Condition
of co-existence for competitive youth
For the last few years we see enormous and complex changes in the
learning community of Chitral. The wave of globalization and
competition among the schools and students has strong bearing on the
holistic development of children in Chitral. It has been witnessed
this year on the declaration of the SSC and HSSC results of
different boards that unhealthy competition and weak resiliency of
some students has taken many lives. Since this year result
declaration we feel the echo of the last calls of few students for
help. Some incidences of suicides and attempts reported in the
newspapers of Chitral and the editorial note on the topic in the
e-paper of Chitral is a testimony of identification and highlighting
the aspects leading to take such kind of decisions by the learners.
The issue of psychological stress during examination and exam mania
during preparation in school, hostels and homes came to light
through different peoples engaged with education in Chitral.
School is basically a complex of different elements that make it a
centre for learning. School infrastructure and environment, parents
and the teacher plays a very important role for holistic development
of a child in the pre and prime age. For the pre-training of the
children ‘Early Childhood Development’ (ECD) move/system has already
been introduced in Chitral and completion of its cyclical process
whether it was beneficial or not for the Children, be assessed by
conducting research. Its influence to win over the challenges that
learners are facing particularly and society generally would be the
case topic for this study. Anyhow time will decide on the positive
and negative aspects of this system in students and societal
development.
A system founded without a vision and mission, would be called a
moving ship without a direction. Only that system continues to reach
its destination earlier, in time and later which runs with a
mission. Working on its vision would be a criterion for measuring
its ability and performance during the given period of time. The
process for achieving set goals, gives a clear indication where the
areas to be improved further after each evaluation of its
performance. Identified area then, would be the subject/topic for
studies and this process continues accordingly towards improvement.
It is also necessary for a system to be the part of the educational
process otherwise getting shortcuts with a purpose to achieve the
set targets might have had adverse impact on the sustainable and
durable development of a system.
For making a system in congruent with the worldly demands
synchronizing with the particular culture what it allows to
practice, is the necessary step to be taken in time to redress the
indiscretion has been made during educational process in Chitral. It
must be a call for get-together for all systems working in Chitral
both in public and private sector, contemplating on and making an
organized force to challenge what they are facing in different
forms.
All the stake holders need their individual and collective efforts
and support to grasp the areas where further improvement is
necessary for sustainable and durable development of learning
community in Chitral. Each system must deem itself responsible for
all stakeholders including parents, teachers and students. Making
this troika strong and self –supporting would further help better
channelising school resources and achieving educational objectives
in the area with combined efforts. Modern research says that
Parents’ has a major role in the development of a child because
he/she spends out of 4/6 hours with his parents at home. It shows
that more time demands more expectations and support on the part of
parents to deal with the issues facing children, would be worth
productive. The day each system is cooperative and responsive to the
circumstances occurring in different forms, the culture of healthy
competition will prevail and it will let the lively and conducive
culture of learning to prevail and it takes root gradually in
society.
The emerging trend in the operational education system of Chitral
should no longer be let unnoticed. The symptoms like drop outs,
disinterest with studies, killing time in school and at home may
take other shapes i.e. psychological disorder and stress leading
ultimately to suicide; by losing heart and hope. This is what
because of the inability to compete with the fellows due to many
reasons and challenges. And students do know that survival without
competition is not possible in the global village.
Now the problem demands sincere and collective endeavour of all the
systems working in Chitral. The individuals, community and
organizations managing, organizing, running and directing systems
are responsible to come together for maintaining and sustaining the
educational culture necessary for developing conducive environment
for holistic development of the learners. The phenomenon of
dependency of one system on another is the pre-condition for
coexistence in society. Responsibility of parents has further
increased at home and teachers in school to strengthen their
endeavour for this common mission. It is also necessary that student
should have the realization to learn in stage of learning. Learning
environment makes learning effective when it subsist both at home
and School because moral, educational and psychological support for
a child in time of growth is central says research.
Subtle call of children from different systems in Chitral for help
is a matter to be considered. How to support learner’s to be able to
adjust with the competitive environment developing in Chitral is a
question to be answered. There are more challenges for the systems
working in Chitral as compared to the urban ones. One way to tackle
the issues might be following the responsive steps coming from
different peoples, students and systems, to suffocate the actual
problems in time before getting complex. Being engaged with
education for the last four years in private sector I come across a
major problem that the working systems in Chitral are neither they
cooperative nor willing to cooperate in terms of learning from one
another. However, the corps engaged with education in Chitral would
have to realize now their stands in the face of recent challenges
and influence to bring about meaningful changes for rationalising
emerging trends. The day would comprehend it; they can take over the
problems easily by utilizing their handful resources. They believe
unfortunately in the obsolete practice of self-existence. This
mindset weakens their force to combat challenges that a student
faces while living in and leaving Chitral in SSC and HSSC level.
This is another important question for timely response. Here again
the role of teacher increases with the parents and the organizations
working in counseling sector of society. Since the triangle of
parents, teacher and student gets weak in any system of education,
the development process can’t covers its course. It creates more
challenges for all stakeholders within a system.
Educational systems (Schools and Colleges) working both in public
and private sector of Chitral while considering the emerging trends
of suicides in Chitral among SSC and HSSC level students, must
collectively develop ways either to get the services of a
psychotherapist for short time redressal of the problem of the
students during their studies in their prime age or some teachers be
trained from schools; for dealing with these problems. For long term
planning some areas and schools or colleges can be identified in
Chitral where the ratio will help to research on the problems what
the students are facing both in school and at home. I do request to
all educationists, academicians, researchers and teachers to
contribute being generous for sharing their ideas and support for
developing solution to the emerging problems that the coming
generation is facing confused in this complex system as victim of
complexities. It is also a question in front of us either we are the
part of a system or have nothing to do with it. Any person or a
system claims its self-dependence from the operational education
system of ‘pick and pull’ of Chitral would be the first responsible
for this menace. -- Alhaj Muhammad Khan
Charun, 07 Aug 2012.
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