In all the places that I have traveled, more often than not I find myself in a school somewhere along the way.  I was born to teach, and I have come to happily accept and enjoy this way of living.  From my perspective a critical aspect of exploring a culture is seeing how they install their values in the next generation.

A true comparison between the Pakistani school systems and our own is unfair; this is a third world country, where as we in the west are setting the standards for education, and the rest of the world is hanging on our coattails.  Saying that I am very pleased with what I have seen and learned on this latest adventure. 

A decade ago our Ontario schools were in the infancy of our new curriculum.  Three years ago my school in Portugal began the process of writing a new curriculum.  Here in Pakistan the word has arrived, but any true understanding of its meaning has yet to take form.  A case in point is a principal I met at a private school in the capital that proudly told me that their school was using the Oxford curriculum.  I was impressed, until later in the day I realized that their textbooks were produced, packaged, and purchased from the Oxford Press publishing company.  In my conversations with the principal at my host schools in Gilgit, and two professors at the Aga Khan University of Educational Development, their confession was that most people in education here believe that curriculum is the table of contents in a textbook.  I became the expert on curriculum in the entire Northern Province, not by training or choice, but by default. My task over two weeks was to rewrite the schools curriculum based on the Pakistani state curriculum, a process that has been left for two years at the school since the process seemed too baffling for anyone in the area.  I can now giggle as I see my name as credited with writing official documents circulated within the schools by the Educational Development branch of the university.

Another shocking realization I came to was the reality of teaching here.  At the end of my first week in the country I was an honorary judge at a science fair in the aforementioned school in Islamabad.  The principal again was proud to explain to me that they teach the scientific method.  What she meant to say is that they read about it.  I saw only a handful of actual experiments, and the other judge, who was the science teacher at the high school, was only luke warm to the idea of experimental value over demonstrations.  One evening helping Kainat (daughter of my host family) with her homework I realized just how science is taught here.  I was to ask her a question about filtering water and I could tell she was trying to memorize the answer.  Ten minutes later I was outside with the whole family pouring dirty water through my dirty socks to see how clean we could get it.  At none of the schools that I have visited here do they actually discover science through playing with materials.  The textbooks are the curriculum and the lesson plans.

I understand these problems; they are related to a generation of educators that were taught under a British textbook system in the foreign language of English.  Change is slow to take place and there is not the adequate amount of money allocated to schools, materials, or training.  Thus everyone is too busy doing the best they can with what they have.  A local public school in Gilgit I visited had some classes outdoors; the classes that did have roofs had as many as 47 students, seated on benches in rooms half the size of our schools.  It is too hot in the afternoon to have classes, so schools finish by one o’clock.  To compensate students and teachers attend on Saturdays.  I visited another high school in Hunza, where the science labs were only distinguishable by some posters and a few models, the geography lab had maps on the walls.  Again materials were sporadic.  I was told of a primary teacher in the mountains who held class with 70 students under the shade of a tree and taught letters and numbers by drawing in the air and then making the symbols with stones in the dirt.  You do what you can.

As you can imagine in such conditions the concept of field trips is mostly unknown.  Teachers do not have the money or foresight to enhance the textbook experience beyond the wall of the classroom.  Upon my return to Islamabad I assisted a friend with some science field trips.  The schools had no idea of what a liability form would be, and teachers did not want to accompany the trip.  Their expectation is that we would just freely teach our lessons and assume all the irresponsibility.  Once we taught the schools how to manage the paperwork behind a field trip we had to teach the students the lessons.  The irony was that the birds and sounds that we were trying to teach about were the actual distractions that limited the students learning.  The nature hikes were limited successes for us, but a giant leap forward towards real teaching for the teachers who did attend. 

The teaching environment here is primitive in comparison to the Snoozelin Room I visited at St. Catherine’s in Peterborough; however the effort of the students and teachers is equitable to our own.  I know I am bias, but for the most part I think teachers are good hearted, hard working, and every child hungers to learn anywhere you find yourself in the world.  My host schools in Gilgit were no different.  I did find myself to be the only male on staff who wasn’t the driver, accountant or guard.  Most teachers are married women. Except of course in the boy’s schools, government schools are gender segregated.  But as for me teaching is business as usual.

Who doesn’t like to start the day with a boisterous game of ‘king stop’, or cricket?  At 9:00 the shout of “class time” is called out and everyone runs to their respective classes, the only hesitation is to shake hands and say, “good morning” with everyone along the way.  I am affectionately called ‘uncle’ by the students, most of who can not say my name.  The school I spent the most of my time at was the Menaz Fatima Montessori School, a primary school with four levels of kindergarten and continues up to grade three.   They have chairs not desks, but beyond what I have already explained they teach essentially the same subjects as we do with the added subject of Islam.  Of course we break for tea each day at 11:00; it is only civilized to do so.

The real action was at the Special Education Center.  Classes were as many as eight students to one teacher and the range of student diagnosis was staggering.  I was fortunate enough to attend a Special Olympic coaches’ clinic with some teachers on my first weekend and we then implemented some of the races and drills during my visits.  The school has incredible facilities considering the norm here and they are struggling with the problem of increased overcrowding or turning away needy children.  I was treated to a real learning experience here, the needs of these students range from daily physiotherapy, to structured lessons, to life skills, and all within an environment where they are given responsibility and treated with care and respect.   To me the school will always be about one special boy, ‘Taz’.  He has mental difficulties, almost fully blind and is the school’s behavioural problem, and I am sure that is not the full extent of his diagnosis.  Medical facilities here are scarce as you may well imagine.  But each day ‘Taz’ was also my personal guide and caretaker whilst I was on site.  We spent an entire hour one day writing out the alphabet, singing it out for each letter, tracing it on his hand, looking for visual clues in the room and even finding the peg board letters to use as a guide for writing.  He utterly failed his required provincial test, but we all celebrated the success of his efforts; it was the first time he had accomplished the task. 

The schools are toying with the idea of inclusive education between the two.  I don’t really see how it will work, but most people couldn’t imagine things working as well as I see given their situation in general. Where there is a will there is a way.  Isn’t that what we are teaching anyways?

My situation was very unique; the school has only had two other foreign volunteers in its ten year history.  They had no idea how to develop their curriculum and my appearance seemed to be a gift from God, or so I was continually told.  I worked night and day to do my best for the schools to make the best of our situation.  In return they treated me with a gracious respect and honour that I can’t put into words.  I am going to miss this place.  Any good teacher learns as much from an experience as the students, and this place will have a lasting impact on me in and out of the classroom.

I have to finish with a thought that finally dawned on me the other day as I was walking to school.  We have something wonderful and special in our schools in Peterborough and I know we all take it for granted.  I have been in schools, private and public, in Shanghai, Soweto, Istanbul, North Africa, and throughout Europe, all of them are walled fortresses with guards at the gate.  In Jerusalem the guard even carried a pistol.  I remember as a boy running back to St. Teresa’s to play in the yard on weekends and after school, in the winter a rink was made up on the PUC hill.  In a recent return trip to observe some programs the situation is still the same, albeit two soccer fields now stand where our rink once was.  What a wonderful message that our schools are a welcoming , open,  and free place for our children and others to grow up and play, between and beyond the bells.   It is a value of trust and responsibility I hope we continue to install in our children for generations to come.