Daily Times

On Saturday, September29, a moving article by Ayesha Nasir appeared in the Daily Times. The author began with the case of Ahmed Shujaan, a highly successful former Aitchisonian who had just graduated from Harvard University. Apparently the young man — he was only twenty-four — just died in his sleep. This article, however, is not about speculations about this staggering tragedy. It is about the life of achievers, in school in Pakistan. The author (Ayesha Nasir) herself is just such a successful, an unusually brilliant achiever and she makes the point that people like her and Shujaan push themselves too hard. They are too organized at a young age and either push themselves or are pushed into being achievers so that they miss out on life. This article explores some of the attitudes of our parents, teachers, school administrators and the student themselves which actually robs the young people of their childhoods.

Elite schools in Pakistan used to be rather easygoing with emphasis on games and extra-curricular activities. What with every saints’ day, two Eids, Muharram and a number of other holidays, life was not bad as far as schooling was concerned. Fast forward to my children’s’ schools. First there were inordinately heavy satchels and then loads of home work. Even these horrors could have been endured by the poor kids had their mothers not developed an anxiety about their performance — Performance, mind you, in classes 1 to 5 not while doing a PhD! This new anxiety had claimed most parents and the culprit was the regular teacher-parent meetings. The very fact that it was held in such a spirit of solemnity actually drove parents frantic with anxiety. They kept on the toes and they ensured that children were given a soul grinding regimen of work, work and only work. In some very elite institutions there were organized games like football, hockey and gymnastics etc. In others the play hour was spent before the computer screen racing cars or finding people to kill. Both kinds of games produced tensions related to performance. Both never allowed real relaxation in the lap of nature to take place. These were no games; they were rehearsals for life which was seen as an eternal rat race.

School teachers have been robbed of their originality and their self-respect has been taken away because constant supervision — a term used in factories — reduces them to powerless robots subservient to the administration. The administration itself is subordinate to the clients ie the parents of the students who pay the hefty fees. Parents feel that a rat race is going on and the market will reject their child

The children were packed off to academies and tuition centres where they crammed more facts and learned skills through mindless repetition and endless boredom. By the time the children returned it was night and Mama or even worse, Papa, had a look at their notebooks. If there were not enough red marks or ticks the parents went to the school to complain about the teacher. A big scene took place and the teacher was asked why she had given too little home work or too much of it. The principal checked the lesson planner of the teacher and said something or the other about it. In the end the whole exercise put down the student; humiliated the teachers and made the children even more anxious and result-conscious than before. It was these sets of circumstances which produced the great achiever.

As some of them testify, they were people who had organised their lives around studies or a combination of sports and studies. They did not waste a single minute and their lives were shackled to the stringent discipline of school, tuition centre, intense competition on the sports ground, intense competition in some activity like debating — in short, a life of all work and no play. Even the play was work of some kind and not some lazy activity in which one just laughed and had fun.

This person was always into a PhD but when the O’level and the A’level came near all semblance of sanity and balance was lost. While an ordinary student is expected to take only six subjects, these people surprised everybody by taking as many as eighteen. And, the wonder was that they got all straight A’s or even ‘A stars’ in all or most of them. That this was totally unnecessary work was something which nobody told them. That youth does not come back; this nobody told them. Everybody encouraged this streak of self-harm in them so they went from one dazzling success to another. But did they become great scientists, outstanding scholars or thinkers? No they did not. They settled down for the same jobs as other people who had not achieved so much. Indeed, so many early successes were not necessary for these jobs. So when a really brilliant person breaks the boundaries of known knowledge ie after one’s PhD, these people were out of the race for knowledge and busy in some other rat race — bank, the corporate world, think tanks doing consultancies etc. They never had time before and they would never have time now.

Consider how geniuses have operated. Einstein was not a great early achiever. He worked hard on his physics later and achieved a distinction which is still considered iconic. To give a recent example, Stephen Hawking, the famous wheelchair bound cosmologist from Cambridge, was more interested in rowing and the usual fun which Oxford undergraduates indulge in when he was a student. He would have got a high second division but for the fact that his tutors did realise that he was a genius. Thus, they called him for an interview in which he waggishly declared that he would be admitted to the PhD at Cambridge if he got a first so, if they wanted to get rid of him, they would give him a first division. At Cambridge too he was an ordinary student posing to be bored as was the fashion among postgraduates. But then he was diagnosed with neuron disease and the doctors told him he had two years to live. So, after a period of despair, he emerged as a new man full of life. Every day was a new day from now on. He loved physics and from then onwards he indulged that love. So, like Einstein he achieved much in life but he was never such a dazzling achiever in school. I could pile example upon example but this is enough.

Actually this ethics of non-stop work and competition with no such thing as spare time and no concept of enjoying idleness is produced by the corporate sector. Their ethic is meant to dehumanise people into robots so that they willingly and mindlessly enjoy their exploitation. School teachers have been robbed of their originality and their self respect has been taken away because constant supervision — a term used in factories — reduces them to powerless robots subservient to the administration. The administration itself is subordinate to the clients i.e the parents of the students who pay the hefty fees. Parents feel that a rat race is going on and the market will reject their child. Thus knowledge is reduced to profitable information and marketable skills. Early achievers are rewarded with corporate positions and so it goes on.

Nothing can be done about this state of affairs because legislation cannot change perceptions nor peoples’ values and beliefs. It is best to recommend two things to young parents. One, a careful study of Bertrand Russel’s In Praise of Idleness and the other the following poem. Let me confine myself to only the first four lines:

What is this life if, full of care

We do not have time to stand and stare.

No time to stand beneath the boughs

And stare as long as sheep and cows (WH Davies).

Both Russell and Davies recommend contemplation of the world and introspection which the Buddha among others also recommended. If you call it ‘wasting time’ please remember that such ‘wasting’ oftime is a healing activity at times. Do find out whether the young people known to you ‘waste’ time? Do they do any of the things Davies recommends? Or are they burning themselves out by the age of twenty-four.

The author is an occasional, freelance columnist

Published in Daily Times, October 11^th 2018.