Daily Times

All over the world schools are regarded as places of learning, fun activities, personality and character grooming and protection for young souls. Our part of the world, however, keeps hitting the headlines for corporal punishment and classroom violence. On Sunday, a 10-year-old boy died due to alleged torture of a seminary teacher in Kahna. As per news reports, the minor student was enrolled in a religious seminary in Ismailpura in Hayer area of Kahna in Lahore. He was beaten mercilessly by his teachers and was admitted to a nearby hospital. Treatment failed to save his life. The death of the minor boy is likely to increase dropouts in the area. Earlier, in September, the death of class 10 student Hafiz Hunain Bilal in a private school of Lahore due to brutal beating by his teacher had reached the press. The teacher was put on trial, while the parents of the deceased boy were under pressure to forgive the teacher. Most of the times teachers resort to beating students for their inability to learn lessons by heart. The same happened in the case of Huanain, who, according to other students, could not pass the memory test.

Lack of professional and trained teachers has brought in the menace of corporal punishment to classrooms. The government has never come up with a plan to improve the capacity of in-service and pre-service teachers. Thousands of teachers have been inducted in recent years in public schools through National Testing Services exams, which hardly touch pedagogical techniques. Private schools, on the other hand, require someone who can tolerate less salary and more work. This has resulted in people taking up teaching occupation as a stopgap job before they have better opportunities. Pakistan has 20 million out of school children and bringing them back to the classroom is an international obligation. The only way to increase enrollment and retention rate is having professionally trained teachers who can deliver clear concepts to children instead of making them rote-learning machines. Our classrooms need professionally trained teachers, who set objectives for each lesson, plan activities and arrange extra material. This can only be achieved when the government introduces mandatory teacher training certification. *