WHY DON’T YOU LOVE ME?

I wrote this article which was also published here. Our elite crowd hated it. This is how they reacted:

 

Ridiculous Sentences

Although Zohair Toru has provided us all with a few days of laughter, I agree that it’s time to stop. He is, after all, just a product of the society that he comes from. He is not one of a kind at all. As a teacher, I can tell you that I have come across many, many Torus, most of who are Imran Khan supporters. It is a private school dilemma related to the fact that education in this country is one big joke. We don’t teach kids how to think. The teachers talk in the same kind of fallacies Khan puts forth. What else do you expect?

Now, let’s get over it please? Or at least let’s try? I’m going to try and help by putting up these sentences which reflect just how incredibly pathetic the O and A level school system is. Warning: just like Toru’s little rant, they are funny at first, but if you stop and reflect upon this, you might start to feel a bit sad.

These are actual sentences written by O level students from Aitchison College, a highly reputed school. This school is considered to be the best boys school in the country, yet they can not write or speak English, even though they are (supposedly) taught in it. When I made them do this exercise they cried out against the futility of it. We haven’t done this since class four they cried! This is for kids not us! Well I beg to differ… here are some amazing examples. The word I had given them to make the sentence with is in bold.

1. Shehryar showed an unconscious attitude.
2. The bag was humane.
3. The marital was sick so the marriage was cancelled.
4. I become very historic at times.
5. He became very imaginary writing the essay.
6. He became alternative when the club sent the invitation to join.
7. The marital relationship with Omer and Ahmed is very weak.
8. A historical move, “We win together”.
9. He was vulnerable finding his boyfriend Ali.
10. Whether or whether not I’m going to school, and you will do my home work.
11. The human race is the most superior race of all races.
12. There was nothing marital between S and F after they were married because they were separated.
13. He has more muscles than I do.
14. When people see a good amount of money they get a little mussle (sic; mussel).
15. A regular pattern was made in the sand as he ran here and there as he went discourse.
16. When I went to the party people said I was looking very soothe.
17. The detrimental from the robbery was Rs. 1 crore.

And here are some classic arguments & conclusions put forward by A level students

1. “… it is coming to logical conclusions and they are implementing [loose] motions in society”
2. Mekevelli was cool. 2pac said so! and that’s how he spelled it!
3. so the evil Nabateloutians, who live long time ago on black sand beaches of Holy Land (Saudi Arabia), were punished by THE GOD! for being sodomizers and unbelievers!!!
4. the roman emperor, Heraculation…
5. Here’s proof that adversity makes one stronger: I once had a painful jaw operation. It hurt a lot and I was in the hospital for days. Now I am a stronger person therefore adversity makes everyone stronger.

It may be very easy to laugh now, but this depresses me immensely as a teacher.

Shaking Pakistan with Lipstick

I must say that Newsweek Pakistan has outdone itself with its list of the 100 Women Who Shake Pakistan. Never has such an extraordinary list been created. I bow down.

Some of the women listed here have “shaken” Pakistan on such a large scale that it’s a wonder that they haven’t had a street named after them yet. The most commendable of the lot, also very well known to all Pakistanis as our very own Estee Lauder, is Mehrbano Sethi, who introduced cosmetics in a country where makeup was largely unavailable. Her contribution to Pakistani womanhood is unparalleled in the history of the country. Let’s bow down.

Sethi has, incredibly, shaken Pakistan with lipstick unlike the no make-up Hina Jillani who was left out of this list for surely a life-long, country-wide, feminist struggle is nowhere near the empowerment women get from layers of foundation. Nothing feels better than sticky lipgloss which gets stuck in your hair. Undoubtedly, nothing is more empowering than nailpolish. Pretty hands stand above and beyond women’s shelters & justice. Only a “jealous” non-elite fool would deny that.

