Quack! Online

Teachers here are no different than a pack of hound dogs left loose to literally hound their students. There is no check and balance on their activities - they do whatever they please, however they please. Course outlines, decided by a so-called ‘Academic Council,’ are barely followed and rarely covered. Assignments are a farce, as are the labs, and learning is scarce.

Plagiarism is once such concept that is strictly ‘enforced’ here at TIP according to our prospectus and every single course outline. And at the beginning of each semester, most teachers summarily state that plagiarism is unacceptable. But by the end of the semester most students submit assignments and give presentations that they acquired from senior students or from other colleges, which are then duly accepted by teachers and given wonderful results. I’m sitting in the computer lab as a type this, and I see three design students (TD2) scan whole chapters from various books, OCR them, and prepare to submit them as “original assignments.” A presentation-cum-assignment I once made, I have seen submitted by different students to 5 different teachers. Some assignments in particular have been doing the ’rounds’ ever since I came to TIP.

Don’t teachers see this? Can they not identify when a student has plagiarized; copy-pasted of the internet, scanned from a magazine or book, or copied from another student’s assignment? Just this semester for a particular course I took, there were probably no more than three “different” assignments shared between 41 students and submitted to the same teacher - and with surety I can say that each of these “different” assignments are lifted from some other source.

I wouldn’t blame the students, they’re only working the loopholes in the university’s system. The blame lies squarely on the shoulders of the administration who apparently doesn’t check on the activities of their faculty. Its time to put a leash to these hounds.

The cure to writer’s block is Oreos. It’s only by consuming nearly a boxful that I’ve managed to begin this article. By the time I end it however, I’m certain we’ll all be comfortably sitting in our homes watching the latest episode of ‘ Kusum’ or whatever Indian drama is fashionable nowadays.

I’ll give you this though; the semester passed faster than a speeding bullet. I still recall the first day of university like it was a week ago. At this pace, I’ll be over with TIP before I know it and before I have any idea what’s going on. We first years only have half a year left as the center of attention. Soon another batch of straight-from-the-schoolroom boys and girls will take our place as celebrities. Sigh…all good things come to an end; the semester is ending, the year is ending, the Pakistan-England cricket series is ending and so is my box of Oreos. I wish scientists would invent something useful, like time turners, rather than wasting their energy in alternately increasing and decreasing the size of mobile phones.

I keep thinking…just one week left. That’s all. Maybe I am being melodramatic but think about it: time’s flying and not on fairy wings either, but on giant turbo jet engines. You can see every minute running past and by the time you eventually notice it, it’s over. And the worst part is knowing that what just happened wont occur again. The moment is gone, get used to it.
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Seminar and Conference

December 2-3 2005, at the Textile Institute of Pakistan

Selected topics:

• New Directions: How Technology is Changing the Industry
• Climbing the Textile Chemistry Value Chain
• Tradition and Modernity in Fabric Design
• Marketing Challenges and Opportunities under WTO rules
• Value Added Manufacturing: Problems and Prospects
• Apparel Manufacturing: The Cutting Edge of Change
• Spinning: Getting the Basics Right
• A Matter of Style: Designing for a fashion concious market

Download the Teaching Textiles 2005 wallpaper.

Update: Read the Daily Times article on the Teaching Textiles conference.

Complete the sentence:

Imprint is …

Calling all alumni. Whats your take? How do you think textiles should be taught?

By Kamran Mohsin

TIP, November 18, the auditorium was full of students (mostly forced in by teachers) to attend a lecture by Mr. Javed Jabbar; a well-known writer, politician and media personality. The subject of the address was “Pakistan’s unique past and unique future.”

He told students that Pakistan is unique among the nations of the world in many respects among the other developed and impoverished countries. These include Pakistan’s creation on the bases of religion, achievement of a separate country on a notice of 10 weeks, difficulties regarding capital and water at that time and other countless issues. This indicates that Pakistan survived in every difficult situation due to unpredictable reasons.
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By Furhan R. Hussain, TMM-1

Brushing the usual aside, TIP seems to be overshadowed, these days, by a cloud of misfortunes. For example, a few days back, the institute’s ‘Tower Point’ bus had an accident near SMCHS that almost killed a number of people including a family of four on a motorcycle (husband, wife, a four-year-old and one-year old kid), as well as the driver of the rickshaw that was hit by the bus after it’s brakes completely failed. The big, bright, yellow markings and text on the coaster made sure that the institute got its due share of publicity. The grapevine has it, that the bus driver had been complaining about the failing brakes since quite some time, but in vain, and was about to resign before an accident took place. On the fateful day of the accident, he was guiding the new driver of the point who was due to take his place.

The same bus, on the same day, almost ran into a petrol tanker on the highway. Had the tanker not run onto the road’s dividing area, letting the bus only scratch it, TIP would have surely lost a fair number of diligent students.
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