Education Pakistan: The Class of 1947

it is Government College Lahore. The photograph was taken in December 1947 by LIFE magazine famous photographer Margaret Bourke-White, and is of freshmen students in a physics class. What made the picture interesting to me was that it was taken in 1947.

There is a whole series of photographs by Margaret Bourke-White of education in Pakistan, as witnessed by her camera lens in December 1947. The one of the left (above) is of the same class at Government College Lahore. The one on the right is of first graders in a school at Faizpur, near Lahore. They represent two faces of Pakistan’s “Class of 1947.”

In introducing the Quiz, I had hoped that we might get more detail on some of the people in the photograph or commentary on the fact that this was taken in 1947 itself. I hope we might get some of that discussion now. To aid this process, we present more photograph’s from Margaret Bourke-White’s collection on education in Pakistan.

All these photographs were taken in 1947. The ones in the block above include (L to R):

• Sind Moslem College, Karachi. Freshman English class. Note that this is co-educational, with girls sitting behind a partition (purdah) separating them from the boys.
• Village Elementary School, Fairpur, near Lahore. FIrst grade students studying under the open sky.
• Village Middle School, Burj Attari, near Lahore. Fifth and Sixth grade students studying in a joint class. Note the metal boxes in front of them.
• Home School, Burj Attari, near Lahore. Teachers tending First through Fourth grade girl students in a home school.
• Pakistani Women’s Education Conference, Karachi. A November 1947 educational conference on women’s education. Khadeeja Feroze Ud-din (2L), Deputy Directress of Public Instruction of West Punjab, in purdah.

In looking at all these different faces of Pakistan’s “Class of 1947″, what can we say about the Class of 1947? What was expected of it? What was delivered? What has changed? What has not? What was achieved? What lost?