Frontlines and playing fields

When parents send their children to schools, colleges and universities they do not expect them to be locked in anything that resembles a battle – beyond, of course, the ordinary debate that should be a part of any learning environment. Yet, in recent years, too many parents have found that the classrooms or the campuses within which they stand can prove to be extremely dangerous places.

Iqbal Khan, the father of Mashal Khan – a 23-year-old who was killed at the Abdul Wali Khan University Mardan earlier this year – says his daughters no longer attend any educational institution even though they are brilliant students. He has explained that while no direct threats exist, the girls themselves are fearful after witnessing their older brother’s fate. As a parent, Mashal’s father is reluctant to send them into an environment that he can no longer believe is safe. Iqbal Khan has said that he had never expected his son to be brutally killed on campus and is now unable to trust his own judgement – even as he awaits at least an apology from the university administration over what happened to Mashal.

The father of Sharoon Masih, a 16-year old boy who was beaten to death in a different classroom many miles away from Mardan in Vehari, had also not expected that an attempt to offer an education to his son would result in his death. Sharoon was allegedly called a choorrah by the teacher at the government boys school that the 16-year-old attended in Vehari as the school in his native village did not offer secondary education.

Since he was a student with top grades, Sharoon’s parents and teachers felt that he should be encouraged to continue his education. This decision brought disaster. Sharoon told his parents soon after beginning classes at his new school that he felt ostracised and isolated as the only non-Muslim at the institute. A skirmish in the classroom apparently broke out after a few boys hit Sharoon for drinking from the same water cup as the other pupils. Some of his peers attempted to stop the violence. But it was too late. Sharoon died as a result of the injuries inflicted on him while the teachers failed to intervene.

The police report regarding the incident, which states that a fight broke out over a mobile phone, has been rejected by Sharoon’s family and an appeal has been filed. Whatever the truth is, the fact remains that Sharoon did not feel safe at his school and the staff failed to protect him from his peers. The incident would have also scarred all the other boys involved in the episode.

There are other stories as well. When 13-year-old Ahmad – a student who scored 97 percent grades in his final exams – began the eighth grade at a private cadet college in Larkana after the summer vacations, his parents would never have expected that their active, healthy son would within a day have to be collected from the institute in a critical condition. The administration of the cadet college has, once again, answered no queries. But Ahmad was found badly beaten – apparently by a teacher – and had been left paralysed and unable to speak.

In November last year, after the intervention of the provincial government, he was sent to the US for medical treatment in the hope that this would enable him to walk again. Since then, he has returned to the country after many months of treatment and is in a somewhat better condition. Naturally, his parents have not readmitted him at the cadet college. But even now, his future remains somewhat uncertain as he struggles to overcome the physical difficulties that he still suffers. Doctors believe that he may never fully recover.

Other incidents include a boy who was killed in January 2014 while defending his school from a suicide bomber. Of course, the parents of over 130 schoolchildren who died in a massacre at the Army Public School in Peshawar in December 2014 had never intended to send them out to battle militants. Calling them martyrs is then something of an anomaly. Essentially, they were victims who could do little to defend themselves against the men who invaded their school.

We have essentially seen our schools turn into battlefields rather than places of learning and thinking. This process continues on many campuses. Students who dare to dissent from the dominant line of thinking have said that they face threats, warnings and even physical violence. We have seen this happen at Punjab University where the Islami Jamiat-e-Talaba holds sway. This has also been witnessed at other campuses all over the country.

Even students from prestigious centres of learning such as the Quaid-e-Azam University have said that they felt compelled to drop out because of the hostility they faced as a consequence of the opinions they voiced or the ideas they expressed.

This is a highly dangerous situation on so many levels. Schools and centres for higher learning should offer a safe environment for every pupil. Of course, an inevitable accident of some kind may occasionally take place. But when young men are beaten to death by their peers or left crippled by their teachers, there is something severely wrong.

There is also something wrong with a society that attempts to paint young children as heroes engaged in a battle rather than as members of society who deserve protection and care. This care should include providing them a space to express their views and act on their individuality Instead, the opposite has happened, with our campuses turning into places that hold many different forms of danger.

We need to make an effort to restore playing fields and classrooms as the places where children can thrive and reach their full potential. This is currently not happening.

Sharoon’s teachers told us that he was an immensely talented pupil. Those who heard Mashal Khan speak at rallies or interacted with him on other occasions say the same. For many others who have died in their schools or other places of learning, we will never be able to say what they may have achieved later in life. What we do know is that when their parents sent them to acquire an education, they did not expect that this process would be followed by funerals or the other painful rituals that accompany death.

Such acts of violence on campus, which have impacted many lives, should never have taken place. There are so many examples of parents who were simply compelled to remove their children from educational institutions because of the discrimination they faced. The added dimension of violence is a new feature of our society. A strategy needs to be devised to hand classes and campuses back to the young people to whom they belong. If they are not able to develop as individuals and as human beings in these spaces, we are confronting an unfortunate state of affairs and now live in a precarious situation.

Mashal Khan’s father has been eloquent in voicing his fears. There are undoubtedly other parents across the country who feel the same but do not know how to act or what to do. Control over the lives of their children has been taken away and those assigned to protect them are failing to deliver. Our playgrounds have turned into frontlines and this presents a particularly serious concern for the future.

The writer is a freelance columnist and former newspaper editor.

Email: kamilahyat@hotmail.com