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Primary education urban vs. rural-3

Prof. Rahmat Karim Baig

The area which is known as Chitral irrespective of the fact that locally the main town is called Chitral (Chhetrar) has now better access to better education facilities compared to the bygone days but the outlying areas have not been given due attention.

Since the hamlets of the far away areas deserve better attention and facilities than they receive now. The facilities of life especially the access to education is the poorest in the mountainous and hilly areas and because of the paucity of sources of income the inhabitants cannot give better education to their children. In those distant areas awareness is also the lowest. The reason is the distance from centres of administration. The officials of the civil administration seldom pay visit to distant parts of the valleys under their jurisdiction on the plea that roads are poor. The poverty of the roads is because of the lack of interest of the government officials, the elected representatives and the Contractor Mafia.

The elected representatives are politicians and this genre often fails to face the electorate when once elected as they cannot fulfill the election pledges that had been given before the elections (during the election campaigns) so no responsible person is available to the public to redress their grievances who then resort to abuse them; and curse their luck for having taken part in the elections and then swear not to vote in the next one. The problems of the voters stand the same and the backwardness looms for another term of five years.

The unfortunate part of the game of politics is that no elected member gives importance to education. The most important part of education is the primary level where the best teachers have to be posted- the best is the one who has a flair for teaching and hence encourages and motivates children of her/his school and attends to the students and helps them in every possible way. He/she should not be a loudspeaker to frighten the young and sensitive minds of the kids. There must be a very very friendly class room atmosphere and the best teachers should be given awards on UC basis not on district basis.

The class room facilities are poor and must be improved. The kids reading in primary schools should be given better facilities as far as distance from the schools is concerned. In the cold winter winds the kids walk out of their living rooms and the temperature is much below zero Celsius and walk for many kilo meters and enter the gate of the school with frozen fingers. There is no heating facility in the class room and in that extreme cold how can they get out their text books, pens, pencils and exercise books with numb fingers, to begin writing?  In the rural areas where the distance is much longer and walking on icy tracks with a stick in one hand and the book bag in the other, deserves to receive some heating facility in their class rooms before they get there.

In the urban they are lucky to catch transport facility and get there in much better position and condition and the same facility on their return from schools. This means the children in the urban areas get less time to reach schools and the same benefit on their return but in the rural they get much longer time on both ways, with much more low temperature.

This affects the learning process of the children and throws more negative impact on their health. That is why there should be much better class room facilities in the colder regions of the province with special focus on class room heating system in the morning to encourage the kids as in extreme cold or snow they refuse to go to schools and miss classes and thus lag behind in learning process, get poor grades and fail to get high position in merit lists for jobs. For low grade they are not given admission in government Institutions and on the other hand their financial position does permit them to get admission in private Institutions. Hence they face frustration and remain backward from generation to generation. Does not our Primary Education system require restructuring?

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