ISSB Preparation Forum | Notes, Guidelines

Co-Education in Pakistan

The layouts mentioned here are meant to be a guideline and not a sample essay to be followed at all cost.
The idea is to exercise minds and stretch imagination to produce relevant points and conclude purposefully.
This essay topic can be dealt with merit and demerits of co-education followed by suggested way forward.

Merits
• Cross gender healthy competitiveness
• Learning about other gender (useful in business, work and marital relation)
• Economy of effort
• Creates sense of equality and mutual respect
• Overcoming fears and apprehensions about other gender
• Enhances Confidence
• Improves teamwork

Demerits
• Cultural and Religious norms may be hard to follow.
• May result in unethical social/ immoral activity (particularly at teen ages).
• Social distraction / incorrect focus.
• X gender discrimination / rivalry may result un-healthy environment.

Way-forward
• Co-education either at very early or university levels (not at colleges & after class 5).
• Gender environment management / involvement of management.
• Awareness at home and institution level about threat.

Do the Dreams Result in Crimes?

What is a Dreams, Why should these be leading us to do good or bad aspects things (manifestation of desires, unfilled desires may lead one to attain these through unfair means like cheating in exams etc).

Factors behind Dreams:
• Good desires (service to nation, become a good man, win a medal, top position in studies etc) vs bad desire.
• One’s Present financial status (rich/ poor).
• What all one possesses vs what all is yet to be acquired.
• One’s way of up-bribing (good or bad person).

Factors for Dreams becoming good or bad actions:
• Good/ poor implementation of laws.
• Parental care, love, affection – guidance and supervision.
• Religious/ moral views / upbringing.
• Education or lack of it.
• Means / systems to attain goals with effort.
• Corruption, lack of jobs and lack of opportunities to excel.
• Injustice and inequality.
• One’s abilities vs his desires. (lack of ability to achieve desire may result in crimes)

How to Ensure that Dreams don’t result in Crimes
(way-forward):
• Factors above are to be addressed by Government, so few sentences can written about these aspects.

Wisdom Comes with Age or Education

Attributes (features) of wisdom
Attributes of Education
Attributes of Age
Correlation Wisdom with age and education
Conclusion
--------------------
Attributes (features) of wisdom
• reasoning ability.
• Farsightedness, understanding of human nature, thoughtfulness, fairness, good listening ability and placing value on advice/ knowledge of others.
• learning from ideas and the environment,
• Judgment.
• Combination of experience, education and intellect.
• practical ability to make consistently good decisions

Correlation Wisdom with age
there is no direct correlation between wisdom and age. Wisdom may increase, decrease or stagnate with age. Growing older is no guarantee of growing wiser, but invariably may bring useful experiences needed to become wise. On relative basis older people may be wiser to younger people.

Correlation Wisdom with education
• Education and wisdom surely have more correlation and lesser relativity.
• Education, however, may have limited scope, thus limited wisdom.
• Awareness.
• Clarity of facts and truths.
• Ability / skills to use knowledge to resolve problems.
• Comes through reading, listening, repetitiveness.

Conclusions
• Education has much greater linkage with wisdom compared with age. Age however, encompasses time (in which education is attained).

Life is an Opportunity

Life as divine gift. (may also highlight Islamic concept of conflict to be resolved (between evil and good). and what we are and what we want to be.
How to Avail the Opportunity - or How to Make good use of this opportunity
How the opportunity can go wasted.
Way forward
----------
Life as divine gift/ golden Opportunity.

• and whatever blessings of the God will you deny
• The ability to do ‘good’ is the privilege vs Evil.
• Opportunity to
=> Transform the world.
=> Haqooq-ul-ibad.
=> Enjoy blessings of God.
=> Defeat iblees.
=> Help the good to prevail.

How to Avail the Opportunity:

• Think, believe, dream and work hard consistently.
• Empathy; care for others. Haqooq-ul-ibad
• Reward is by Allah and not by human (don't work, look or expect reward from others).
• Share comfort, joy and wealth.
• Focus on own role in every situation.
• Learn to appreciate nature, others and master self control. Read and understand Quran, Practice solitude.
• Understand what is success.
• Learn to defeat fear through faith (fear of defeat, fear of workload, fear of things going wrong).

How the Opportunity can go Wasted.

• Not realizing / not understanding the existence of opportunity and failing to understand the purpose of creation.
• Wavered faith.
• Getting too deep and cozy in comfort zones.
• Not seeking continuous improvement and direction.
• Not setting short and long term goals and wasting time in less productive activities.

Way Forward.

Know yourself and do the righteous things.
State rules and regulations, family environment, education mechanisms all help in this regards and can be discussed for improvement as per time.

