I once read a quote by Horace Mann where he said “Education is the great equaliser of the conditions of men, the balance wheel of the social machinery.” But after having taught for three years, I can say that education in Pakistan is far from an equalising force – rather, it seems to create more difference than equality.

I first came to this realisation during a job interview at a prestigious school. I was told that I was not a ‘brand name’ in education because I was new to the ‘market’. And then my prospective employer kindly explained that education is a service rendered to the masses. Teachers are branded by their popularity and by the students they attract in the market and therefore, schools pay them according to their crowd-pulling power. When the principal of one of the leading schools in Karachi talks about ‘branded education’, you realise that there is something very wrong.

Brand psychology is simple. Consumers buy products or services based on reputation and exclusivity. In one consumer study, advertising companies noticed that ‘brand psychology’ noticed that the ‘perception’ of a brand is more important than the reality of its usefulness. How is brand psychology creating a system of difference in Pakistan?

Well, one immediately notices a system of hierarchy where people fight for the best option. The first division appears where private education is better than public, the Cambridge system is better than the Matric. But this hierarchy owes itself to several factors: lack of government spending, recognition of degree, cost of schooling and so on. Brand consciousness comes within the narrower choices and is making itself apparent in how parents and students choose schools and teachers.

Schools make themselves exclusive by their fees and by being extremely selective about the students they take. In the top private schools of the country, a student with straight A’s is preferred over one who has a few B’s thrown in. They open their doors for admission for a limited time only. Here, people apply to ‘names’ rather than institutions. We want our children want to go to ‘the best’ schools, where the concept of ‘best’ comes from reputation rather than any intrinsically good service provided. It is a sad fact that students of these ‘top brand names’ in education have to resort to tuitions in order to do their homework and prepare for examinations. Despite this lack of quality, applicants flock here because the prestige of belonging to these schools outweighs any other shortcoming.

It’s like owning a Louis Vuitton – the name suffices (thoughts on quality, usefulness come later). And then there come the ‘brand names’ within the tuition world – certain subject teachers who charge astronomical sums of money and provide quality service to their students, including regular treats to Pizza Hut. Students begin to make friends and make social judgments about each other based on what tuition teacher the other can afford. It should come as no surprise, therefore, when pitiful looks were cast my way when I didn’t take any tuition: I was not a part of the social circuit of branded education, the poor outcast who had to study herself.

It isn’t easy to be branded – it requires quite a lot of sacrifice – of time and money. Admission to the primary section in these branded schools is a complicated process: children are put through a year of tuition just to prepare for the entrance exam. So much is the power of the name that parents are willing to overlook how these tuition teachers demoralise their children – the techniques of learning include scolding and sarcasm at one end to abuse like slapping and, in one instance, forcing a twelve year old to put a feeder in his mouth because he hadn’t done his tuition homework. In fact, now there are tests to get into the tuition class for the admission process; all this to get into those few schools, to be a part of privileged elite.

Once the students are IN those schools, parents are even more ready to overlook abuse. One mother cried about how her son’s teacher picked on him about his weight and how he was refusing to eat and was suffering from low self esteem. But she didn’t dare complain because she had a younger son to apply to the same school in a year’s time.

Of course, there are parents who do their research about teachers, subjects, reputation. These are sensible customers who view education as an experience rather than a product. But come admission time, we see more and more parents flocking to the admissions office in hoards without any deep research about school beliefs, philosophy and past practices. One parent told me she wanted to get her children into a particular institution because the children of all the ‘important and elite’ people went there. ‘You can build some really useful contacts’ she told me. Thus, there is joyful jubilation at admission and suicidal despair at rejection – much like the angst exhibited when customers are denied their lawn suits at the end of a successful clothes exhibition.

This alarming perception of branded education which savvy school owners and businessmen are cashing upon is going to create a society which is more divided than before – where one set of students will look down upon another not because they aren’t educated, but because they haven’t got the right name behind their degree.