Hopes and fears

"With her fluent Urdu tinged with a Punjabi accent, Zarmeen throws in several words from English as she says, “I had seen some educated people from the city. The way they spoke, the way they carried themselves – it made me want to be like them.” http://tribune.com.pk/story/412265/a-dream-fulfilled-college-gates-open-for-guards-daughter/#. The article published in Tribune is titled as A dream fulfilled. I read this article as a hope for them who strive hard and reach where they have dreamed to be, but on the other hand I fear about what we are doing in institutions like LUMS. What dreams are we giving to the new generation? To explain my fears I offer you to read Bourdieu’s arguments concerning cultural capital as he "vociferously challenged the widespread view of modern schooling as a mobility engine that promotes or demotes people through the class structure simply on the basis of their talents and efforts. Indeed, from Bourdieu’s highly critical vantage point, modern systems of schooling are far more adept at validating and augmenting cultural capital inherited from the family than they are at instilling it in children who enter the institution with few or none of the requisite dispositions and skills. Consequently, he maintained, the educational systems of modern societies tend to channel individuals towards class destinations that largely (but not wholly) mirror their class origins. Moreover, they tend to elicit acceptance of this outcome (i.e. legitimation), both from those who are most privileged by it and those who are disfavored by it" (Bourdieu & Passeron 1977 [1970]). I wish educational planners and policy makers may be able to realize what people like Bourdieu and Paulo Freire kept telling ...

I forget in my honesty

I have experienced it many a times... someone gave me some money to keep and after a year when he came to take his money I actually had completely forgotten, I opened my locker and found the money just there as it is. I was so ashamed of myself and I thought it was very irresponsible of me. But then I felt it was very good that I did not remember I had his money, it was a kind of best way to keep someone's money safe even from myself.

Someone once gave me his password to send an email. After a few months he wanted me to edit a draft email and I had actually forgotten his password. I tried my best but could not remember so I asked him again, he could not believe that I had not saved it or noted it anywhere...I just thought why would I?

Recently I met some of my clients whom I had done some counselling a few years back and they asked me do I remember their problem and I could not remember until they reminded me. I am a psychologist and an educator I should actually never try to remember my clients' /students' names and cases.

I usually do not forget things. I could only conclude that i forget the things I think I do not have a right to remember... this is my professional and personal honesty and now I do not regret but feel great knowing that I forget only in my deepest honesty...I think this is the best thing I have.

Stop Believing blindly and start thinking...

we believe whatever our parents say...
we believe whatever our teachers say...
we believe whatever our religious preachers say...
we believe whatever our loved ones say...

Believing parents kills our curiosity and creativity.They train us to do things in their way. We doubt everyone who says something against what they have told us. If parents have a conflict we join one or the other person and believe the other one to be wrong. If parents have a conflict with someone else, we join our parents side believing that all others are wrong. We believe they know us better, we believe they will never tell us anything wrong. We just become blind followers...

Believing teachers keeps us illiterate in the sense that we could not think independently, they train us to read, write, solve mathematical problems by their given formula and just believe whatever the books say, even at higher education we read recommended books, we cannot think about who is saying this and why. We believe what is taught or we believe one theorist or group of theorists or the other. We just become blind followers...

Believing religious scholars keeps us away from our faith. They train us to say prayers as they do. When they say only our religion is the true religion, we believe it and then we begin to feel as if God is only going to be on our side. Whatever we may do our religion is true so at the end we'll be rewarded for that and no one else. We begin to believe that God will only reward us if we do what these preachers are telling us to do and we'll be badly punished otherwise. We believe whatever is being defined to us as piousness is what God wants from us. We
just become blind followers...

Believing our loved ones makes us insane. They tell us they love us and we believe. We tell them we love them and they believe. We have been trained to believe blindly so whatever we say to each other we can easily believe that. Until the reality strikes. We tell each other we are the best people and we tell each other no one can love more than we do. We believe each other and make each other believe it too; and we enjoy being the blind followers...

Think about all I said and please do not believe me...just think about it!

They can have their own choices...

I am unable to understand how can we force our choices on anyone...even on our own kids. As elders we are responsible to convey to them what we learned about life. It may be religion or it may just be social norms, we need to share all that we learned and it is a responsibility no doubt. But we do not even know when we turn this responsibility into an authority and we begin to enforce our choices on others...we not only enforce it on youngsters but we try to enforce upon all others around us...in our personal life as a mother, father, husband, wife, brother, sister and even as a friend...we want others to be what we want them to be or otherwise we'll at least disconnect and at most destroy...
This behavior spreads around the society and in one way or the other we seek to get this power...as religious leaders, as teachers, as landlords, as factory owners, as managers, as govt officers, as political leaders, ... we all tend to enforce our choices ... this is completely opposite to what democratic ideology says... we are unable to learn what others want we only learn what we want and how to tell others that this is the right thing...we are unable to give them the choice and we are unable to think about it...
Let us try and differentiate between responsibility and authority of "positions" that we have ... and when we are in a responsible position let's make sure we help them to have a safe, secure and happy life with open choices rather than having a safe, secure and happy life only if they follow our choices but otherwise we'll at least disconnect and at most destroy...

