No wonder that Pakistani schools have one of the highest drop out rates in the world
ISLAMABAD: A few weeks ago, I travelled to interior Sindh for the purpose of completing an official assignment. For the assignment I had to visit a couple of remote villages in the province. I met a group of children in one of the villages, who had stopped going to school for fear of corporal punishment. It was very unfortunate to hear this. Nearly all important scholars on education have emphasised the role of teachers in nation-building. Nations blessed with capable teachers can indeed consider their future secure. A competent teacher can end up training the future generations in a way that they can become valuable building blocks of the future. They can have an informed world view and become talented citizens.
An incompetent teacher, on the other hand, can produce a generation full of individuals, who look at things with a negative perspective. These individuals will be depressed and frustrated and will remain indifferent towards their responsibilities that they are supposed to shoulder. Teachers who keep students away from schools are absolutely the worst.
Instances of hitting children, punishing them in strange ways and even cases of child abuse are recorded on a regular basis in schools across Pakistan. There have been many instances, both in rural and urban areas of the country,where children have been hit or verbally abused at school. No wonder that Pakistani schools have one of the highest drop out rates in the world. Of course, poverty contributes to the rate of drop out, but the terror of cruel teachers is also a significant factor. Surely, our children deserve better. The education department in Sindh has already banned corporal punishment in schools. However, there is an urgent need to ensure the implementation of this law. All provincial education departments must enforce a strategy that allows for regular monitoring of classrooms to ensure that our children are acquiring education in a safe, violence-free environment.
Similarly, in the absence of proper training, it is unfair to single out teachers only and blame them for all the ills afflicting our education sector. There is an urgent need for a nationwide teacher training drive that includes regular professional development — sustained through the institutionalisation of a child psychology and behaviourial management curriculum. In the same realm, to counter the high prevalence of corporal punishment, the government should launch a mass campaign against it, upgrade assessment systems so students are evaluated by means other than rote learning, and set up a monitoring mechanism.
Finally, to bring an end to the culture of corporal punishment, there is also a need to set some kind of a limit to having a certain number of students in a classroom. Government schools in certain areas of the country have more students in a single classroom than what a teacher can realistically manage. The narrative that corporal punishment is an effective way of disciplining children needs to be denounced. It is time that we, as a nation, understood that enforcing respect through violence and fear is an unethical and ultimately futile strategy that has only been affecting our children and their mental and physical well-being adversely.
Afshar Iqbal
Published in The Express Tribune, February 4th, 2015.
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