| 18 August 2004 | Wednesday | 01 Rajab 1425 |
Good times, bad times
Where are the listeners and the readers?
Taking advantage of the negligence of the district education department authorities, some of the local villagers have converted the building of the Government Girls High School, Looni, into a cattle yard.
The school, which is located on Bajwat sector's bordering area along the Sialkot Working Boundary and falls in the constituency of National Assembly Speaker Chaudhry Ameer Husain and Punjab Industries Minister Afzal Cheema, had been upgraded to high school level on Dec 28, 1995.
Some of the local politicians reportedly played an important role in the upgrade of the institution. The then MNA, Chaudhry Akhtar Ali Variyo, and his son Chaudhry Khush Akhtar Subhani (the then provincial housing and physical planning minister) had inaugurated the project.
Some of the villagers told Dawn that after the inauguration, the politicians developed differences and made the issue a matter of prestige and started efforts to thwart the school's progress.
As the government changed, the ruling representatives in the National and provincial assemblies overlooked the matter due to which some 'evil elements' succeeded in their designs.
Instead of starting higher classes, the department's officials stopped its functioning without any reasons in 1996, alleged the villagers. They lamented that thousands of girl students were deprived of an opportunity to get education.
Talking to Dawn, some of the students and their parents expressed concern over the situation and criticized the education department for turning a deaf ear to their pleas. The girls had to go to far-off villages to complete their education.
The protesting villagers said the abandoned school building had become a safe haven for people involved in 'anti-social' activities. Taking advantage of the situation, they said, some of the villagers converted the school building into a cattle yard in 1996.
Neither the succeeding governments nor villagers had bothered to take stock of the situation in the last so many years. "We had waited for the upgrade of the school for many years, but were unfortunately deprived of it," some people regretted, saying the district government system also could not change the institution's fate.
The locals tie up their cattle and pets in the ground and classrooms. When contacted, they told this correspondent that they had made the best use of the school building. When contacted, MMA's MPA Arshad Mahmood Baggu advocate, PML-N MPA Imran Ashraf and opposition leader in the district council called it 'height of negligence' of the education department.
They urged Punjab Chief Minister Pervaiz Elahi to take action against the authorities concerned, who had yet to make some serious efforts to restore the institution. The officials of the department declined to give any comments.
Meanwhile, Advocate Arshad Baggu and opposition leader in Sialkot district council Qamar Abbas Chand has criticized the district government for making tall claims about promoting education.
The local government had failed to take any measure to solve the problems of the students. Buildings of various government schools were in a dilapidated condition and there was acute shortage of teachers, they said. Meanwhile, a majority of union council Nazims have criticized the Sialkot government for unavailability of basic educational facilities here.
UC Nazim Mumtaz Ahmad Bajwa told a recently-held meeting that a middle school at Phalora village had not been upgraded for the last 50 years while there was no high school for boys in Gadgore UC comprising 22 villages. The students, they said, had to go to Chawinda for getting higher education.
Kandan Sayyan-Daska UC Nazim Khalid Mahmood Sayyan told the house that the provincial education department has approved a project of constructing girls' higher secondary school here in 1995. Later, this project was shelved because of reasons best known to the authorities concerned.
He said there was only one teacher each for boys and girls' primary schools at Kotli Lalla village. According to Gojra-Daska UC Nazim Umar Hayat Bal, there was no buildings for the government girls' primary schools at Nikka Kailla, Thatha Laakhi and Qila Tek Singh villages in this UC.
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More than the 8,500 students of 40 government boys' primary schools in Sialkot tehsil's four union councils are still without basic facilities. The UCs are Kamalpur, Gadgore, Kapurpur and Chahoor.
According to the locals, the main problems of these schools is acute shortage of teaching staff and classrooms. They said there were 500 students in one classroom each at the government boys' primary schools at Maliyanwali, Kamoki Khurd, Jabbokey and Punan villages.
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The Punjab government has approved the establishment of an industrial and engineering college in the district in active collaboration with the business community for providing the skilled labour to cottage industries. This was stated by Sialkot District Nazim Mian Naeem Javed while talking to newsmen. He said the district government had selected a suitable site for the project.
Good times, bad times
It is 'results' time in the city. Last week the two examination boards in Karachi announced the matriculation science and intermediate pre-medical group results. In between came the Cambridge Board's O and A-Levels results.
