Why take on the public school system in Pakistan?
A I realized I wouldn’t be able to bring all the street children, all the working children into schools until and unless I start reforming the public school sector. The majority of the kids in Pakistan go to public school, and you can’t educate the masses until you reform these schools. Children in these schools don’t develop any analytical skills. They don’t develop any critical thinking. All they’re doing is rote learning and no thinking. They can’t even write a letter in Urdu, their own language. The government temporarily transferred management of a school in our name. Then we got (government permission) to change the textbooks. Then we built programs in sports and art. We turned around the school. We now have underprivileged girls rowing. They compete against elite private schools, and they won a competition in Sri Lanka. What we’re trying to tell the government and everyone is that this is a model of good governance. If you give a chance to underprivileged children, they can exce
