Once again this year, a number of textbooks of Class IX and X are not available in the market, more than a month after the commencement of the new academic session in the city's schools. This chronic problem is undoubtedly due to the fact that the Sindh Textbook Board is not in favour of education.
It does its best to avoid printing textbooks, but if forced, it grudgingly prints a very small quantity. This must be a policy decision because shortage of textbooks has been going on since 30 years. The chaps who were working at the STB thirty years ago have retired and new officers are in charge, but short supply of textbook continues. So it is either a policy decision to nip enlightenment in the bud or the STB has a stake in shops that do photocopying.
At the start of the new academic year there is as great a rush at the photocopy shops as at the Urdu Bazaar, Karachi's main market for books, textbooks and school supplies such as stationery and satchels. If the STB-printed textbook is not available, students tend to have photocopies made.
Actually, I do not think the STB has a stake in photocopying shops, because through the shops textbooks do become available, and that defeats their mission to ensure the province remains intellectually dark.
To ensure success in their mission, the STB has decided simply not to print a single copy of vital text books. This year, the textbooks not available in the market include Class IX Sindhi, Class X Mathematics (English medium) and Class X Physics. The Class X Mathematics (Urdu medium) has not been available in the market for the past two years.
Of course, one can teach a lot of things without textbooks, such as political propaganda, drug smuggling, how to make Molotov cocktails, how to detonate bombs and handle guns. Especially the last is very important because it a novice does not know how to aim, he is likely to shoot indiscriminately and can never become a good sniper.
You may have noticed how well-taught and well-trained the anti-social elements are. This is not possible without teachers. And you may also have noted that the majority of anti-social characters are young men who, if they had studied Mathematics and Physics would have developed a conscience and a sense of social responsibility.
If it was not for the fact that certificates and degrees are needed for securing jobs, there would not be much emphasis on book-learning because matric and Intermediate school certificates and college degrees are issued if a student passes exams in which the question papers are set in the light of recognised textbooks. For Board exams especially, all answers to the question paper have to be according the textbooks printed by the local textbook boards, in our case the STB.
But the real education is the anti-social kind, learnt without textbooks. This could be the reason for cheating at exams and for coercion of invigilators who nab the cheaters. A recent case was on Tuesday May 5, Professor Saeed-uz-Zafar Khan, principal of North Karachi Government Degree Boys College which was an exam centre for Intermediate exam, was invigilating. He was forced to leave the exam hall, harassed with threats to his life, if he dare stop candidates from cheating.
The Tuesday incident was denounced and the Board of Intermediate Education Karachi (BIEK) shifted the exam centre to Bahria Foundation College in Nazimabad. To ensure that no candidate missed the next exam paper on the following Thursday, BIEK had vehicles available at the controversial North Karachi college to transport the students to the new centre in Nazimabad.
Cheating to pass the exams has become an evil practice throughout the country. If you recall, the case of politician who had his nephew sit for an exam in his (the politician's) place. The College Principals' Association describes this menace as "cheating mafia" but, unlike drug mafia and land mafia, cheating is not a gangster type activity.
The unfortunate thing is that parents have been caught taking the exams for their sons and daughters. In a TV feature on cheating, it was shocking to see mothers taking cover to hide from the eye of the camera. It is a wonder the cameraman was not attacked.
It is bad enough that nephews and cousins take exams for dumb candidates, but it is appalling that parents, especially mothers should have no conscience and abet in the cheating. What moral degradation! Next time somebody boasts Karachi is the most literate and highly educated city of Pakistan, I won't know where to look.
At the next census the status of a person's education should be determined through simple textbook questions such as how much is two-plus-two or spell "honesty". I have personally witnessed students seeking admission to a university unable to correctly fill a form or write a simple paragraph free of grammatical error.
I have also seen textbooks with errors, one of them was a book to teach English Grammar. This textbook I discovered in a highly respected Karachi English medium school. I brought the offending textbook to the notice of the principal who asked me to write a complaint to the Board then called Board of Secondary and Intermediate Education (BSIE) which had recommended the textbook, which was printed by the Sindh Textbook Board.
I went to the Teacher's Commonroom to write the complaint. The teachers were cynical. They said "Do you know who was on the panel which approved the grammar book which STB printed?" The very principal to whom I had complained.
What I am trying to convey, is that lack of proper textbooks and their non-availability is largely responsible for poor education standards as well as the cancer of cheating at exams. If parents and principals have allowed the canker to spread they must not condemn students, they must take responsibility.
Furthermore, the education system has become over dependent on book-learning. Passing of exams is the end all and be all of schools and colleges. There is no character-building activity such as sports and debate. The former teaches how to sportingly take defeat, the latter to tolerate another person's point of view and settle disputes through fair speech rather than by violence and guns.
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