The children sit on the concrete floor. There is and and dust everywhere. Their hands, feet and faces are dirty. There is about 30 children in a tiny space that resembles a storage space. There are no windows. Next door there is another room similar to this. Most of the children from the surrounding slums in the outskirts of Lahore attend this school.
I stand at the back of the classroom as the teacher starts the lesson by praying with the children. After that, they all start reading from their books in unison. They are loud and clear. I can only understand some of the lessons since my Urdu is not very fluent, but I get the impression that the children are not understanding much of what they read from the books, rather they are just reading the text in order to please the teacher.
This is how the lessons continues, as well as all the lessons that follow. The teacher adopts a very authoritative approach to her work. The children are focused on her throughout the lessons. They do everything the teacher tells them to do - they read, read and read... When the bell rings, the children gather their books, say goodbyes to their teacher and run out to the beaming sun.
The teacher smiles at me and starts to speak in broken English. ‘What do you say?’
I smile back at her.’Nice kids you have here. They have such tough lives yet they really seem to enjoy school.’
‘Oh yes. They love this school. It brings them something new. They have nothing at home, but at least here they have something and they can learn... They lead very disruptive lives. Many of them sleep on the street. They get into violence and have to fight for their lives. They are very clever because they have to find ways to survive on a daily basis.’
I nod. ‘I understand. It is so hard for us to understand what kind of a life they lead. But I saw the slums on the way here. In the West, people wouldn’t even keep their animals living in such conditions.’
The teachers turns very serious. ‘I wish I could teach them more. I wish I could help them more, but the best teacher do not come to the slums. The best teachers go to proper government schools where they get proper pay. I get hardly anything and I struggle with my own family. Oh, these poor kids... as if the whole world has turned against them.’
The following day I visit one of the main universities in the province of Punjab and in the whole of Pakistan. The building is modern, with a small garden in front. I press the buzzer and enter a posh reception area. Art students come and go, walking from one class to another. There is a nice buzz in the air and one senses that the students are happy to be there.
I am invited to the Dean’s office. She is dressed in design wear.She offers me her hand. ‘How do you do. Do come in.’
I sit down on a leather sofa opposite her grand desk. She asks a servant to bring us tea, cookies and cake.
‘This is our university. It is one of the best in the field in South Asia. We have students studying for arts, music, acting....’ She drifts off to a long-winded conversation that mainly emphasizes the fact how great their university is. There is a lot of talk about money as well. They seem to take bride in the fact that they charge high fees and are private.
‘What about the teaching techniques and approaches that you use here?’ I ask. ‘How do you teach your students?’
‘They have lectures every day. usually five or six hours a day. Lecturing, mainly...’
I am taking to listen to a couple of lectures in the afternoon. This is how it seems to be most of the time - students sitting in a lecture hall listening to a lecturer speak. Afterwards, they have group work or independent study time. They are given a lot of homework that they need to complete after sitting in lectures for more than six hours. Students who are from outside Lahore live in a boarding house that has a curfew of 8pm.
When I leave the university, I compare my experience from the slum school to that at the university. The teaching technique are the same. It seems that the education system strongly relies on traditional ways of teaching and learning, despite of the level of education. To a person having been educated in the western system, the education system in Pakistan needs new winds in order to maximize students’ learning.
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Canada Pakistan Basic Education Project is doing valuable work for the education sector in Pakistan: http://cpbep.org/
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