What are Children Learning ?
Sufi Tabassum’s Tot Batoat, Sheikh Chilli stories, Ali Baba
chalees chor, Naunehal Digest, Syed Tajammul Husain Khan’s Adabi Reader and
counting games like akkar bakkar seem to belong to a bygone age.
Today children capture moments of childhood activities
against the back drop of political turmoil, war and now Covid. Many village
children grow up with absent fathers, earning a living elsewhere. Urban
children live in mohallas, apartments or houses, surrounded by strangers.
So what do Pakistani children learn? And who or what do they
learn from?
There are more than 2.2 billion children in the world.
Nearly two billion of these live in a developing country. Pakistan has over 80
million children. The vast majority of children live in rural Pakistan.
Officially, 23 million are out of school. Many who do go to
school are ‘taught’ by underqualified teachers and children may leave school
without knowing how to read or write. Yet learning is a human instinct.
Formal education is only one of many sources of learning for
children. One can argue that in Pakistani schools today, the vast majority of
parents focus on grades and certificates rather than the knowledge their child
has acquired. Rote learning, the preferred method, is rarely assimilated as
knowledge and soon forgotten. Perhaps there is a resistance by parents to the state
taking over their child’s development through uniform school curricula. Locally produced children’s books, films,
cartoons, toys and sports, seem to have an equally low priority.
A farmer who takes his child to the fields every day is
imparting the skills he feels his child will need. Parents who want a better
life than their own for their children, depend on others to develop those
skills. School is an obvious option, or they may apprentice them to a skilled
worker, or send them to a seminary.
Parental power has, however, rapidly eroded as children are
exposed to a host of other influences. Where once family elders transferred cultural
and moral values to children, and play-rhymes, lullabies, story-telling,
community festivals, cultural dances and customs gave children a sense of
belonging, television and the internet have stepped in.
Televisions fill homes with breaking news or dramatic soap
operas filled with sad or angry adults. The child may develop an image of a
fearful adult world, or begin to accept violence as a way to solve problems. There
is no Pakistani children’s TV channel or radio programme. Children are left to
learn from observation of adult behavior or from programmes originating in
other cultures. The internet, and social media, now available on mobile phones
across the country, has expanded the knowledge young children can access.
However, it is mostly unmoderated by parents who have little idea of what their
children are absorbing. Parents rarely make discussion time to help children
process what they observe.
Ironically, its children living in poverty, unlike the sheltered
children of the more affluent, who still play kanchay, gilli danda, ghar ghar, and
street cricket, climb trees, invent games, negotiate disagreements amongst
themselves, and develop resilience. Fred
Rogers presenter of the long running TV
programme, “Mr Roger’s Neighbourhood”, believed
‘Play is often talked about as if it were a relief from serious
learning. But for children play is serious learning. Play is really the work of
childhood.’
One can only speculate what kind of Pakistani adults
children of today will become. Will there
be more than the current 10 % young women and men who graduate? Will they be leading
the way? Or will it be the resilient unlettered majority, creatively bending
with the wind?
Durriya Kazi
April 24, 2021
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