Classroom needs a teacher, not a tyrant

Do you want to see the assembly line for trauma? Then look at the classrooms in Pakistan, where the education system does not correct children; it controls them through terror and humiliation. The classroom follows the same degrading ritual of punishments that has nothing to do with learning and everything to do with breaking a child's innocent spirit. Forget homework once, and the teacher orders the student to write the same sentence fifty or a hundred times, not because repetition improves understanding, but because it satisfies their cruel need for control. Forget a notebook, and the student is made to stand outside the class for the entire period, missing the lesson while being labeled careless. Come late, even for reasons beyond control, and the punishment is public shaming, standing in front of the class like an offender, while moments, dignity and self-worth are brutally shredded on display.

If a student cannot answer a question, they are forced to stand until they "remember", while classmates stare and laugh. If handwriting is weak, the notebook is thrown back, pages are torn, and insults follow. If the spelling is wrong, the child is ordered to copy the entire page again and again. If a student talks, they are shouted at. If they stay quiet, they are accused of not paying attention. If they seek clarity, they are scolded to stop being oversmart. If they make eye contact, they are seen as disrespectful. If they look down, they are called weak. There is no way to win in a system designed to punish your very existence. Is this empowering teaching, or is it emotional torture?

Do you think that by doing all that, you are disciplining them? Let me clarify one thing for you: this is not disciplining. This is pure bullying. Yes! bullying! What you are creating inside the student is not obedience, but PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder), chronic self-doubt, emotional numbness, suppressed rage and alexithymia (the inability to identify or express emotions). So yes, you are not shaping obedience; you are, in fact, manufacturing trauma.

Many psychologists and criminologists agree on one very uncomfortable truth: persistent public shaming, emotional abuse and social rejection can twist a developing mind. This does not excuse crime, but it explains how cruelty injects the venom that later grows into anger, hatred and moral detachment.

History has already shown us what devastating humiliation, bullying and emotional abuse can produce when adults in power keep breaking a child instead of protecting them. This is not some cute intellectual fantasy; these are well-documented patterns. Some of the most dangerous criminals the world has seen were shaped by years of humiliation, neglect and psychological damage long before they committed crimes. Their actions are not at all excused, but their origins cannot be swept under the rug.

They were laughed at, isolated, called useless and treated as less than human long before they became dangerous. Instead of intervention, they received neglect. Instead of guidance, they received ridicule. Their psychological injury was dismissed until it exploded outward. Society condemned them later, but ignored the emotional rot done to them earlier.

Even outside extreme cases, countless individuals who were constantly insulted, shamed and belittled in schools grow up emotionally damaged, aggressive, emotionally numb or deeply resentful. Some become abusers themselves. Some develop criminal behaviour. Some turn their anger inward through addiction, self-destruction or lifelong failure to trust authority. When a child is fed daily that they are worthless, stupid or unwanted, what kind of grown-up do you imagine from that trauma?

Pakistan is not immune to this reality. Javed Iqbal, one of Pakistan's most notorious serial killers, openly described a childhood filled with abuse, neglect, humiliation and rejection. He spoke about being beaten, degraded and treated as worthless from an early age. His crimes were horrific and inexcusable, but his psychological breakdown did not appear without context.

Pakistan cannot afford to create another Javed Iqbal.

Develop children, not criminals. Build graduates, not gangsters. Hire educators, not executioners.