Evaluation of Objectives of Population Education Integrated in School Curriculum on the Basis of Islamic Philosophy

Pakistan emerged on the map of world in 1947 as an Islamic state on the basis of two nation theory. Islam was the main binding force behind that unprecedented successful struggle. The inherent education system of Pakistan was greatly influenced by British and Indian education system. Since independence, various education policies and plans were formulated to align our education system with our philosophical foundation. During period 1983-1998, population education was integrated in school curriculum in three phases. The main objective of study was to evaluate the objectives of curricula on basis of Islamic philosophy. This study was delimited secondary school curriculum for class 1-10. The researcher used document analysis and expert review. The data obtained were tabulated, analyzed and interpreted statistically. The findings of study revealed that Population education remained a controversial area among curriculum developers.

Plant Assisted Microbial Remediation of Textile Effluents by Floating Treatment Wetlands

Water is the basic need for all life forms. Among all other necessities of human life; air, water, food, and clothing; are of utmost importance. Clean water, air and food are the dire need for healthy life. Similarly in any civilized society clothing is the basic need of humanity. Clothing is necessary not only for aesthetic purposes but also for protecting the body from all kinds of adverse environmental impacts. With the swift increase of population in the world, the consumption of water and textile products is increasing progressively. Unfortunately, there exists large quantity of water consumption in textile industry especially in dyeing and processing units. In different processes of fabric wet processing large quantity of water is consumed. All these pretreatments, dyeing and finishing processes lead to chemical and dye-rich effluents. These effluents are ejected either untreated or partially treated into nearby drains in most of the developing countries that ultimately become the part of clean water reservoirs through various channels. These effluents severely pollute the environment and are the big source of serious health hazards for humans and other animals. So detoxification and cleaning of textile wastewater is the need of the day for the sake of protection of our valuable water assets and to enhance clean water availability. In developing countries, like Pakistan, traditional technologies for cleaning up textile wastewater are usually not feasible because of high capital and operational costs, generation of concentrated toxic solid waste and its dumping, as well as lack of availability of specialized operators. The floating treatment wetlands (FTWs), is a nature based treatment system that involves wetland plants, soil and their related bacteria to treat the wastewater. FTWs offer a less expensive, efficient, eco-friendly, green and sustainable approach for the remediation of textile effluent. In this technique pollutant degrading microbes play prominent role in the conversion of organic waste to more stable and less dangerous substances. In addition to this the extensive root structure of the plants also absorbs the pollutants dissolved in textile wastewater. In this scenario the present study was planned to evaluate the potential of plant assisted microbial treatment of textile effluent in the form of free floating macrophytes treatment system. Various operational parameters like degradation efficiency of selected strains at different hydraulic retention time, and plant types were optimized for various kinds of textile effluents i.e. bleaching, dyeing and finishing effluents. Two types of locally available free floating wastewater plants, Eichhornia crassipes (Mart.) Solms (water hyacinth) and Pistia stratiotes L Plant assisted microbial remediation of textile effluents (Water lettuce) were selected and vegetated in this plant assisted microbial floating wetland system for remediation of textile effluent. In order to enhance the efficacy of this system, pollutant degrading and plant growth upholding bacteria Bacillus cereus and Bacillus subtilis were added to this system. Eight different treatment reactors were developed with variant combinations of plants and bacteria. At the end quality parameters of treated water were analyzed and compared with textile industry and municipal wastewater discharge quality standards developed by National Environmental Quality Standards (NEQS) of Pakistan and Zero Discharge of Hazardous Chemicals (ZDHC) program. A significant reduction in all pollutant indicating parameters like pH, electric conductivity (EC), total dissolved solids (TDS), total suspended solids (TSS), biological oxygen demand (BOD), chemical oxygen demand (COD) and color concentration (CC)% was noted under selected retention times i.e. 0, 24, 48 and 72 hours. The optimum degradation of all these parameters was observed for the combination of Eichhornia crassipes and Bacillus cereus bacterial strain after 72 hours retention time. This research identifies the application of plants in synergy with bacteria for pollutant degradation as a novel option in comparison to traditional wastewater treatment techniques that may offer great prospective for textile wastewater treatment.