And the women agree. Women from all over the country travel to our major cities where it is available, often in droves, cleaning up shops as they go along. News of Luscious has spread so far & wide in the land that poems based on the products are being memorised in order to advertise to the illiterate. Women in Thar dance to the tunes. Activists have volunteered hours of their lives to translate them into all our national languages. They are jingles so powerful that Abida Parveen herself wouldn’t be able to do them justice. Near eid, our shopkeepers can hardly keep up with the large demand. Medora, Swiss Miss & all the other local beauty brands are seriously considering shutting down. “Even though we’re cheaper, poor people are more than willing to spend money on a product that puts Estee Lauder to shame,” said an employee with tears in her eyes.

“It’s true,” said a woman in a store in Peshawar who had come all the way from Waziristan looking for things she could use to empower the oppressed women of her area with. “We are willing to spend more. Look it’s simple. Medora nailpolish chips in 2 days whereas Luscious lasts me 2.5 days.” In front of my very eyes, she bought everything in the store. “This is the best present I could give to the women living under the Taliban. I don’t care about these rights groups or shelters etc. Women aren’t interested in this funny concept of freedom or equality you silly city fool! They want to look pretty. Don’t you know that’s the only way to feel good?” I hung my head in shame & instantly decided to get a manicure. It didn’t make me feel better, so I’m wondering if I should get my sex changed to male officially…

But in all seriousness, although what Sethi & the other women who I don’t think should be on this list have achieved is commendable, and should indeed be lauded, they are not a patch on the worthier ones who were left out. I admire them for their resolve, but they are not known to most Pakistanis. The only ones who do know them well are those who are catering to their own elite crowd through a publication. It’s something we’ve all witnessed before: sycophantic elite self-love, giving each other way more importance than necessary & making an erroneous assumption that they can speak for Pakistan without knowing the ground realities. How many people even know who Selina Rashid is for example? I do but only because she happens to be related to me & knows the same tiny circle. Much as I admire her & laud her for creating a company that is definitely praiseworthy, I do not think she has “shaken” Pakistan. Her market is a tiny elite circle or those who can afford her services. What she has done is commendable & I sincerely hope more women follow in her footsteps instead of sitting home or baking cupcakes. What I object to is the fact that too many worthier women, who actually represent Pakistan, were left out.

Honestly, I often wonder what planet our elite live on in general, but that’s another story.

And let me state here, again, like I have so many times in the past, that the elite self-love circle will probably be out for my blood for even daring to say this. And I will indeed report all their hilarious comments back. I will be accused of being “jealous” & “insecure” (which is basically the following wail: “WHY DON’T YOU LIKE ME DAMN IT?! WHY DON’T YOU LOVE ME BLINDLY LIKE YOU SHOULD?!”) because, after all, who on earth would voluntarily make the decision to be a low-life teacher?  This is the only way they know how to deal with valid & logical criticism which makes me sad, especially as a teacher, to see so many parhay likhay jahils. What makes this whole song & dance the Lahori elite and I have going is the fact that the more they hate me, the more confident I become as a writer for, after all, being detested by those who lack brains is sometimes a bigger compliment than critical acclaim. I won’t deny that I find it all terrible amusing and when they do the whole drama, I thoroughly enjoy watching them drive themselves up the wall for no good reason whatsoever. It’s comical, really.

Let the witch hunt begin. I’m quite used to it and I have elephant skin. But first let me bow down to this shameless display of irresponsible “journalism”.

Name & Shame

There are loads of students in universities & schools across Pakistan who think it’s perfectly acceptable to email/message random teachers and ask them to do their work for them.

Well, this teacher is getting sick of these people. I am not interested in interacting with people who have no concept of academic ethics. And I’m sincerely hoping that this new section of my blog will act as a serious deterrent to those who think that this kind of behaviour is acceptable. Although I normally don’t even reply, there are some interactions that are worth showcasing.

Here’s a prime example of this kind of shameless behaviour.

Please note the fact that the student admits that he knows this is wrong. And I also don’t like having to reply with a threat to report these kids, but I also know, from personal experience, that they won’t stop otherwise. There have been times when random students have sent multiple emails, effectively spamming my inbox, because they think they can get away with doing so. It’s a sad reflection of our education system as a whole that encourages shortcuts, tricks & gimmicks instead of hard work & critical thinking.

