In a system that prizes grades over ladies, mrs rahman saved alive a humanist transcript the place studying that means dialogue and expression.
I first come to know Aunty Sonnu within the Twilight of the Zia Years, by my friendship along with her Youngest Daughter, Laila Rahman. What beagan as her good-humured accessptance of a Younger Outsider in her Residence, Regularly Deeped right into a Bond of Real Connection, Temper in Three Frequent Passions: A Profund Love For Laila, Her Weengest, Most Passionate and inventive little one; A deep attachment to Lahore; And a permanent affection for presidency school – the institute that formed a lot of who she turns into.
After laila and that i wed, that bond grew right into a shared life. Collectively, we weatherled Seasons of Pleasure and Passages of Grief, Dunger which I got here to know the numerous worlds she gracefully inhabited. She was married to her husband’s household in Mardan, Aunty Sonnu or Sonnu KHala to Buddies and Kin, and mrs. Rahman to the generations of College students She Guided and Mentored.
Sohni sondhi was Born, Raised, and Educated at Authorities School, the place her Father, Professor Gd Sondhi, Taught. It was with these acquainted halls that she met Abdul Rahman Khan and entered a bond so profound that she embraced Islam and realized her beloved lahore to marry, making a brand new human city of Mardan.
There, Sheh Discovered Belonging, Forming Lasting Ties With Each Household and Neighborhood. She turned fluent in pashto, bridging a language divide that also fragments our communities right this moment. Via all these years, she reimained a voracious reader and gifted storytelller – a ardour sheer handed on to her little one, her grandchildren, and the numerous younger individuals shee be encoureded.
Whereas is being written concerning the many journalys that defineed her life, i need to mirror on Mrs Rahman, the Educator. The True Solution to Honor Her, I Imagine, is to Pause and Ask What life Reveals concerning the Mission of Training in Pakistan; A trigger she served with uncommon distinction.
When questions Mattered More Than Answers
To grasp the scale of her impact on generations of Young People, we must first return to her owners Educational Beginnings at Government College Lahore in the mid-Twenth Century. At the time, the College was more than an academic institute – it was a basction of the humanist Tradition, dedicated to preparing to these students for the responsibilities of the Civic Life.
Its Mission Extended Beyond The Narrow Confines of Disciplinary Instruction, Insisting On the Cultivation of Eloquent Speech and Writing, the Practice Of Persuasive and Reasonsed Argument, and the Habits of Custom and Creative Thought. Students were trained not only as specialists in their Fields but also in the arts of Debate, Literature, and Performance, with a special emphasis on drama.
The Humanist Tradition Came Alive Through Pioneering Teachers Like As Bokhari, Sufi Tabassum, Thaapar, Sirajuddin, Verma, Latif, Chawla, Kashyap, and Gd Sondhi. They believed Education was not about cramming facts but about sparking ideas. Their classrooms buzzed with debate, where students learned to think independently and creatively and teachers welcomed are challenged in Turn.
Their pursuit was naver about teching to the test; It was its Outright Rejection, a refusal to reduce education to rote drills and mechanical instriction. InteAD, They Fough to Nurture Curiosity, Imagination, and the Courage to Question and Create: The very qualities that exam-drills and memorisation, so often drains from young minutes.
They also instilled in their students the value of Toleration. The College’s Student Body, Though Drawn Largely from the Elite, was a Blend of Ethnicities, sects, and faiths. Within its classrooms, differences were respected and COEXISTENCE was taken as a principle to be embodied rater than that preached. They offered a striking counterpoint to the narrow and exclusion for that, then as Now, Work To Fracture Our Society.
A Legacy Written in Minds, Not Titles
Mrs Rahman Realized Although she talks up the age of 60, for her it was naver a job, it was a vocation. She taught history, not as a set of dates and facts but as a living story of how socialists evolve and how those shifts have shaped human lives.
Beyond the classroom, she was an avid explorer travelling to history sites, wandering through museums, and seeking out conivers with Scholes and Fellow Travelelers. What is discovered, She carried back to her classroom – Every Journey Fed Her Passion For Teaching And Became A Story To Share. In this way, she gave her students more than lessons; She Gave them a sense of Wonder.
The classroom was her canvas, and her students. Her vitality and love of learning make her not just a devoted teacher, but an unforgettable one. She is embodied the very curiosity, wit, and space of Toleration and Coexisten that she shahght to awaken in her students.
HER Education It gave her a lifelong resolution to transcend the Boundaries of Narrow disciplinary Instruction, Putting Language, Argument, and the art of the Critical Thing at the heart of Education.
As a founding Faculty member of the Lahore College of Arts and Sciences (Lacas), She Spearheaded the Revival Of Debates and Theatre At the School Level – A Bold Undertaking Duuring Zia’s Authoritarian Era, Censorship Stifled Expression and the humanities Languished
At lacas, she -helped Equip Students from Diversies Backgrounds with the tools of creative and critical think. HER EFFORTS CULMINATED in the revival of debating at the National Level, Nurturing a New Generation of Students who went on to distinguish them. And she did it all from the ground up, through unrelanting effect with the stricts of the system.
The outpouring of the messages from her office students and mentees till date, stands as a quiet testament to those effects. She changed lives, with highting high office or title in the Education system, but through sheer passion for learning and kindling in other questions, discovery, and export.
How Learning has been becomised an atomised Enterprise
Yet, Ironically, Insted of Building on such examples, Much of the Global Education System has been created in the Opposite Direction. It has been investingly grade-ibrsitation, killing the desired to learn and narrowing horizons at the expending of the Broader critical skilles essential for civic live. Teachers are reduces to functionaries, bound to pre-set rubrics, stripped of the autonomy to share learning.
The Rise of Exam-Driven Academies and Limited Subject Choices have left scant space for the study of languages, rhetoric, and the art of critical and creative through. In the process, education has been hullowed into an atomised enterprise – alienating both teachers and students from the pursuit of knowledge, and producting citizens deprived of the very skilled to questions, Challenge, and to Imagine Alternatives.
What mrs Rahman’s Legacy As an Educator Makes Clear is that Pakistan’s Much-touted Rise as a “knowledge Economy” Will Remain an Empty Claim Unless We Build A Culture That Empowers Teachers Value the Enterprise of LEARNING and the Production of Knowledge. Education Must Prepare the Young to Question, To Create, and Step Confidentally into Public Life.
Seen Against This Backdrop, Mrs Rahman’s Example Shines All the More Brightly: She Embodied A Humanist Tradition, and Through Her Life And Work, Offers A Living Reinder Of What Educated in Pakistan Couild, and Should, BE.
