A TEACHER’S SPATE

Lecturer Muhammad Hussain Deputy District Education Officer (Colleges)

Ravi and Shalimar Town, Lahore.

The status of a teacher even once s/he is placed as a gazetted officer in the Basic Pay Scale-17 and above, is considered to be quite humble and at times depicts lowly in exertion of its powers, as if awarded to the officers of the Education Department is merely for the purposes of pay, pension and allowance purposes. To quote an instance once at an Evening Academy where a colleague of mine used to teach to earn an extra buck to make his two ends meet narrated the following story depicting the pathetic state of affairs teachers are faced with from time to time. Some students got involved in a scuffle and due to the usage of fire crackers a commotion took place that attracted the local police patrol headed by a Station House Officer (SHO) of the near by Police Station.

The Police Patrol met the administrator and demanded to arrest the rowdy students involved in the fight. The administrator tried to pacify the situation assuring the Police Patrol over a cop of tea. The police personnel were adamant to take the culprits over to the Police Station. The Administrator tried to negotiate with the police party and in order to impress the SHO, he said that the Class Teacher is a Grade-17 officer of the Education Department. The SHO who was a Grade-7 officer of the Police Department took it as an insult and he ensured that the teacher too is arrested and whisked away along with the accused students. The Administrator’s ploy, back fired badly. Once the investigation was over and the students along with their teacher were hand back to the Administrator, a police personal was over heard making a derogatory remark, “Scale-7 officer of the Police Department is a heavy weight compared to a Scale-17 teacher of the Education Department.”

Quoting another incident that took place while I once visited the Secretariat of Education, I entered the office of a Deputy Director there. The officer at once sent for the peon. The moment the peon came over the officer abusively scolded him as to how was I allowed access to his office. To add insult to injury I felt very small and humiliated, so the discrimination within the department is quite obvious and even the departmental officers and officials in their air of superiority they too look down upon the teachers’. It is common perceptions that our religious teachers’ (Mullas’), are those people who fail to achieve a reasonable job thus join in into the ranks of the clergy. Likewise the lowly scum’s of the earth take up the profession of teaching as School teachers.

Once it so happened that I came a rich relative of mine at one of the marriage ceremonies of the family. After the pleasantries, he enquired of me if I was still teaching pupils’ or doing a job. So with that we can imagine the worth and perception of a teacher.

One of my uncle’s is not on talking terms with me ever since I got enrolled as a school teacher for his preference being a patwaree, girdawar or a tehsildar were much more, of course in terms of nuisance value and authority invested in them as part of the revenue department in the executive.

I remember an acquaintance of mine with a Master’s degree to his credit joined as a teacher in a school run by a Non Government Organization (NGO). He used to lament about the meager salary he was drawing. I countered him with a retort. I suggested him to quit and get into a job of his liking. To which he replied that he could not quit his job due to the prevalent state of joblessness in the country. He opined not to jump on to the band wagon of the unemployed, even though that he was drawing a salary less than half that was being drawn by matriculate / intermediate qualified drivers of that very NGO.

Now that I am a Deputy Director in the Education Department’s administration the perspective seems changed because of my designation and officer status, I distinctively remember that even my own class fellows who had successful in entering the Central Superior Services (CSP) Cadre would ignore me since I was employed as a school teacher. They would meet me only if they had to, but now I can feel the difference in their attitude … even though my emoluments, grade etc., is still the same. However the designation and holding an administrative office and placement has made all the difference. I have after all metamorphosed from a teacher to an officer.

I have an observation that the public sector teachers’ hardly have doctors’ and engineers as their spouses and it true especially so for the male teachers’ so to say. Moreover generally in the society the teachers’ even if they earn a lot of money are not given the amount of respect that is rendered to even an unemployed doctor. Tuitions due to the extra earnings and access of the teacher to the well to do parents of the students may be in terms of money, business or their appointment make them charming and desirable and attractive but at what and whose expense? The vested interest of the teachers’ can be seen through on one side and they probably close their eye to the though obviously a derogatory reputation that teachers’ do not teach well during the school hours but put in a lot of effort while they are at tutoring. The other side is the parents and the pupils, who are these days unfortunately considered clients and consumers respectively. The parents’ are the investors who want to reap profits and the students too are may be NOT interested in learning in terms of value and knowledge but they want the fruits of the looms and labor in the shape of Letter Grades, Grade Point Averages (GPA) and higher percentages appended with either jobs, admissions and scholarships and the key objectives of learning and the goal(s) of knowledge become(s) subservient. Vested interests are supreme in our society and being an administrator to have a self driven and a notorious value system by default. As an executive officer in the Education Department and attesting documents, etc., is like being a cog in the wheel of a system similar to an oath commissioner in the courts.

Whereas as a District Education Officer, one is approached, coaxed and pampered in one context or the other due to the tagged nuisance value and authority vested in him by the Government of the Punjab.

It is high time that we give the due respect to the teacher and try to give him pre and in-service training in our divisional, district and tehsils through our available infrastructures first and to start with let us address our weak areas’ first but along with other curriculum items too. The start point could be from the tip of the iceberg and the 80 /20 principle. To my mind we ought to go according to the iceberg principle if you take care of the tip of the iceberg (Approximated to be 20% - the visible portion – the problem) the remaining 80% shall be taken care of automatically). Let’s take the lead and train our teachers’ and give them a head start … through a series of Character Development Seminars’. And be the change agents and in the words of Mahatma Gandhi, “ Be the Change, you want to see.”