What is Impact of mobile devices on sports

General/ Intro[/b]:
Impact pf Mobile Phones on Sports[/b]

• Positive Impacts
  - More coverage
  - Viewing on the go.
  - Addition of mobile gaming (more fun)
  - Fitness / health tracking apps
  - Sports marketing made easy
  - Identity/ social presence of athletes, followers engagement, well being
• Negative Impacts
  - disrupt concentration
  - induce mental fatigue
  - sleep and food disorders
  - Distraction
  - Time management issues

- Horse trading

How to offset disadvantages of mobile devices on Sports
• State level (laws/ follow up of laws e.g. regulating mobile devices usage by athletes (during tours) sport grounds by every private school, funding for sports related activities, creating awareness by including this aspect in syllabus etc)
• individual level.

What are Pros and Cons of Work from Home

Covid Situation and its impact on online work.
Pros for Working from Home

• More flexibility - in terms of work-style and timings etc.
• No commute time or expense.
• Simple, clothing and ease of work.
• Can do other things as well (instead for waiting for weekend)
• More time with family.
• Convenience
• More usage and learning of Technology
• Less sickness and absence

Cons of Working from Home

• Lack of community and teamwork
• Mental Stresses of isolation particularly for foreign students.
• Lack of Motivation.
• Un-monitored performance and frequent breaks.
• Only possible in limited fields.
• Lack of Office Equipment and Security Concerns
• Distractions and lack of a good working environment
• Burnout
• Risk to productivity

Way Forward - to the Future

[*]The advantages / lessons can be take forward to be implemented in future.
[*]Experiment hybrid system.
[*]Flexible and open office environment e.g. bring kids/ family, work at convenient timings.
[*]Focus of Productivity and higher morale, instead of timings.
[*]Innovation in use of online technology may be stretched to more areas in life.

How to Be Successful

Things which help in succeeding:
✓ Correct direction and Environment.
✓ Hard work
✓ Healthy mind / body, +ve attitude.
✓ Sharing, support from others
✓ Panning and Consistency
✓ Patience and self belief.
✓ Allah’s help

Things which make success difficult:
✓ Laziness
✓ Fear of competition
✓ Lack of self-belief- faith/ focus
✓ Time wastage
✓ Lack of sincerity

Indications of success:
✓ Willingness to change (flexible).
✓ Listens and learns (curious).
✓ Valuing diversity.
✓ Courage, not too cautious, Lack of Fear.
✓ Seeks self-improvement.
✓ Happy when other succeed.
✓ Contentment

Role of others – govt (create better environment for living, learning and excelling), elders (help and encourage).
[color=#000BF]What to do[/color] – to be successful: Follow above aspects i.e. things which make one successful.

Conclusion
• Islam’s teaching, consistency, dedication and passion is key.
• State /other relevant agencies and individuals must promote environment helping people to succeed.
• Consistent effort and education.

Elements of Good Personality

Introduction:
✓ What is personality.
✓ Factors Effecting Personality.
✓ Consistency and Effort.
✓ Balance

Elements of a Personality
✓ Physical Elements: examples => appearance, dress, energy, good health, dynamic, discipline.
✓ Mental Elements: examples => Cheerfulness, dynamic / flexible, energy, courage, intelligence.
✓ Spiritual Elements: examples => faith, pious, honesty, sincerity, uprightness.
✓ Social Elements: Loving and caring, cooperative / helpful, respectful etc
✓ Emotional Elements: examples => balance, wisdom, intelligence (emotional).

How to Achieve These
✓ Effort and Consistency.
✓ Balance in various parts of life i.e. not adopting single track approach.
✓ Ongoing and part of education.
✓ Elders at all levels to invest time in personality development of next generation.
✓ Role of religion and Sports should not be undermined.
✓ Contentment

Impact of Social Media on Youth

Introduction:
✓ Defining Social Media.
✓ A summary of impact and interdependence of these on type of person.
✓ Summary of how one can one benefit and avoid harm.

Positive Impact of Social Media on Youth
o Social networking / sharing of day-to-day information, stay in touch etc.
o Helps in education.
o Tracking consumer habits, likes and dislikes to influence business.
o Reach out and promotion of brands.
o Online sales.
o Track social pattern to influence political decisions (can be negative).
o Influencing communities to gain benefits in justice / injustice, promoting a cause etc
o Replacing / supplementing conventional news resources

Negative Impact of Social Media On Youth
o Implication on health and outdoor activities.
o Fifth generation warfare to create disruption/ chaos in countries.
o Time wastage due to its magnetism.
o Rumors and false news.

Way Forward
o Users, parents and teacher’s education on effective use and avoiding ill effects.
o Controls through interaction with media managers of key platforms.
o Check and balance – punishment - laws
o Individuals to be careful and utilize to benefit.

