"My son is brilliant, he will become a doctor," a proud father tells his friends. Another status-conscious woman tells her friends, "My daughter is studying in NUST. She wants to be an engineer". Like them, almost all the parents of this country wants the children to become doctors, engineers, business mangers, pilots, etc. They hardly ever ask their children what they want to be?
So the children strive to become what their parents wish them to be. Many a time they are not to reason why, they only have to do and die. Such are the norms of our society and thus is how we see honour killings of another kind, mostly by the so-called educated parents.
I keep coming across such cases quite frequently. I was once approached by an educated father of a girl who had been withdrawn from engineering after her 5th semester. Since she had been relegated by a semester once before, she had already spent three years in the university and she could get bachelors degree after another year and a half, provided she did well in the class.
When I looked at her transcript, I could see how miserably she had done in the last three years and she had no potential to recover, even if she were given additional chances. But her father wanted me to give her one more chance. He pleaded that she was a brilliant student, but failures and poor grades had made her a patient of depression. She was under treatment of a psychiatrist, who had prescribed some sedatives for her. She therefore slept more and studied less. Given a chance to repeat. She would recover.
This was too much for me to take, so I had to tell that ambitious father, "please have mercy on this poor soul. Why do you want her to be an engineer, when it is beyond her? You have already wrecked her psychologically, and you now want to destroy her socially. Please worry about her emotional state and future married life. Let her do what she wants to. I will not to be a party to this honour killing of your daughter by a heartless man like you." He left my office with visible annoyance on his face.
I am sure, he would send her to some other university to redeem its honour. The poor girl can only take more sedatives, but she had to do her parents' will. This is not fiction at all, but a hard reality of today. The parents of today draw social mileage out of their helpless children. Is there a way to stop it? Will the NGO's of this country join us in this Jihad?
NUST has just taken a talent hunt initiative. It is a humble beginning, but we hope it will expand and others will also join us in this noble cause.
THE OBJECTIVE OF OUR CAMPAIGN IS THREEFOLD: Reach out to the schools and colleges to draw the talented children and implant in their minds a quest for creativity and urge for scientific inquiry.
Identify and prepare talented minds for joining NUST and other centres of excellence in science and technology. Create awareness among students and their parents to acknowledge the necessity for education based on the aptitude and intellectual potential of our future generations.
From this academic year commencing September / October 2008, we at NUST have introduced a system of allocating streams of related disciplines to our new entrants rather than confining them to individual disciplines. For example, out of our groups. Group 1 comprises electrical engineering avionics, mechatronics. IT and computer engineering.
Students within this group or stream will be allowed to change their discipline after one year, based on their aptitude, potential and interest. The University will help them decide through counselling and mentoring. However, this is too little, too late. Ideally, the educational system should identify talent and aptitude of children at the elementary stage. At the secondary and higher secondary levels, the students should know what is the best course for them.
NUST outreach program for school children is aimed at creating an awareness among our younger generation for the need to discover the wonders of the fields of science and technology.
We are using LEGO Mindstroms NXT as a vehicle of creativity and an instrument of employing concepts from mathematics, mechanical, electrical and mechatronic engineering UST won't stop here. We will, Inshallah, expand our interaction with school and college students to stimulate their minds and enliven their spirit to learn and create. I hope and pray that Almighty Allah will help us in this endeavour.
I must express my thanks to Sara Shafiq Khan and Kashif Sharif who have come from University of North Carolina to help us in this first ever effort by our university too join us. We can do a lot to save our future generations from the kind of honour killing that is so pervasive in our universities. Louis Pasterur had very rightly said. "When I approach a child, he inspires in me two sentiments: tenderness for what he is, and respect for what he may become."
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