Daily Times

“Have you ever really had a teacher? One who saw you as a raw but precious thing, a jewel that, with wisdom, could be polished to a proud shine? If you are lucky enough to find your way to such teachers, you will always find your way back.” This beautiful excerpt from “Tuesdays with Morrie” is a befitting homage to teachers. I often wonder, and I suppose I am not the only one, what if my teachers had given up hope on me? And may I add, I did test their resolve. Somehow, like Job, they always summoned that extra ounce of patience and continued to believe.

Students, especially in Pakistan, excel not because of the system but despite it. They do so because of our teachers as Wordsworth would put it, their “little, nameless, unremembered, acts… Of kindness and of love…”

We don’t celebrate our teachers often or enough. In an education system designed to exclude, our teachers work tirelessly to ensure their pupils can matter. Across different streams, our education system does not adequately reward our teachers or value their input. Despite that, our unsung heroes continue devoting their fleeting present, often at the cost of neglecting their own families, to the future of their pupils. These teachers, despite the challenges, only seek comfort in having honed skills in their pupils and preparing them for their proverbial “first flight!”

From working on handwritings to footwork in the nets, our teachers spend hours and months carving out rough edges in students. Students may move on, but their teachers hold on to those times; living through them.

Only a teacher would make a heretic for you. At a very young age, when the abilities of a child are still concealed, a teacher discovers them; instilling a belief in him. Seeing that faith, odd acknowledging nod or a reassuring smile, a child nurtures and grows. Back in the day, Ms Umber thought I was a little more than a blended Epicurean, a backbencher keen on flying free on the merry-go-round, even though I had never given her any representation to the contrary. And Brigadier Bajwa, last one of his kind, did not lose hope despite my Senior Cambridge grades. Teachers like them inspire us to strife and become the best version of ourselves. There are so many instances that one can recollect when our teachers would bend the rules for us and help us through different stages of school and college. Remember, they never had to do any of that and yet they chose to.

But our teachers, like a fading memory, deserve more than being fondly reminisced about. Dr Mahbub ul Haq, for instance, was of the view that teaching should be made one of the highest paying professions to attract the best talent towards academia. While schools develop a social fabric, universities across the globe are epicentres of research and innovation for the states. There is a lot of distance to travel in schools and also at universities in Pakistan. We simply don’t have the enabling environment, at present, to facilitate the profession of teaching.

While schools develop a social fabric, universities across the globe are epicentres of research and innovation for the states

Our modern school system is implosive. Instead of recognising teachers as pivots that hold the balance, owners of schools feel it is far more important to cultivate a relationship with the parents. This transactional approach views pupils as commodities with value, which may or may not serve the purpose of a school’s projection and image in a rat-race. It is crass sophism that has completely excluded teachers from the bargain. Unfortunately, because of how we have premised our school system, a teacher is no one’s role model today. This model cannot sustain. For any policy solution aimed at addressing the issues of our system to work, including one that envisages public-private partnership; a teacher needs to have a central role.

Our systems need to put teachers at the forefront of learning, that among other things, requires resources aimed at training and skill development of the teachers. Unless students look up to their teachers, we cannot thrive as a nation-state. When a certain Peter Mihailof, or popularly known, as Peter the Great, instrumental in transforming Russia into a great European power, had embarked on his journey of learning away from home as a young boy, he carried with him a seal bearing his picture as a young carpenter with his shipwright’s tools and the inscription: “Myself a pupil; I seek teachers.” Builders of nations and individuals, as Peter the Great had realised, are teachers.

The writer is extremely uncomfortable in treating education as business, trade or profession at par with other trades or professions, something our courts have leaned on while interpreting Article 18 of the Constitution to oust or limit state’s paternalism in regulating, especially, private schools. Education needs to be aggressively regulated across the streams at a policy level, both for bridging the gap in different streams, if not completely abolishing them, and for treating education as more than just a business. It is an essential service!

The writer attended Berkeley and is a Barrister of Lincoln’s Inn