AS far as creative minds are concerned, our education system represents a killing field. Our schools are remnants of their counterparts in the Victorian era as masterfully depicted in Charles Dickens’s novel, Hard Times. At the heart of that novel is the issue of education. “Go and be somethingological directly,” Mrs Gradgrind tells her children. The opening lines are worth a recall. “Now, what I want is Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else … nothing else will ever be of any service to them.” This is central to Mr Gradgrind’s education philosophy.

The textbook in the traditional mode of examinations is the bible for students and teachers. No one even thinks about defying it. The ideas espoused in textbooks must form the answers, otherwise the answers would be considered outright wrong. This attitude promotes cramming.

Needless to say, pedagogy follows the demands of such a stifling examination system. Teaching cold facts in a cold manner makes the learning process tedious and boring. It reminds me again of Hard Times. Itis a critique on the fossilised education system, wherein Sissy Jupe is snubbed for using fancy to answer questions: “Ay, ay, ay! But you mustn’t fancy. That’s it! You are never to fancy.”

At a parents-teachers meeting of the penultimate semester at my daughter’s school, I was told that my daughter had shared first position with one of her class fellows. We were sure that our daughter would beat the class fellow who was a strong contestant because she had done great preparation for the exams, especially in the subjects of English and Science.

She had added some relevant quotes and phrases to English essays and letters that had been dictated to the whole class by the subject teacher. She had herself Googled and selected the quotes and had diligently learnt them by heart. She enlivened the bland body paragraph of the letter that was part of the question paper. There had to be a marked difference between the papers of the two contestants.

Upon our request that she must be awarded as per the standard of her answers, the teacher amazed us by stressing that the other student had “impeccably reproduced” the answers dictated to the class, and, hence, she was awarded full credit equal to my daughter’s answers. I implored that creativity should be encouraged, but the teacher didn’t agree.

Preparing half-heartedly for the final term examinations, our daughter avoided any extra effort and just focussed on her classwork and ready-made material provided by the teachers. She still shared the first position. But we felt a throbbing pain at the dying creative diligence in our daughter. Her enthusiasm stood smothered.

Under the Cambridge system, creativity is actually encouraged, but our traditional education system snubs any such approach, and our schools have metamorphosed into killing fields and dumping grounds for our talented children.

Teachers ought to have a firm belief in creativity. It always pays off and it must be the ultimate goal of all pedagogical methods and educational systems. The case cited above shows how a a stifling education environment works against the young.

Alas, what Dickens wrote about schools in the 19th century remains true of traditional schools in Pakistan in the 21st century.

M. Nadeem Nadir
Kasur

Published in Dawn, June 21st, 2022