In Pakistan, the real crisis in schools isn’t just about the lack of resources. It’s about bad hires and worse teachers. People are being hired as teachers who should never be allowed near a classroom. They have no passion for teaching, no real knowledge, and no understanding of how to deal with students. Yet — they’re hired.
Why? Connections. Favors. Cheap salaries. That’s how many teachers get in. Not by merit. Not by skill. Not by heart. Every lesson they teach is a warning sign that something’s broken in the system. Some can’t explain the simplest things. For example, a science teacher in a school in Rawalpindi was teaching how blood circulates in the body and said, “It just goes round and round like traffic.” That’s it. No detail. No explanation. And when a student asked how it carries oxygen, he shouted, “You don’t need to know that much!” Then, that same student failed the test. And guess who got blamed? The student.
And let’s talk about exams. Some of these “teachers” literally copy-paste papers from Google without reading them. Google wrote the exam. The teacher just hit print. The questions don’t even match the lessons taught. One school gave a final English exam with a poem from the internet that was never discussed in class. The whole class failed. And guess what? The teacher said, “That’s not my problem. You should study everything.”
Classrooms feel like prison cells. Fear walks in before the bell rings. Lessons come second. Uniform policing comes first. They obsess over nails, shoes and hairstyles. They waste 15 minutes yelling at girls for loose ponytails or untidy uniforms. Boys are yanked out during assembly, slapped like criminals, and paraded as examples — not for cheating, not for violence — but for a missing belt.
And here’s the most disgusting part: these teachers signed a “zero-tolerance” policy, promising not to hurt, insult or abuse students. But they break that promise daily. And the system lets monsters roam.
This isn’t education. This is trauma.
We don’t need teachers who terrify. We need teachers who teach. Real ones. Qualified. Kind. Human. Or stop calling it a school.
Yumna Zahid Ali
Karachi
