By Mustansir Karim (Student Grade F.Sc.) What is education? Learning is like rowing upstream not to advance to drop back. (Chines proverb). Education is the simple process of learning and knowing. It is not restricted to the schools only. Education starts from the mother’s lap. Parents and family inculcate good manners and make responsible citizens out of their children. Home is called first school of the children, but the formal education starts from the school, where they are taught, how to behave and understand what is going on around them. Therefore, the first word a child learns is MOM or DAD and by that word his learning starts. By the time he is admitted to a primary learning centre. Early childhood educational centre or 1st step of schooling run by the Government of Pakistan is “PRIMARY SCHOOL”. It is the basic unit of early childhood learning by which any one can go towards his higher education. The primary completion rate in Pakistan, given by Date Centre of UNESCO, is 33.8% in females and 47.18% in males, which shows that people in the 6th largest country of the world are unable to get the basic education. But in district Chitral if 10 children are admitted to a primary school, in a year, out of them in my opinion approximately rarely 2-3 students hardly complete their 16 years of education. The remaining 70% to 80% of the children remain uneducated which merely go to some low profile occupations who can alive their own soul. (As there is a saying “Tall oaks from little acorn grows”. If the acorn is rotten then how tall oaks grow from it.) Let’s we analyze what are the factors behind this dilemma? Weather the primary school itself, parents, teachers or the students their own……There are many factors behind this crisis. Out of them primary education is on the top that is the basic means of early childhood education. There is a saying of Movlana Rumi (R.A): “If the first block of a building is put wrong then the building will not stand straight, any time it will fall down”. In our system there are so many primary schools but incomplete neither in case of building nor in case of infrastructure or well trained TEACHERS. In each primary school there are 6 classes from KG to 5th standard and the teachers who are teaching at this level-all the six classes at a time- are only two in number, which is allocated by our system. For each teacher it is obligatory to take eighteen (18) classes each day or eighteen lectures per day. How one can handle this huge burden? How lessons can be planed? Is it possible? In primary school for six classes there are only two teachers and if we go to MIDDLE SCHOOL there are eight teachers for only three classes, how astonishing is this?…why not two separate systems can be merged and work together to achieve better results. As our great leader Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah said “United we stand divided we fall.” If two directorates are merged the officials serve in their relevant Primary schools as a teacher, the Nation will be Educated and the system will work immediately. In our system EATERS are so many but TEACHERS are only handful…!!!!! Therefore the primary education system has totally failed. My dear fellows, have any of our educationists, EDOs, Education Ministers, secretary Education, Politicians, Social workers thought about this dilemma/problem/ crises or Destruction? On the other hand look to Establishment, well furnished offices, salaries of officials, their huge colourful vehicles, Class IV staff looking busy doing nothing in their air conditioned offices are a big burden on the nation and the national wealth. Secretariat-à Education Minister -à secretary education-à assistant/additional secretary education -à sections officers-à Director >additional Directors> Assistants Directors>Clerks >Distt. EDOàADOsà S/Clerks, J/Clerks, a number of Peons to serve the bureaucracy added by rally of monitoring team is another headache/disturbance for the poor teachers in teaching/learning standards of the poor students……. If the result is worst, i.e. 80% students can’t make their education complete, so why theses high-profile personnel for?? What is the purpose of their being there? If community requests to appoint more teachers in their primary school our high officials ignore saying that we don’t have policy to appoint more than two teachers in a primary school. But 3 directorates just for nothing have been established there. For which they have policies to appoint against huge salaries but not to give benefits to the Academicians (the poor teachers) working on the gross roots level. Nowadays on primary teachers another burden is the paper work that is to fill this or that format and send to EDO office on monthly basis. Exam duties, Flood and natural hazards Survey reports, correcting Electoral rolls, census reports and other official tasks are also assigned to the teachers which some how give monitory support to the poor teachers but waste and destroy the student’s time. Due to all these circumstances people admit their children in Private school but they charge too much that every one could not effort, and unwillingly poor parents let their children to government school, then again this cycle starts which produces less literate and more illiterate… Nation. But keep in mind I am not talking about the TEACHERS or gov’t schools of 1960. They were quite better because of less numbers of students but high profile teacher’s enthusiasm. The only solution of the above problem is by enrolling more qualified and trained teachers to the Primary Schools because that is the basic unit of education. Merging of two directorates or two school systems into one can be the most effective panacea. That is just from primary to High level. So By this way our Gov’t schools will immediately get single teacher for each class at primary as well as middle level. The community will come forward to enrol their children in the Govt system, and then we can get good results with a trend of encouragement to the teachers not by threatening them. Without the solution of this problem it will not only destroy the life of students but it will ruin all the opportunities for the development of the whole nation. As Allama Muhammad Iqbal says: Afrad ky haton ma hai aqwam ki taqdir har fard hai milat ke muqadar ka sitara. So I am humbly requesting our Education ministers, directors, policy makers, law listeners, social workers, Great Teachers and Chitrali Peoples to lean an ear to this problem and try to nip the evil in the bud.]]>