I wish my people learn it in their personal and professional life and my religious and political "leaders" may understand this too...

EXTREMISM IS NOT JUST...

I have noticed that whenever we begin to talk about extremism, we end up talk about religious fundamentalism... I have lived in three societies (PAKISTAN, UK and USA). I have been hearing so much about extremism...just talking to someone on the other day, we were discussing about why some women from very decent family background behave odd. I corrected and mentioned it is not only about women, it is also about men. I said it is a result of social extremism and my friend could not understand.
The particular female we were talking about was someone who keeps changing boy friends and each time blames the boy to be going too fast while she was just trying to be friendly... Any way lets not be specific...coming back to extremism, I tried to explain it to my friend that in the extremist societies one form of extremism is that females tend to behave in an extreme feminine way and similarly men tend to behave extreme masculine way. Similarly elders tend to believe that youngsters cannot and should not say even a single word in opposing them, while the youngsters feel only being rebellious is the way to make their elders convinced. The rich think poor have no right to live better and the poor think the only way to live is to snatch. The weak thinks the only way to survive is to keep crying and telling the whole world about miseries, while the stronger thinks the only way to live is to keep the weak suppressed. This is definitely all social extremism which has nothing to do with religious extremism...and until we do not maintain a more neutral value system we won't be able to pull this label off our society!

Around the table...

Learning happens consciously or unconsciously...
We had a strong tradition of sitting at the dining table (or dastarkhwan) with the whole family and have a quality time together.

جب ہم کھانے کی میز پر مسکراتے ہوے بیٹھتے ہیں، تو ہماری مسکراہٹ میں سب سے پہلے تو الله کا شکر رہتا ہے. میز پر کیا موجود ہے اور کیا نہیں اسس سے کوئی فرق نہیں پڑتا. خاص بات یہ ہوتی ہے کہ تمام گھرانہ اس وقت ایک ساتھ بیٹھا ہے. کھانے کی میز پر رونق رکھنا نہ صرف برکت پیدا کرتا ہے بلکہ یہ تمام گھرانے کی تربیت کا موقع ہوتا ہے . مائیں بچوں کو ڈانٹنے سے پرہیز کرتی ہیں، میاں بیوی لڑائی سے گریز کرتے ہیں اور سب لوگ تحمل اور بردباری کا مظاہرہ کرتے ہیں، بزرگوں کا احترام کیا جاتا ہے، بچوں کو سلیقے سے کھانے کی آداب سکھاے جاتے ہیں (بہ شرط یہ کہ مائیں چللاتی نہ رہیں ) کھانے کے بعد کچھ دیر سب ایک ساتھ بیتھتے ہیں اور ہر طرح کے مسائل پر بات چیت کی جاتی ہے ... اگر ان سب باتوں کا خیال رکھا جاتے تو سوچئے کتنی اہم تربیت ہے یہ
مگر ہم اور بہت سی چیزوں کی طرح کھانے کی میز کےآداب گنوا رہے ہیں، ہم گھروں کی رونق کھو رہے ہیں ، ہر وقت بے برکتی کا رونا روتے ہیں، بزرگوں کو بچوں کی سامنے نیچا دکھاتے ہیں، مائیں چیختی رہتی ہیں اور فساد کھڑا رکھتی ہیں کہ بچے کچھ کھاتے کیوں نہیں،حضرات کو مہنگائی
نے مسکرانے سے قصر کر رکھا ہے، سب لوگ کھانے کی میز پر آتے ہے اک دوجے پر احسان کرتے ہیں، الله کا شکر تو بہت دور کی بات ہے... بہت سے گھرانوں میں تو ایک ساتھ کھانا کھانے کا رواج ہی ختم ہو چکا ہے... گھرانے سے تربیت کے مواقعے ختم ہوتے جایئں گے تو معاشرے میں سب سے اونچا بولنا، ایک دوسرے کی بات کاٹنا، بات بے بات بدتمیزی کرنا اتنا عام ہو جاتا ہے کہ ہم بچوں کے ساتھ بیٹھ کراخلاق سے گری ہوئی مووی تو نہیں دیکھتے لیکن بدتمیزی سے بھرپور ٹالک شوز ضرور دیکھتے ہیں اور سمجھتے ہیں ہم سب تہذیب یافتہ ہوتے جا رہے ہیں....

Sharpner

Life seems to be a sharpner...
I hope many of us still use the lead pencils which need sharpners to make it more pointed...the better a pencil is sharpened the more nicely it draws and writes... if you have drawn with these pencils you'll agree there are some places where we do not need such a sharp end, some of us even prefer writing with a little softer nib as well... but yes after some time we have to sharpen our pencils otherwise it will be unable to write any more.

This is exactly what continuous learning means to me...The learning may be formal or informal it does help us being able to be productive otherwise after sometime we'll lose our abilities and capabilities without even knowing...this is why I chose the path to keep learning...

Another interesting feature is what life itself keeps doing to us... it also sharpens us but that is when we are unaware and that is unconscious learning... we do not even know and still we keep learning... so the choice is ours if we want to hold the sharpner or we let the fate do it for us without us knowing ...