Of course my own students have always tried to pull these tricks. For example, many who can’t be bothered to read the course material, come to class and do their own research think it’s perfectly ok to ask me questions that I addressed oh, I don’t know, about a hundred times while they were snoring. Emails asking me “how to cite” despite being given a workshop, a full class, all material required for citation & internet resources are a source of frustration and leave a very bad impression. What makes this problematic is the fact that there’s a writing centre, open all week, for their use, complete with student tutors. How lazy can you possibly be, I always think. It takes longer to email me this long list of questions than it does to search for the answer.

Who on earth nurtured these kids into believing that it’s ok to do this? The answer: we did.

When I was teaching A level students in Aitchison, I was constantly being pressured to write their college essays for them. When I said I was happy to help by just giving feedback, they would walk in with blank papers, bark a topic to me & expect me to shit out a nice little essay for them, right there and then. When I didn’t, they would, you guessed it, cry & whine until they found another teacher to do it for them. And sadly, they would always find another teacher to do so, which was very upsetting for me to watch.

Yes, upsetting and genuinely unsettling. You see, even though I did go to a private school in Wales, I didn’t ever, even once, consider asking my teachers to do anything like this. Why? Because we knew that we had to write our own essays & asking anyone else to do so would be like cheating. We understood that, and even if we didn’t, not a single teacher would have done so. THAT is professionalism. And when I took a stand to do the right thing, I suffered the consequences for trying to be ethical in an extremely unethical environment. “You MUST help your students!” they would say. See the twisted definition here? It’s synonymous with “do it ALL for them”. And if you then were the one black sheep who didn’t do something most teachers didn’t have a problem doing, then you were the villain. How these teachers sleep at night after doing this all day is beyond me. I ended up quitting because I had a hard time living with myself.

In our schools we spoon feed our students so much that by the time they come to university, they expect the teachers to indulge their brattish behaviour. They think it’s normal to ask a teacher what resources they should use instead of going to the library and researching for themselves. Heck, we don’t even provide them decent libraries in schools! This is just an outcome of what they are already used to, really. We shouldn’t be too surprised, should we?

This leads me to another headache all teachers the world over face: students constantly badgering them to improve their grade for all sorts of ludicrous reasons. I’ve spoken to many at length about this issue. One, my personal favourite, is: “I deserve an A because I am the best. I say I’m the best and I insist I know better than an experienced teacher with an MA in this subject”. I call this the (LGS Defence) Gremlin syndrome, a result of private schools that put their students on undeserved pedestals. Undoubtedly Gremlins top the list of the most difficult students. Oh, the stories so many of us could tell you!

The most common one, however, is “oh shit I fucked up the course by being a lazy brat so now please pity me and pass me for no good reason whatsoever even if I cheated or plagiarised”.  With this one comes much begging & crying. And when those don’t work, threats start to pour in ranging from “my uncle works in the ISI” to “I am related to X,Y and Z” and “you know that anyone can charge you with the blasphemy law based on things you say, right?” is now cropping up countrywide.

Again, this comes back to schools, especially private schools. LGS, for example, pressured me to pass all the students I was teaching because they “didn’t want to lose money” (verbatim from the Principal’s mouth). They wanted me to pass boys so weak in English that they couldn’t string a sentence together. It had been decided, in advance, that they would be promoted to O levels just because they parents threatened to pull them out if they were taught Metric. In Aitchison, although the admin did not ask me to pass students unnecessarily, they did absolutely nothing about the physical threats I received. When students call you up and tell you how they will rape you in explicit detail, or when they physically harm you by pushing you around then shouldn’t they, ideally, be punished if not expelled? The answer, in Pakistan, is a resounding NO.

