Young Pakistanis Take One Problem Into Their Own Hands

LAHORE, Pakistan — The idea was simple, but in Pakistan, a country full of talk and short on action, it smacked of rebellion.

A group of young Pakistani friends, sick of hearing their families complain about the government, decided to spite them by taking matters into their own hands: every Sunday they would grab shovels, go out into their city, and pick up garbage.

Lahore’s schools hiring private security consultants

Government’s security guidelines not enough?

By Afnan Khan writing for the Daily Times, Pakistan

LAHORE: In the wake of reported terrorist threats for schools providing Western educational facilities, the city’s elite educational institutions are hiring private security consultants to provide foolproof security to students and faculty.

The schools have decided not to rely solely on the security instructions issued by the government.

Is Pakistan collapsing? A father and a citizen speaks

By Ali Dayan Hasan

At my daughter’s annual school parent’s day event in Lahore last month, the tension was palpable. Bewildered at the speed with which this innocuous annual event had transformed into a maximum security operation, anxious parents filed in their hundreds past security guards, metal detectors and bag searches into Theatre Number Two of the Alhamra Cultural Complex – a modernist structure that the citizens of Lahore would tell you proudly is amongst the largest public-funded exhibition and theatre complexes in Asia. They were there to see their children, none older than seven, perform the usual amalgam of tableaux on “Peoples and Festivals of the World”, a smattering of Kathak – a North Indian classical dance, a “Chinese dance” performance and, of course, my daughter’s favorite – a Disney-esque version of the Bangles hit – “Walk Like an Egyptian.” The event began, as always, with recitation from the Quran. Tense primary school teachers grappled with security issues and as I walked in; a very public stand-off between a security posse comprising teachers, local police and plain clothes personnel and a random man who was on the premises for “no known reason” was underway. The man was eventually deemed harmless and let go but there was no parent who entered that hall without making note of the exits. Two hours later, as we filed out, I and virtually every relieved parent thought and said the same thing: “One more year like the last one and next year there will be no Parents Day. Another month or two like the previous ones and there might be no school left open.”

Since December 27, 2007 – the dreadful winter’s day when streets across Pakistan fell silent in the aftermath of the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, Pakistanis have understood and expressed in varying degrees, or disagreed in desperate denial, that the Islamization project unleashed by the United States and implemented by the Pakistani military since 1979 had turned on its creators, snarling at the United States, devouring Pakistan and exposing its army for the megalomaniac but intensely incompetent institution that it is. And the narrative of impending disaster, brutal dispossession and disembodied lives in exile for stateless citizens harking back pathetically to a lost life, hitherto the preserve of Palestinians and Cubans, Afghans, Somalis and the ethnic mosaic of the Balkans, beckons to Pakistanis as well. One could argue that Pakistanis are scared of a future comprising daily doses of floggings, beheadings, daisy cutters and drones. They might be too. But no one has had time to think that far ahead. The truth is more prosaic: After all, if your children cannot go to school, the future has ceased to be. And when societies cannot have a future, they die.

State should provide sex education

‘State should provide sex education’

* City lacks community centres where the youth can freely express themselves
* Popular social networking sites are being misused by the youth

By Ali Usman (Daily Times)

LAHORE: The state does not provide the youth with proper guidance regarding gender issues and sexual studies, leading to odd behaviour when they express their suppressed ideas in frustration at the wrong place and time, experts told Daily Times.

They said that even in big cities like Lahore, there was a lack of community centres where the youth could express themselves and exchange ideas. “When the youth is left with no way to express what they feel or think, they end up using the wrong channels to release their frustration. Proof of this is the social networking websites that are being extensively misused by Internet surfers, who upload obscene pictures and/or vulgar messages to them,” they said.

Schools I – If it ain’t elite, it’s gotta be highbrow

posted by Rafay Alam

Quality education in Pakistan is – at the primary and secondary level – almost entirely dominated by the private sector.  With so many schools out there, there is bound to be a shortage of names.

I’m beginning a series of photos of schools in Lahore. 

 Enjoy.

Elite schools may be offered govt land in remote areas

Saturday, August 23, 2008
By Khalid Khattak (NEWS)

THE government in order to encourage elite private schools to establish campuses in remote areas is considering various proposals including provision of land on lease to such schools.

It is learnt that the Punjab Schools Education Department recently held meetings with the representatives of some elite private schools on the instructions of Punjab Chief Minister Mian Shahbaz Sharif.

Sources privy to the development said that Schools Education Secretary Nadeem Ashraf recently held a meeting with representatives of Beaconhouse Schools System, Lahore Grammar School (LGS) and The City School. The meeting deliberated on various proposals such as provision of land on lease besides exempting schools from various kinds of taxes. They said that private schools might open franchises in remote areas on the pattern of Beaconhouse School System operating across the country.

21 government schools in Lahore non-functional

By Khalid Khattak in Lahore

AS many as 21 government schools in District Lahore have been non-functional for the last many months, exposing lack of interest and commitment on part of officials concerned.

Sources in the Punjab School Education Department told The News that reports recently submitted by Monitoring and Evaluation Assistants (MEAs) of the Chief Minister’s Monitoring Force disclosed that there were dozens of non-functional schools in each district of the province.

The sources added most of these schools stopped functioning during previous regime because of acute shortage of schoolteachers.