The school in Islamabad where Mohammad Ayub teaches is like no other. With no roof, no walls and no tuition fees, anyone who hears about it may be forgiven for thinking that the institution is a figment of the imagination. “Before I started teaching here, people from the surrounding areas used to come here and throw garbage,” Ayub tells Weekend Review. “I cleaned this piece of land with my own hands so children could study here.”
On days when it rains, the students sitting on the vacant plot of land where “master Ayub” teaches find themselves taking cover under the trees. If the weather gets really bad, they are forced to go home early. Many of the pupils work during the daytime and come from families who cannot afford an education.
Believe it or not, despite their manifest hardships, Ayub’s students are among the lucky ones. Pakistan has the world’s second-highest number of children — an estimated 5.1 million — who are out of school. The problem is compounded by the phenomenon of “ghost schools” — state-run institutions which only exist on paper and whose premises are often used for purposes other than education. It is widely predicted the country will fail to achieve the UN Millennium Goal — to have every child receive primary education by 2015.
In the face of such gloomy figures there has been a surge in interest in the international media in the problems facing Pakistan’s education system. This has mainly been sparked by the recent Taliban attack on the 15-year-old Swat valley school girl, Malala Yousafzai, now recovering in a hospital in the United Kingdom. In November, former British prime minister Gordon Brown travelled to Pakistan and handed a petition to President Asif Ali Zardari signed by more than one million people in honour of Yousafzai demanding free and compulsory education for all of the country’s children. “Malala is a role model,” says Asma Shirazi, a popular anchor with a nightly news programme on Dawn News TV. “She was punished for her love of a book, paper or pen. Besides that she did not do any other crime.”
Shirazi met the young girl years before the tragedy in October created world headlines. Back in 2010 she had interviewed Yousafzai for a TV show in Mingora, Swat. “I invited many women over there and nobody came,” she recalls. “No woman came over there except Malala. Though her father is very supportive to her — it also happened because of him — but she came and raised her voice, and this was a very big thing which she did. So, definitely, she is a symbol for education. I was doing a public show, so there was a crowd with me as well. Afterwards it became a little political, and there was also a clash. Anyway, in this kind of society, for someone to come forward in this way and to talk matters a lot.”
Unfortunately it is not just the extremists such as the Taliban who are keeping children away from schools. In large parts of the country where the Taliban do not have a visible presence, there are still millions of children who are being denied education — a right given to them by Article 25 A in the country’s constitution, which states that every child between the ages 5-16 should get free education.
With his school, Ayub , in his very limited capacity, is filling the vacuum left by the neglected state educational system. He tells me he began to teach Islamabad’s neglected children some 27 years ago on a visit to a commercial area in Islamabad. “I looked around in the markets which are considered a VIP area for educated people,” he says. “I saw these children who were washing cars, selling drinks or picking pieces of paper. So, I thought why not talk to these children and find out if they only worked or were also receiving an education. They told me their parents were poor and they could not study. I said, ‘what if I could teach you?’ They said, ‘we do not have the money — how can we study?’”
Ayub told them that he would teach them without charging any fees. The children asked him if he had a school. “I said I don’t have a school but I can teach you right here,” he recalls. “In the beginning they made fun of me, saying that I was lying.” Undeterred, he eventually persuaded two or three students to sit down with him and study. “I started with Alif Baa,” Ayub says. “The second day, two or four friends from the group also came.” Soon the children who were working in the markets also began to take an interest. Over time, Ayub found himself teaching classes of nearly a hundred children.
“I used to sit down on the ground and teach,” he says. “But the market wala [owner] said this area is very narrow, and the cars are parked there. And these children sometimes also can be naughty, he said, so I should take them somewhere else. After this, I went to a school in a VIP area. But the people there said to me, ‘no, brother, you cannot teach here, so please go somewhere else.’” Eventually he found this plot of land where he has been teaching for 15 years. He has now taught thousands of students. While there are both girls and boys in his class, he tells me there are a few more boys than girls.