Role of Women in Development of Pakistan

Essay layout

Areas in which women are Contributing (partially or wholly)

✓ Agriculture.
✓ Medical/ Health care (doctors / nurses).
✓ Banking.
✓ Teaching.
✓ Fine art / Music.
✓ Fashion, textile designing, stitching.
✓ Military.
✓ Air and Bus hosts.

Main Areas of Lacking Women Participation
✓ Economic / Financial planning.
✓ Engineering
✓ Technical and non technical Labor.
✓ Technical and non technical production.
✓ Business management.
✓ Construction and town planning.
✓ Real-estate.

Reasons for Lack of Participation
✓ Religious / cultural aspects.
✓ Marriages and Child care.
✓ Social and Financial Status.
✓ Education.
✓ Harassment.

Measure to improve role of Women in Development
✓ Social and legal empowerment.
✓ Encouragement
✓ Respect and equality.
✓ Education and Training.
- Training and education.

Future of Youth of Pakistan

The sample given is not supposed to be the only and last word on the topic. Its to provoke a thought process.
This topic can be dealt as under:-
- Strengths and weaknesses of the existing system of growth of youth.
- How to improve the Weaknesses of the System to make it better.

Existing System of Development of Youth

Strengths

o Parental care and support.
o Structured education and decent literacy rate.
o Basic health care, recreation and information infrastructure is available (internet & social media exposure).
o Social / religious morality.
o Appreciation in society for doing well and scholarships for good ones.

Weaknesses
o Mindset of parent and society that only the ones with high academic grades succeed in life.
o Limited fields and within that better/ practical education is expensive.
o Decision of career at early stage of life and lack of career counseling.
o Less skill acquisition, hence less job opportunities, narrow spheres of education and employment,
o Safarish system, in-equality, incorrect influences and preferences.
o Low incentives, less scholarships, less openings in multiple fields / sports etc.
o Social adjustments is difficult due to contradictory standards of moralities.
o Over dependencies on parents.

Way Forward
o Change in approach => from conservative to very aggressive and versatile in all spheres of youth’s life.
o Job opportunities => fundamentally required change. Youth job centers at district level to improve this aspect.
o More sports facilities => to create alternative openings.
o Skills improvement through internships, scholarship and workshops.

Role of Women in Combat

- Women's' physiology... soft, records in athletics / other sports.
Historical Perceptions ...
✓ Man hunted for food, females nourished kids.
✓ Women -Nursing, health care, well being of men and source of inspiration in war.

Religious and culture role of women - importance of home and looking after family needs.
Professions in which women are participating in bulk - agri labor, teaching, banking, medical.

Modern Perceptions
✓ Participation is there in all armies as well as pk - but very limited.
✓ Equality and making use of a major segment of society.
✓ Physical Concern: strength, child bearing / related hospitalization, child care in early years of child.
✓ Social Concerns: Isolate locations for prolonged time with men, sexual assault / Rape, Pregnancy during / prior to war.

Present Employment:
✓ Bulk and most suited in medical care, nursing, doctors etc.
✓ Logistic, office work, communication / management in HQs.
✓ Limited in real combat.
✓ Less roles in leadership capacity.

Future:
✓ Likely to stay similar.
✓ Way Forward:
==> mutual respect and care.
==> training for roles as per needs of Battle field & women.
==> Conceptual equality and lack of / no discrimination.

One of the possible approach / sample essay layout / way to deal with the topic is mentioned below.
Its not supposed to be the final word on the topic. Following a fixed borrowed thinking may not help much.
Its just a guideline and ONE OF THE POSSIBLE way of dealing the topic.

Are Women Better Teacher then Men

Qualities of Good Teacher & Gender's Co-relation
✓ Patience. -- Male vs female.
✓ Knowledge. -- Male vs female.
✓ Class Management. -- Male vs female.
✓ Communication Skills. -- Male vs female.
✓ Understanding of Human Nature. -- Male vs female.
✓ Kindness and Strictness. -- Male vs female.
✓ Gender Majority in Institutions (girls school / university, boys school / university). -- Male vs female.

Summary of Analysis.

Way Forward.

Common Mistakes in Essay Writing

Starting essay without making a mind map or layout of how to proceed with the topic.
Verbosity. Writing more and conveying less.
Too less reasoning / points conveyed, mostly 3-4 point repeated time and again.
Irrelevant. e.g. Topic: Future of Youth, the writers keep talking of importance of youth for a nation. In short essay one has to be very precise in approach.
Incorrect time distribution, writing lengthy (and irrelevant) introduction.
Focusing only on one side, i.e the one you want to support. Not mentioning the opposing view effectively (thinking that it will make my point of view weak).
Not understanding / establishing co-relation between weaknesses of the system with suggested improvements.
Not mentioning solution / resolution of problem.
Restricting to fixed mindset of layout instead of using these to make own approach to the handling of topic and points clear.