So when students demand that their grade be “improved” I have to remind myself that this is a result of their education. After all, many schools happily change grades for transcript as Aitchison now certainly does. Recently, I saw a real transcript and another doctored one prepared for universities by the admin. I was horrified to see that the student who had been given Ds by me now had As, but let me assert here that Aitchison is not alone. All our “best” private schools happily do so. There are only a handful who don’t. They also don’t check for plagiarism, a common problem the world over, definitely not isolated to Pakistan alone. As far as I know, the vast majority of our schools (and unfortunately universities too) do not use a plagiarism checker before checking essays so sadly, many students get away with it. I’ve had numerous encounters with students insisting they didn’t plagiarise, lying with a straight face which then turns red when a computer generated plagiarism report is shown to them.

But plagiarism almost seems like a mild offense as compared to cheating, which, in many schools doesn’t result in an expulsion, suspension, detention or even a failing grade. My personal view is that if someone is cheating, take the paper away and give them a zero. If the same person repeats the offense, take disciplinary action. I’ve tried to do this a few times. I say tried because the schools don’t let you fail the kid. Oh no, instead they do utterly ludicrous things like “separate” the two whispering to each other, turning a blind eye to this issue. What kind of behaviour does this reinforce? Does it discourage cheating at all? Of course not! When students have spent their entire academic career being moved from desk to desk when they were cheating instead of being punished, they do it with full confidence. They know there are absolutely no consequences other than a few seconds of their time lost while moving. This is so stupefyingly counterproductive and sends out this message: “it’s ok to cheat because there are no real repercussions.”

As I now publicly declare that I’m quitting teaching once this semester is over, even though I really appreciate the completely professional & ethical atmosphere of my current workplace, I leave you now with one single thought, a question I often ponder over: are we really educating or are we creating armies of brats who think it’s perfectly acceptable to indulge in all sorts of academically unethical behaviour? Let me know what you think.

Your Happiness, My Misery

“Come participate in my happiness!” they all say to me, over and over again, the same fucking phrase so oft regurgitated that it has lost all power, all meaning, becoming a string of words that go in one ear and out another.

“Your happiness is my misery!” I tell them, the same fucking phrase of so oft regurgitated that it has lost all power, all meaning, becoming a string of words that go in one ear and out another.

Your happiness, my misery; it’s all one & the same when it comes to wedding related ostentatious “look at me I am Punjabi loin ROAARRR!” events that I can’t stand; these “functions”, these displays of wealth, these symbols of power make my blood boil.

I am not interested, I maintain, over and over again, in wasting my precious time with something that will upset me, aggravate me, and make me angry & venomous. Weddings turn me into Euripides’ Medea, an untameable, outraged virago, ready to sacrifice her own for a betrayal. And what a betrayal you are dear DNA sharers! What a betrayal!

When you say that my misery makes you happy I feel betrayed. I feel cheated on. I feel like I’m being reduced to insignificance while you place yourself on an undeserved pedestal. I feel like I’m being asked to sacrifice MY happiness for yours for no good reason other than the fact that you want to show off your popularity. “Look at me!” these weddings scream. “I am so rich, so popular!”

No, thank you, but I am not interested in helping anyone perpetuate a myth of family unity. And I am not willing to sacrifice my mental health for you, even if I do love you. Love & misery go hand in hand in seems, for me, the Punjabi wedding avoider. How can it not when it seems that they revel in my misery.

Your misery is my happiness is what you seem to be telling me, illogically.

Shall we deconstruct? Let’s.

“Share my happiness” they say, as if happiness is something like a candy bar we can split into two. The message this sends me is one of conformity. Don’t dare to be different. You will not belong. Happiness should, apparently, mean one and the same to everyone.

Disagreements are not tolerated it seems. The right to define what happiness is for me isn’t tolerated it seems.

“I do not ask you to eat pork!” I once yelled. Asking me to come to a wedding is like asking me to shove aside my principles for one day. How convenient that it’s ok to ask me to do so, but if asked to do something they detest for me, I wonder if they ever will. I will not try to even find out because I do not think that those who revel in my misery have any real love for me.

It takes a particularly sick & twisted, sinister mind to revel in my misery, declaring it happiness. I can’t help but question this weird definition of love. What kind of love is this, this oppressive emotion that relies on my misery in order to define the opposite?

From now on, no more. No more will I indulge any more of this “share my happiness” bullshit. For you see, your happiness is my misery.