TOBA TEK SINGH City News

Fed up with poor writing, headmaster revives

Takhti in school

From Arif Ghias

TOBA TEK SINGH: Writing on a Takhti, a traditional wooden slate, with a reed pen, was a routine in all government primary schools till some 15 years ago, but it was almost abandoned after the introduction of ink pens and ballpoints.

The shift to the use of ballpoints and ink pens has resulted in poor handwriting of students. Recently, students of the primary section of the Government High School No-2, Kamalia, have turned to Takhti writing to improve their handwriting. Senior Headmaster Zafar Hussain, who is a calligrapher and painter, said he had introduced Takhti in the primary section as he was fed up with the poor handwriting of the students. He said that he had arranged 200 Takhtis with one side printed with Urdu alphabets while the other side was plain for writing by students with the traditional reed pen. He said that when an examiner checked answer-sheets, he always awarded good marks to students with good writing and low marks to poor writing. He claimed he had arranged the Takhtis from his own sources while he would soon arrange for 400 more Takhtis for other students of the school. He said a number of heads of private and government schools had contacted him to start the practice in their schools after seeing improvement in handwriting of the students.