The next few weeks will be exciting times for more youngsters as Class IX, matriculation general group and intermediate humanities and commerce students will learn how they have fared in their academic pursuits.
In one way human nature has not changed one whit when it comes to exams and results. The excitement was palpable - students called up newspaper offices to have their roll numbers checked and the special supplements brought out by some newspapers were immediately snatched up. It was a time for rejoicing for those who got through and sadness for the not-so-lucky.
But times have changed in other ways. Over 88,000 candidates appeared for matric science examination and 73 per cent of them passed. A record, but then it's a record every year, for the number keeps growing.
What is striking is the remarkably better performance of the girls. They not only clinch the top positions. They also get better grades. Thus 4,289 girls as against 2436 boys got an A-1 grade. The ratio changed as the grades fell - 42 girls in E grade to 520 boys.
Seeing the results, a feminist asked if this was cause to celebrate emancipation of women. This calls for some serious thought. Why do all these bright female students vanish from the workplaces? Only 12 per cent of the women of Pakistan take up gainful employment outside their homes.
Another interesting phenomenon is the explosion of O and A level candidates appearing for the Cambridge Board examination. In Karachi alone 80 schools are registered with the Cambridge Board for the GCE. It is estimated that 5,000 or so students in the city appear for this examination.
Certainly with a higher standard, these exams are highly competitive with an ongoing battle for As in which parents and teachers play a significant role in driving the children in their reach for the sky.
The result? A student with 4 'A's (90-100 marks) and 7 'B's (80-90 marks) and an overall percentage of 90 was in tears because she didn't qualify for the most prestigious school in town.
Sepa DGs
Environmental issues figure so low on the government's list of priorities that for a long time the Sindh Environmental Protection Agency (Sepa) has not got a technical director-general. It was established over 15 years ago and given the task of implementing laws relating to protection of the environment.
Under government rules, the Sepa director-general should have a PhD in environmental engineering and seven years of field experience. Alternatively, he should have a post-graduate degree in environmental engineering and 10 years of field experience.
The current incumbent of the director-general office, a district management group officer, does not have the required qualifications. His predecessors - Mohammad Yunus Dagha, Syed Naseem Haider, Akhtar Zamin, Mahtab Akber Rashdi, Tanveer Akhtar Jafri and Mehfoz Mustafa - also did not have the relevant degree and experience. Sindh Environment Secretary Shamsul Haq Memon, who is also a non-technical person, officiated as Sepa DG for some time in the past.
Creaky bridge
A friend who recently returned from abroad after a number of years climbed a pedestrian bridge in front of Aisha Bawany School over Sharea Faisal in order to avoid having to cross the busy artery during the rush hour.
After taking a few tentative steps, he realized that the creaky bridge wasn't too strong. He could actually see a couple of gaping holes further down the track.
As he turned back, the rusty steel structure of the bridge under his left foot gave way and fell to the road with a thud. With his heart in his mouth, the friend beat a hasty retreat. He was understandably very traumatized and wondered why the bridge near a school was allowed to be in such a state of disrepair.
Extended party
The people of Karachi have suffered long and painfully from economic deprivation, a creaking civic infrastructure and devastating law and order problems, including sectarian and terrorist violence.
But their spirit remains undaunted, as was seen again during the Independence Day weekend. The youth of the city had an extended party that began on Friday evening and ended in the early hours of Monday morning.
Forgetting their daily frustrations and problems, people flocked to various places of recreation, and Clifton beach was the scene of huge crowds. Youngsters on motorcycles with the silencers removed roared through the streets, flags waving. There were families among the revellers, and busloads came from all over the city. There was also a feeble attempt at letting off some fireworks.
Obviously, there was confusion and a lot of noise and complaints about rowdy behaviour. There were also stray incidents of lawlessness. The traffic jams were horrendous, made worse by reckless motorcyclists and drivers with an attitude problem who would refuse to help in clearing the way.
But on the whole the situation remained under control, and all those in the administration who managed it can take some satisfaction from the knowledge that a difficult job was handled well.
Above all, it was the never-day-die expression of the will of the city's residents that was the distinguishing mark of the festivities. Many people had a lot of fun, and for them life will seem pretty dull for a couple of days. If only all this tremendous energy could be channelled into social and civic uplift, Karachi would become a difficult place.
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Where are the listeners and the readers?
