Late and not sorry

Published February 27, 2015
The writer is Dawn’s resident editor in Lahore.
The writer is Dawn’s resident editor in Lahore.

THE events of the past few days tell us that people must say sorry when they are deemed by others to have done something wrong. Or the others, when they can, will apply force to squeeze a ‘sorry’ out of the erring lot.

A cleric is said to have apologised — orally or in writing — after he was pressed and then pressed a bit harder to denounce an act of terrorism. And on what has engaged Pakistanis on a much larger scale more earnestly and urgently, Moin Khan must express his regrets and immediately seek forgiveness of the nation. Having been pushed into a corner instead of voluntarily choosing one for himself, he had absolutely nowhere to go.

In contrast to these forced admissions of regret, acceptance of responsibility, and much before that, an acknowledgment that a lapse had occurred, need a lot of practice. It doesn’t come easy to people in a country where the ‘authorities’ remain so woefully uninitiated and unaware of decent manners of conduct themselves, and thus fail to create an essential example.


Acceptance of responsibility and, much before that, an acknowledgment that a lapse has occurred need a lot of practice.


In the event of something going wrong somewhere, Pakistani officials would promise anything from action to inquiry and investigation, but they can seldom, if ever, bring themselves to begin with a ‘sorry’.

Some 1.2 million students. Examiners. Invigilators. Teachers. Not to speak of parents and the intimidating barriers which have come up outside our centres of learning. Last Tuesday had all the signs that a serious exercise was in progress, as Class 5 students in Punjab braced themselves for their biggest educational test so far — only to find themselves at the receiving end of a lesson in official inefficiency at a very basic level. Everything was in place except there was no paper to be attempted on the day.

The Punjab Examination Commission, according to the government, had been unable to ensure delivery of the question papers for English to four districts in the province. This, the explanation goes, necessitated postponement all over. The children were sent home and some protests were reported. These protests, however, were not proportional to the severity of the lapse, nor could the official response to the crisis be called appropriate.

Of course, no one had the courage to look the youngsters in the eye and teach them about the merits of apologising without the act being imposed by force.

This was a simple matter that should not have required too much of an effort. This would have been an issue drawing strong criticism back in the times where all these communication facilities did not exist. With these facilities at the disposal of the officials involved, this was an embarrassing exposé of everyone right from the examination commission to the executive district official to the superintendent in-charge of an examination centre.

This was a real scandal but was eclipsed on the day by the unfolding story from New Zealand where Moin Khan had been caught compromising national pride inside a casino and now sought forgiveness from the nation. Pakistani children could be heard later on, just as they were asked by the authorities to appear for the paper on another day. This was the children’s first experience with the world outside the comfort of their classroom and their schools. They were being familiarised, if nothing else, with the confusion that stalks them all around.

The English exam was pushed to the next day. There were reports that some of the schools, including some in Lahore, did not get the question paper even then. It was said the people who had been assigned the job of printing and distributing the papers had messed it all up.

Beneficiaries of the latest trend where government outsources work to privately run companies, they perhaps found the operation involving more than a million students and teachers spread over Punjab too large to handle. No one from that firm turned up to explain and none was officially asked to. The emphasis clearly was on repeating the old drill that quite often conceals more than it reveals.

The process typically begins with the chief minister taking notice and ordering an investigation. These days Shahbaz Sharif is not as quick and prompt in noting official lapses as he has been in the past, but he did take up the issue with the provincial education department. An urgent report was called for and the provincial education minister Rana Mashood, someone not new to controversies, was forced to address a ‘hurriedly called’ news conference on Wednesday.

Little was explained. Some vows were made and journalists as usual were keen to use the opportunity provided by the error to question the whole system of schooling at the basic level.

Consequently, someone at the meeting pointed out the futility to have board exams for fifth-graders. A journalist observed that since the fifth-grade exam had not led to any visible assessment of the weaknesses and strengths of the system it was useless to tax these students at such an early stage of schooling. For instance, if the results showed students were finding it tough to learn the basics of a subject, what steps were taken to help them overcome these problems?

This was the start. In the debate following the missing question paper, a lot of other afflictions in the system have been pointed out, not least the issues faced by teachers at this most important level and the gap between the privileged and the less privileged schools.

As is the general tendency here these days, the stress is on uprooting the system and inventing a new one in its place every time a lapse takes place. That is a noble objective but pending an overhaul will someone take the responsibility for keeping it going in the meantime?

The writer is Dawn’s resident editor in Lahore.

Published in Dawn, February 27th, 2015

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