KARACHI: The Society of Pakistan English Language Teachers (SPELT) celebrated their 40 years, under the title of ‘Four Decades Strong: Honouring Our Past, Embracing Our Future 1984-2024’, at the Pakistan American Cultural Centre (PACC) on Saturday, which also happened to be World Teachers Day.

The venue of the celebration, PACC, was where SPELT had held its very first conference in 1985. Many teachers who have been with the organisation for all these years came to remember and share with others some of their fondest memories of working as a SPELT member.

Shireen Khan shared how she started her teaching career by helping a school dropout in her neighbourhood to resume school. Farheen Hassan said that SPELT helped her grow both personally and professionally.

Founding member Ambrina Kazi said that she was happy to see so much teachers’ development in all these years. Fatima Shahbuddin said that she had been with SPELT for 39 of its 40 years. “I have learnt a lot with SPELT and I hope it is equally helpful to the teachers who are a part of it now,” she said.

Gul-e-Rana Jaffri, who has been with SPELT for 31 years, said that SPELT is a voluntary organisation with selfless volunteers working for the uplift of education in Pakistan.

Dr Fouzia Shamim looked back all their annual conference topics and spoke of the various courses introduced by them along with mention of their sister organisations with whom they keep sharing ideas.

“There has been a lot of learning, going back and forth with ideas,” she said.

Meanwhile, Dr Maliha Ahmed provided a glimpse of next month’s SPELT conference ‘Transitions in ELT: Past, Present and Future’ to happen on Nov 16 and 17.

More messages of felicitations from old SPELT members and participants in former SPELT conferences, who could not be there in person, were also played on the screen.

SPELT’s president Mohsin Tejani said there were a collective spirit that had helped teachers in the instruction of the English language while being a beacon of innovation. Later, he also moderated a panel discussion with CEO Idara-i-Taleem-o-Aagahi, Baela Raza Jamil and Dean, Institute of Education Development, AKU, Prof Dr Farid Panjwani on the topic of ‘Education in a state of emergency — focus on teacher training’.

Baela Raza Jamil said that teachers are a rich social capital. “Teachers create magic. But they are only seen as human capital. We don’t see them as a social capital though they are reaching out to not only students, they are talking to the parents, the community, etc, as well. They go beyond boundaries to transform situations. They make a difference. Then what happens when these teachers are empowered?” She pointed out.

Dr Farid Panjwani said that SPELT has taken the English language and turned it into a tool to spread quality education. He said that they spoke to some students to learn that they want their teachers to be able to explain things to them. “They also wanted their teachers to understand them,” he said, adding that even computers can teach but they don’t have that emotion or passion of a human. Passion leads to competencies,” he said.

Low salaries hurting quality of journalists, moot told

The second panel of the day dealt with the topic of ‘Has media deteriorated as a source of educational values and coherence?’

Moderated by senior journalist Ghazi Salahuddin, it had author and literary critic Muneeza Shamsie, communications specialist Seema Tahir Khan, senior analyst Mazhar Abbas, former CEO of the Dawn Media Group Hameed Haroon, Op-Ed editor for The News Zebunnisa Burki as participants.

“The press thrives on an open society. Our society is not open. We have the most corrupt ruling class. We have no freedom of expression or press freedom. When the press is attacked there is no one or no mechanism to defend it,” pointed out Hameed Haroon who quoted various examples of putting the press in chains such as making newsprint inaccessible, stopping transmissions, etc.

Ghazi Salahuddin added to that with: “Freedom of media means the freedom of society and the freedom of the people. When we have restrictions imposed on us, we are left all alone.”

Mazhar Abbas said that there had seen media curbs as far back as soon after 1947. “Apart from that news became the first casualty because of advertisements. We kill news to make space for advertisements,” he said while also pointing out that the financial model of the electronic media is also bad with huge differences in the salaries of anchors and desk editors.

On the mention of independence, Hameed Haroon reminded that the first censored person in the country was its founder the Quaid-i-Azam, whose speech to the constituent assembly of Pakistan on August 11, 1947 was censored.

Mazhar Abbas then said that low salaries and not being paid for three months or over was also hurting the quality of journalists.

“Then if the journalist is not loud or sensational enough, he won’t get ratings. When he doesn’t get ratings, he is sidelined,” he said.

Zebunnisa Burki said that she could see that people were giving far too much importance to mainstream media, but they were getting news from social media. “Technological interruption is bad but also good,” she opined.

Seema Tahir Khan said that initially she wanted to educate, enlighten and entertain through her three channels. “But then I realised that the viewers were only looking for entertainment. Then entertainment was to be used as a sugar-coated pill to educate and enlighten,” she added.

Published in Dawn, October 6th, 2024