Poetry is there, but where are the listeners? exclaimed a speaker at a recent literary function. By 'listeners' he meant those who had a discerning taste for poetry. Poetry was losing its charm, he said, with a deep sense of loss.
Similar feelings were expressed by critics and writers at a symposium held at the Sadequain Academy last Tuesday. The topic of discussion was: Why are readers shying away from books?
Most speakers found their answers in the declining socio- economic order and the onslaught of globalization. But Zafar Mohiyuddin, a newspaper columnist, was more specific. While introducing the subject, he said that illiteracy, along with a rising population, abject poverty, joblessness among youth, corruption and a decline in social values were some of the basic causes for the chasm between books and readers.
He quoted from the report of a survey recently carried out by Unicef in three major cities - Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad - asking a couple of thousand persons from a cross-section of society with an average monthly income of Rs10,000 to Rs100,000 as to how much they were spending a month on buying books.
The answers were depressing. All they could cite was the money spent on textbooks for their wards or a glossy magazine or two from a roadside stall when in a "generous mood".
Books are costly, libraries with easy access almost non- existent and books on current affairs and informative literature rare. After a day's tiring work at offices and shops, people seek entertainment, and television comes in handy. It doesn't require much effort, once you have acquired a set.
Writer Hasan Zaheer put the blame on the retrogressive feudal system which prevented the level of literacy from rising and knowledge and enlightenment to spread. Zaheer asked why a major novel had not been written for years and why another poet like Faiz Ahmed Faiz had not emerged.
"We are sleep-walkers," he quoted an eminent writer as saying and suggested that the culture of questioning and dialogue should be revived. Only then a book culture would strike roots and flourish.
A college teacher, Mansoor Multani, complained that most people, even among educationists and writers, never read anything, apart from their own published pieces. The scrapping of Persian and Arabic from the curriculum had struck at the very roots of our culture, this being one major cause for the decline in learning.
Mansoor Multani also pointed out that most teachers in their attempt to finish the teaching of prescribed courses within a short term of a few months provided their students with brief notes, guides, guess papers and get-through exam papers and thus denied them the opportunity to read and explore on their own.
The over-emphasis on information technology for a successful career in the job market had also had an adverse effect on our social setup. The teaching of languages and the social sciences - history, geography, sociology etc., - was now considered as a "waste of time" because it did not guarantee immediate gain.
Brig A. R. Siddiqi (retd), felt that Urdu was not given its due share in education and official use in the country. He nostalgically recalled that in the pre-partition days, literary journals of taste were widely available at low prices. Such quality magazines were no longer seen, and those that still existed were fading out.
Brig Siddiqi, who is a writer and once headed the military's Inter-Services Public Relations Department, said it was sad to note that religion was being used to hamper intellectual progress.
While Iqbal's song 'Tarana-i-Hindi' was rescinded from his collected works, India had adopted it as virtually its second national anthem. This narrow and mindless thinking on our part had damaged book culture.
It was expected that in the free country of Pakistan, Urdu with its common use in all social sectors would flourish and its literature would be easily available, but the situation was just the opposite. Brig Siddiqi felt, and urged writers and common readers to help correct this depressing picture.
Dr Hanif Fauq looked at the problem differently. Books, he said, were related to culture. With the rising torrent of globalization, culture in Third World nations was being drowned out, and inevitably books had suffered a similar fate.
The American scholars' claim that the present political crisis the world over was due to a clash of civilizations was not altogether wrong. Imperialism with its technology and mighty war machinery was determined to destroy the weaker nations.
Fauq felt that human society was becoming less human. With the fall of the bureaucracy, we were now being ruled by technocrats. Were our writers aware of the problems raised by the fast changing world, Dr. Fauq asked. And, further, were they intellectually equipped to face the challenges?
Prof Azfer Rizvi, president of the Dhaka Group of Institutions, in his concluding speech referred to Dr Fauq's remarks regarding the need for a culture of dialogue and said that due to the heavy load of textbooks and courses, students were left with little time to participate in extra-curricular activities.
He regretted that debating, literary and historical societies were no more found in schools and colleges. Students had thus lost touch with books other than their textbooks, Prof Rizvi said.
On the whole, the discussion left a depressing impression. We lack intellectual stimulus as a society, and the absence of democracy in our political life has had a stultifying effect on our cultural, literary and social life also.