Guns and pens

Along with their books, files and pens, school and college teachers across Khyber Pakhtunkhwa will be carrying an unusual item into their classrooms: guns. The latest phase in a programme begun last week to train teachers in the use of firearms started on Tuesday, with female teachers among those receiving lessons from police. Schoolchildren then will be staring constantly at guns while they pore over their notebooks or at least be aware of the presence of arms close by. Perhaps this will ensure better behaviour. But on a less frivolous note, we must question the sense – or lack of it – behind the policy adopted. As the Private School Teachers Association in KP has already emphatically stated, pens and guns do not mix. The classroom is no place for weapons, notably in a society already as brutalised as ours. We need to protect our children from further trauma, and the strategy adopted will not help.
The notion of armed teachers is simply not a pleasant one. Indeed it is unacceptable and very possibly completely unsafe. Potentially lethal firearms in the hands of inadequately trained personnel are dangerous, and a two-day training course is insufficient. This policy will not make schools safer. It is also true that the task of school teachers is to educate children – not act as guards. The argument given by the KP government, that every teacher who wishes to carry a gun will be allowed to do so because there are not enough policemen available to guard the province’s 35,000 or so schools, is simply ludicrous. If they are not available more security personnel need to be hired. The task cannot simply be handed over to teachers who have crucial duties of their own to perform. The idea of guns in classrooms is an unpleasant one. Our children, and our teachers, should not be made to suffer this simply because the government has opted to abdicate responsibility rather than performing its key duty of finding ways to protect citizens. The terrible Peshawar school massacre is a reminder of how important it is to perform this task well.