Education of women is a particular concern in Pakistan. A recent UNESCO report on the country highlighted that female literacy between ages 15 to 24 stands at 61 percent, compared with a male literacy of 79 percent. “Sons are considered an investment,” Shirazi explains, “but girls are not. For change to take place, this notion has to change first. For example, my sister was studying for her bachelor’s degree when she got married. But I resisted and I said that I will not get married until I make something of myself. So my family had to allow me to get my education.”
Shirazi’s own story illustrates the importance of investing in female education. She spent her early childhood in a village, where she went to school, before her family shifted to Islamabad. Her father had already been living in the city. In school she was known for her debating skills and later attended Punjab University, where she did her masters in Political Science.
Remarkably, despite such humble upbringing, she has managed to make herself a leading name in Pakistan’s media. Shirazi became the country’s first female war correspondent when she covered the Lebanese-Israeli war in 2006. She was also the only woman among a number of TV anchors who were banned under former president Pervez Musharraf as he sought to rein in the judiciary. For Shirazi, education was one of the important factors in her success. “I was brought up in a very conservative environment where girls only became lecturers or doctors,” she says. “Besides, they couldn’t be anything else. I know what happens to girls, because I spent much of my childhood in a village.”
One of the reasons Pakistan lags in education is that the state spends very little on it. The amount allocated to education hovers around a meagre 2 percent of the budget. In November the government announced plans to set up ‘Malala schools’ in 16 areas of Pakistan affected by conflict or natural disaster, but it remains unclear where the funding will come from and how committed the authorities will be to the project.
What is clear is the country cannot rely on the charity of individuals, such as Ayub, alone. “I am a worker in civil defence,” he says. “I have a limited salary, which I divide in three portions. One portion is for my wife and my own three children. The second portion is for my sister who is a widow and lives with me in my own house. I spend the third portion on helping these poor and orphan children — to buy a pencil for one, a textbook or a notebook for another, only for those children who are orphans, who are really needy, because I cannot give to everyone.”
Yet Ayub continues the fight. The plot on which he conducts his classes is surrounded by mansions of wealthy people, including a member of parliament and the editor of a leading newspaper. “You know what these people say?” he says. “‘When people used to throw garbage here we were in a lot of difficulty,’ they say. ‘There was a bad smell here and it used to be a mess. Now since the time you came here the place has been clean, and children sit and study.’ No one has raised any objection with me.”
Yet idealistic men such as Ayub, with their limitless energy for philanthropy, are exceptions to the rule. The narrative of a struggling education system runs parallel to the growing menace of extremism. On rickshaws in the streets of the second-largest city, Lahore, photos of Yousafzai and the words, “an attack on Malala is an attack on humanity”, compete with the slogan “Jihad — Now or Never”. Unfortunately, the targeting of the innocent 15-year-old has been turned into a polarising issue by elements of society. “She has definitely polarised and divided society,” Shirazi says. “Between the conservatives and liberals or the progressives — she has drawn a line in the middle.”
Shirazi has done a number of shows on Yousafzai. In the days following the tragedy she even organised a vigil for her. However, her efforts to highlight the issue have not been received positively by everyone. “A lot of people send messages saying that the Taliban are angry, your name is included in the list and so on,” she says. “And this is why I also announced the vigil over there, and that too I organised on social media, Twitter, in one or two hours. Some 300 to 400 people were there, so it was a great success. To have had so many people participate on such a short notice in this hostile environment was a big thing. Unfortunately we were not able to maintain that fervour.”
The issue of female illiteracy is a result of the neglect of education on a national level by successive governments. Ayub is of the view that it is within the reach of society to fix the problem. Yet not everyone understands his selfless motive in teaching children for free, and in the past, some have even accused him of being a spy. There was a police inquiry to ascertain he is who he claims to be. But the achievements of the alumni from his “free” school speak for themselves. Students who studied under him have now gone on to work in ministries, as accountants and nurses, in shops and some have emigrated. “If in Pakistan, in its every street, every corner, every home, one person teaches his brothers and sisters one word daily, imagine the progress that can be made,” he says.
Syed Hamad Ali is a writer based in London.
To offer help for his school, “Master” Ayub can be reached at +92 (0)300 557 6072