If the moment you see an ‘educational solution’ article you say with Prufrock, “For I have known them already, known them all.”
I can understand your frustration. Yes, it is true that we are suffering from a glut of advice that no one seems to take seriously probably because education itself is not taken seriously. Bear with me then when I offer yet another ‘solution’ which may make a dent, somewhere.
I have surveyed the situation of the education scene of our country and come to a strange but obvious solution: let’s not open any more schools. Let us vow to use those that already exist to the maximum extent possible.
Travelling to the interior of Sindh (as indeed elsewhere) the picture is one of bizarre contradictions. The schools exist: they have been made at government expense for the people to learn but … consider:
• a school has a mali belonging to a tribe other than the villagers: so a thirty-room building will remain unused because the villagers will not send their girls to study in a school where the mali belongs to a distant tribe.
• a school that has been made but it is so far from the potential students that the few brave fathers who wish to have their draughts educated prefer the boys school nearby rather than the three-mile trek in dangerous ground.
• a school that has no fans, no furniture, nothing to sit on or write on or read … “Isn’t it better that the children are sitting in the open under the trees because at least they are in the breeze?” said the harassed headmaster.
Consider these anomalies of the system and consider whether it isn’t folly to open more schools. Let’s simply make sure that there are no ghost schools. But there’s more to be done, and I have a simple but radical suggestion: this is for all the people who think that the schools in the area they live are their responsibility, that schools where the children of the community study must be made places where one wants to go. Let us adopt schools not children.
Let me elaborate. If you see a school in your area, and whether it is government or not, think whether there is any law or rule that stops you from giving it something. Think carefully whether the children who are in its stuffy unswept rooms will grow up into self-respecting citizens who will like decency and cleanliness wherever they go. If not, think what you can do to help. The solution is simple: adopt it!
The possibilities are endless. Talk to the headmaster (or headmistress). Don’t overwhelm these people with too many grandiose plans. Just say that you have noticed that the schools walls need whitewashing. Could you help them with it? Take you time. Let them think over it. The chances are that they will be so surprised at this unexpected gesture of goodwill that they will immediately look at you suspiciously. You may even hear them ask you bluntly: “Why? What’s in it for you?” Wait it out … win them over. And think that 49 years of poverty has made everybody in the education scene bitter … so be patient. Then after about a month of hemming and hawing (by which time you will have collected the whitewashing materials, the brushes and the labourers) simply set a date and get it done. A nice white school that has had the cobwebs removed, the graffiti whitewashed, the children’s scribbles cleaned …good.
Next step: go for the water. Arrange for a cooler in the school for the children. Surely cool water is simply not too much to ask from the nation by its young. Peep around the lavatories; and you will be surprised. The school which has proudly calligraphed on the walls about umpteen times the saying that cleanliness is half of faith can’t afford a jamadar to clean the filth, and the smell is terrible. Pay for a jamadar and get that done.
Then look around for spaces for potted plants and see if beautiful flowers might not look good in the school compound. If you have the man (woman) power, go for the whole garden. You will be amazed to see how ready the children will be to help. And of course the teachers. Up till now you have been simply playing a war of nerves. By now the School Administration, along with the DEOs and the SDEOs and all the others will have checked you out … They know that usually parents are only interested in schools as long as their own children are in it. They still can’t believe that you are doing this for other children. Just thank them for their concern and fill out any papers they ask you to – there won’t be many – such things simply don’t happen. Now you can enter the classroom: and list all the broken benches, windows panes, blackboards, and the furniture that needs help. Be prepared to see: a teacher’s table chained to a chair; fan wings twisted like toffee wrappers; windows with their wooden frames missing … and with a big lump in your gut take on the full and complete restoration of the things. Sure this will take time: what’s the hurry? It took 49 years to get it like this. Still the work is not over. In fact it has just begun.
Have you noticed why are the teachers locked in such unremitting boredom? Because they have received no training whatever. It’s worse if they have received some training. So you then tackle that problem. Your main intention is to make school a place where the learning that is offered is a place worth going to; where there is some joy, some laughter, some spark of understanding about that which matters … and if you think your patience was tested when you were doing the physical things just wait when you begin working on the people. Lord! What ever happened to these people?
Here is a man with 25 years of service. You ask him which school are you in? He says: in such and such a school: but I get my salary from such and such other school. Here is a headmistress of a school with 100 per cent enrolment of girls yet there at the entrance, large as life is written: Government Boys School. But why? Because it comes under the District (x) Male. Isn’t there a Female Section? Sure: all districts have one. Then why can’t this school which is obviously a girls’ be called a Girls School and comer under the Female Section? The teachers will lose their seniority … they have been under this office for so long that the files … the sequence will be changed which in turn will jeopardize their promotions … so it is better to have an all girls school be called a Boy’s School. What must it be doing to the consciousness of the 350 girls studying there is anybody’s guess. Just imagine: “Which School do you go to, Saima?” “GBS, …” What? You are in a coed school?” “No.” “Then in all boys school with only a few girls?” “No, we are all girls there!” “Then … why isn’t it called GGS? Why … why not?” (fade out).
There is one solid argument against all this: aren’t we doing work that the government ought to do, and therefore aren’t we letting the government off the hook? Why on earth should be bother? Two thoughts and I’m done.
First, the government cannot and will not do anything. It is suffering from bureaucratic arthritis. Secondly, if the fact that Pakistan is the only country where illiteracy is rising and the fact that those who come out from the system at the matric level are functionally illiterate is not cause enough to fill you with shame and galvanise you into action, nothing more can be said.