I HAVE been visiting painting workshops for children held all over the country for a year now. The opportunity provides me with an insight into child education and the factors associated with it.
Mostly, children selected for these workshops are students of government schools or street schools between the ages of four and 14. The areas where these workshops are organized include remote places like Kiech in Turbat, Bela in Balochistan, Mithi and Juhi in Sindh, Shaikhupura in Punjab and Pak Colony in Karachi.
During my visits to these workshops I discovered that children from the remote areas hadn’t thought that the new atmosphere would be very different from the schools that they acquire education in. In a friendly environment, when their shyness withered away, all of them proved very receptive to different ideas and made paintings without any inhibition. They did not even accept a hint of suggestion. And the results were pleasing.
On the third day of the workshop, many children painted beautiful motifs inspired by their respective native regions. It proved the fact that if such an atmosphere would be created at their schools, they could work wonder over there as well.
One workshop conducted by Riaz Rafi at Pak Colony, Karachi spoke volumes for what bad education could do to young, gullible minds. The selected bunch of children at the workshop did not take painting as something pleasurable. They remained tense throughout, displaying a certain kind of mistrust in their eyes. It was a mere question of ‘passing’ or ‘failing’ in a test. On the second day their ‘homework’ showed signs of copying and tracing, and their work was done by some older member of their family. When asked about the authenticity of their work, they turned quite and did not utter the truth. All of them were under the influence of bad education that inspired nothing but bad habits, which in turn hampered creative thinking.
I have seen many examples of bad education in our government-run primary schools because for comparison I have also been visiting some of the school run by the NGOs. While visiting a school located in Pak Colony, English grammar was being taught to some students. I looked at the blackboard where it was written, ‘girls was coming.’ The teacher was reading the sentence aloud and the children were repeating it after her. Almost thirty years ago, Urdu language primer for the beginners printed by the Sindh Text Board carried a wrong word for coop (darba) and the teacher taught the wrong word to children without realizing the mistake.
But my experience at the Shaikhupura workshop was quite different. A Lahore-based artist R M Naeem conducted the workshop. Most of the children were from a model school. They turned out to be good at learning whatever was taught at the workshop. It is interesting to note that one of them cut his own hair to paste it at the top of his drawing. It showed that those who had organized the workshop achieved reasonable success.
However, true quality education was observed at a workshop conducted at the Pearl Valley Public School (PVPS) in village Kharick, Rawalakot, Azad Jammu and Kashmir. Children studying at the PVPS belonged to under-privileged families of nearby villages. System of selecting children for admission was no less interesting. A few months before the annual admission, the event was thoroughly publicized. Parents were asked to bring their children so that they could be interviewed for admission. An independent team of experts including child psychologists from the Quaid-i-Azam University gave APID (Assessment for Pre-school Intelligence Development) test to the children. Once a child passed the test, it was not refused admission to the school even if his parents could not afford to pay the already highly-subsidized tuition fees.
It was observed at the PVPS that children getting into school for the first time easily adjusted to the methods of education and atmosphere whereas children inducted from other schools had difficulties in adapting to the new environment. One could detect the effects of bad education on them. It was here that the management of the school headed by Maj-Gen (retd) Rahim Khan realized the need for proper training of teachers of primary schools. The management took up the task to establish a teachers’ training institute in the vicinity and invited girls with graduate degrees to their credit from the adjoining areas for training.
The school is run by the Kashmir Education Foundation. Imparting quality education to students would not have been possible without the support and cooperation of the British Council and Voluntary Services Overseas of UK.
Presently head teacher of the school is principal of the Lady Teachers Training Institute. The institute is also supported by the Ali Institute of Education, Lahore and Cheltenham and Gloucester College of Higher Education Cheltenham, UK.
Here it must be mentioned that the Kashmir Education Foundation has an extensive programme to impart quality education and set up teachers training institutes all over Pakistan. Another elementary model school is under construction in the rural area near Rawalpindi.
I HAVE been visiting painting workshops for children held all over the country for a year now. The opportunity provides me with an insight into child education and the factors associated with it.
