I do not just want to tell that I miss you. I do not just want to tell you that you are an outstanding teacher. I want to tell you of something far more serious. As I have seen you spread optimism even in the most bleak and dismal times, I consider you as the right audience for my message. Since I arrived here, I have come across many humanists/atheists who I now call friends. I get time to attend meetups, book clubs, and movie nights and many other social/ intellectual discussions. Ms Anda Larson, my friend, dropped Sam Harris’s Free Will in my mail box. She wanted my observations on Sam’s central thesis that Free Will is an illusion. Similarly, my wife and I are re-reading The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn for a book club discussion next week. What is perhaps very relaxing for me here is that I do not have to hide my views and live a different life from what I am used to. I do not have to teach what I do not know well. By the way, I have not had any damnation so far despite the fact that I had the pleasure of experiencing Shabbat; morning and evening mass at Immaculate Conception and winter solstice organized by my friends at the Humanist Association of Greater Philadelphia. My children walk to their school called Jenkintown Elementary/High School. It is a public school. Everyone in the neighborhood sends their children to attend this school. When I went to seek their admission, the school administrator told me that they needed the proof my residence in Jenkintown. I asked her the reason for such a particular concern. She told me that lots of people, who do not live in this area, show up with fake residence claims in order to get admission for their children. We do not have to escort children to their school because crossing guards help children cross the roads in addition to all the strict measures taken by the Jenkintown council to ensure speed limits in the surroundings of the school. My children tell me that they have been provided with a chrome book and an email. i.d. I see them connecting with their teacher even after school hours. In school, they get their newscast regarding their school every Friday. It is prepared and broadcast by the students under the supervision of their teachers. The school web-site is the most active interface for teaching and learning. Music and gymnastic education are perhaps the most important aspects of education in Jenkintown. Like all other children, my children participate in the school choir. The choir performs inside the school and at different places outside the school. After school, they walk to Jenkintown Public Library. It is barely a minute’s walk from our residence. My little one, along with my wife, has joined the literacy program of the public library. They meet every Wednesday. They have got the gift t-shirts of the program and the incentive of attending the program is that by the end of the program those who attend the program will be given a statue as a gift and a certificate. I often compare school life in the US with my own teaching practices and expectations in Pakistan. I now reflect on the fact that I tried to emulate my all great teachers in the West. I would select papers published in peer- reviewed journals and title them as, for example: “Essential Reading for the Course". I never thought that how my students with their schooling experience in Pakistan would connect to experiences of the West. How would they understand the deeper meanings of the issues discussed in them? In my classroom discourse I kept referring to these studies and expected my students to have read and understood them. It never occurred to me that literacy practices were social practices. That the literacy in the broader society is entwined with the literacy required in academia. To be honest, I realize now that I did not consider the fact that my students had very limited proficiency in academic English. My teaching has been devoid of history and context. I presented a view of knowledge operating and evolving in a social vacuum. I have never taught my students my own research. I have never taught them the studies conducted by my colleagues. I have never taught them of the problems they can easily relate to. I have never taught them how to make use of existing knowledge produced in their part of the world. The questions that often bother me are: Is it possible to achieve a higher form of intellectual growth and reasoning without the presence of required infrastructure and practices in the wider society? Can one be natural and confident talking about problems he/she has not experienced in his/her life? Is it really necessary to teach in one language only? These questions still fill my thoughts. Would you, Dr. Sahib, have any particular opinions on these issues? Your views would be most welcome comment The writer is a Visiting Scholar Associate at the Graduate School of Education, University of Pennsylvania, USA.
