation serves as a critique of systemic educational failures and warns about the broader implications for social stability and progress.
In practice
This quote can be used in a discussion about the importance of education in national development.
In a public dialogue with Salman in London he [Edward Said] had once described the Palestinian plight as one where his people, expelled and dispossessed by Jewish victors, were in the unique historical position of being 'the victims of the victims': there was something quasi-Christian, I thought, in the apparent humility of that statement.
What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
Never ask while you are doing it if what you are doing is fun. Don't introduce even your most reliably witty acquaintance as someone who will set the table on a roar.
[E]xceptional claims demand exceptional evidence.
The worst days are when you feel foggy in the head - chemo-brain they call it. It's awful because you feel boring. As well as bored. And stupid. And resigned.
Let me tell you something: for hundreds of thousands of years, this kind of discussion would have been impossible to have, or those like us would have been having it at the risk of our lives. Religion now comes to us in this smiley-face, ingratiating way β because itβs had to give so much more ground and because we know so much more. But youβve got no right to forget the way it behaved when it was strong, and when it really did believe that it had God on its side.
Free the child's potential, and you will transform him into the world.
Many girls do not go to school because of poverty.
Hairstyles change, and skirt lengths, and slang, but high school administrations? Never.
He continues to teach because it provides him with a livelihood; also because it teaches him humility, brings it home to him who he is in the world. The irony does not escape him: that the one who comes to teach learns the keenest of lessons, while those who come to learn learn nothing.
They told me that, as a woman, I'd never get into graduate school in physics, so they got me a job as a secretary at the College of Physicians and Surgeons and promised that, if I were a good girl, I would take courses there.
Be convinced that, if man were able to reach the end without preparatory studies, such studies would not be preparatory but tiresome and utterly superfluous.
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