ISLAMABAD: The Beaconhouse School System (BSS) desires to further clarify its position on the recent misunderstanding regarding its purported views on the Punjabi language. “The above confusion stems from a circular issued in August – on the letterhead of Beaconhouse’s Sahiwal branch- which stated, “Foul language is ‘NOT ALLOWED’ within and outside the school premises, in the morning, during the school hours and after home time. Foul language includes taunts, abuses, Punjabi [curses] and the hate speech.” The functioning word in brackets – ‘curses’ – was unfortunately missed in the circular”, said a press release issued. Beaconhouse is deeply embarrassed by this omission and cannot emphasise enough that it was a simple miscommunication caused by a lapse in language. Our headmaster in Sahiwal – Jamil Ahmed – was attempting to advise students to refrain from using foul language in Punjabi, it said. “He wrote ‘Punjabi’ instead of writing ‘Punjabi curses’ or ‘foul language in Punjabi’. Contrary to some media reports, Ahmed did not say that the circular or its contents came from the head office – had this been the case, it would have been distributed at every branch of Beaconhouse across Pakistan”, it added. Beaconhouse has been asked if it is trying to imply that the school accepts curses in Urdu or English language. Needless to say, as an educational institution, we find cursing in any language completely inexcusable. “Unfortunately, Ahmed highlighted Punjabi because cursing in Punjabi was a specific issue at his branch – however, he was wrong and should never have singled out the Punjabi language”, the statement said. Furthermore, he did not understand that his sentence structure implied that all of Punjabi was a foul language as such an interpretation would have never occurred to him because he himself is a proud Punjabi-speaking person – just as half of our students and teachers, it added. “As a consequence of the above, Beaconhouse apologises to its students, staff, alumni, and indeed all speakers of the Punjabi language for this unintentional offence and confusion caused by the circular. We have also – with immediate effect – withdrawn the said circular from Sahiwal and expunged it from our records. A fresh circular will be issued to all parents to sign and return to the school”, the statement said. Considering Beaconhouse ‘a nationwide network of hundreds of schools from Peshawar to Karachi’, unfortunately it is not an easy talk to screen every single circular from every school – without crippling the day-to-day operations, it added.