Anantnag:It was teacher’s day yesterday. But in curfewed Kashmir, kids celebrated it differently. The schools though closed from last two months didn’t deter teachers and students from teaching and learning—in the atmosphere of everyday atrocity.
In one of the curfew schools in south Kashmir’s Anantnag district, students performed, amid joy and agony. Joy, that they have celebrated it with new friends and agony that it was not this time at school.
In this makeshift school, at Reshibazar Anantnag, around 150 students from nursery to 12th standard with their 10 teachers performed skit, poetry and Tarana.
“We are so happy that we are able to celebrate Teacher’s Day despite our schools are closed,” says Sifta Jan. This sixth standard student’s happiness is not undying though. “I feel sad when I see everything shut. I fear to walk on streets when I see forces with their guns. It is scary.”
For the teachers, this is a unique experience.
“Teaching them gives us peace of heart,” says a teacher. “At home we used to feel depressed, doing nothing for whole day.”
“We stay busy teaching them and the day passes happily, we make them learn and we too learn,” she adds.
However, not all the teachers feel same.
Khaytul Abyad, an award-winning artist, and fine arts graduate from Kashmir University, teaches in this curfew school, but feels worried.
“These are so innocent kids but sometimes they ask us certain question that really worries me,” says Abyad. “When once we asked kids to make drawing, depicting what you want to become,” she says, “most of them made sketches of gunmen, dying people and wailing women.”
Sitting behind the drawing, portraying a gloomy face, canvassed by Abyad, she says, “we are trying to shift their attention by introducing them to cultural activities but it is difficult.”
While the forces are guarding the deserted alleys, in the congested lanes of old town Anantnag , a voice calling, “yete yee na amun,” echoes the walls.
“We are in conflict and we have to keep ourselves learning and mostly happy,” Zulikha, a 6th standard student of Radiant Public School Anantnag says. “We want to go school but how will we go when people die here every day.”
Akhtar Appeal To Restart Schools
Maintaining that a generation of Kashmiri youth can’t be kept away from education for too long, the Minister for Education, Naeem Akhtar Monday sought the support of different sections of the society, including the separatist leadership, in restarting the schooling.
“While all of us are anguished over the loss of precious lives of youth and grievous injuries during recent disturbances, we have to think about that for how long we can keep our children away from schools amid present paining situation,” Akhtar said in his message on Teachers’ Day.
The Minister said unfortunately education has become the biggest casualty of the prevailing unrest and “it is our collective responsibility to think over the terrible consequences of the loss of education of our children.”
He said like drinking water, rations, electricity and other basic amenities of life, education is fundamental to the very existence of a society, and every right-thinking person in Kashmir including the separatist leadership shall have to seriously think over the issue, before it is too late to recoup the academic massive loss.
The Minister said while the Kashmir’s affluent class has already started shifting their children outside the State for education, it is the middle class and the poor whose children are losing out on education because of the prevailing situation.
Hailing the teachers of Jammu and Kashmir for facilitating massive turnaround in the State’s educational sector during the past 2 years, the Minister said due credit goes to the teaching community for bringing this turnaround and the need of the hour is to keep this momentum going so that J&K’s youth cam compete with their counterparts from anywhere in and outside the country.
The Minister said that a new training programme has been launched for the teachers today which will further sharpen their academic skills to the benefit of the students.
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