Cell phone screens are as good a classroom in a conspicuous concrete building — only safer during dangerous times
ISLAMABAD: If the children of personnel of the armed forces of Pakistan are now under threat, then it is a serious crime to subject them to outschooling in a hazardous environment. We need to adopt home schooling methodologies to safeguard them and indeed all children who are vulnerable to terrorism, epidemic, war and other perils that are beyond their control.
The homeschooling movement is popular in the West. In the US alone, nearly 1.5 million children are home-schooled and are showing better results than out-schooled children. In addition to educated parents, homeschooling can benefit from modern-day assets such as the internet. In fact, the latter can even altogether replace the need for an educated parent when it comes to homeschooling. If the government of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa enforces a state of emergency and mandates homeschooling for all children during the war-related emergency, then the government itself can create systems of education that utilise the internet, television, FM radio and 3G and 4G mobile technologies. This would take more than half the burden off the educating parents’ or older siblings’ shoulder as they can sit with the child and make use of the lessons the aforesaid technological facilities bring into their homes. Indeed, online teachers are never absent, they are not abusive, they cannot hit children, and their being bad at teaching is out of the question because they are being watched by all and sundry. Since their every word is recorded, the good will inevitably replace the bad as the system evolves.
If our wars are going to be unconventional, our safety requirements, too, should be accordingly managed. Children are the most vulnerable and the most precious part of a country’s population. Education is the most important component of their development. The pursuit of education need not endanger children’s lives. Modern technologies have introduced new and innovative ways of teaching children to read and write.
Cell phone screens are as good a classroom in a conspicuous concrete building — only safer during dangerous times. If we coach children to read and write at the primary level, the seed of literacy can bloom according to the fertility of the mind that has absorbed it. Through classrooms carried to children’s homes in the shape of cell phone screens that play educative videos, virtual teachers running online schools on computer screens, and TV screens streaming educative lessons financed by the government, children can educate themselves in the safety of their own homes, instead of assembling in a conspicuous buildings, which can get bombed or shelled during war. The government of Pakistan is requested to consider enforcing emergency for as long as the country is at war and design safe systems for education of children of personnel of the armed forces, children of the IDPs, indeed all children anywhere in Pakistan who are at risk due to one reason or another. The government will be pleasantly surprised with the result of its innovative and caring initiative.
Zeenia Sadiq Satti & Shahzeb Khan
Published in The Express Tribune, January 26th, 2015.
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