Kashmir's Schools Must Wake Up

After the suicide of 14-year-old Numan, it's time Kashmir's schools leave behind old patterns and finally learn how to care for real, and for every child.

- Khurram Rasool

There's always that one child in the classroom who doesn't sit still, who stares off, who says the wrong thing at the wrong time. The child teachers call a distraction. The one they discipline often, but rarely try to understand.

In Kashmir, these children aren't exceptions. They are everywhere. And they are often hurting in ways that don't look like pain.

We live in a region where conflict is not a chapter in textbooks but a lived experience. Its weight presses into homes and classrooms, into daily routines and young minds.

Children in Kashmir carry trauma as early as they carry schoolbags. Some have seen violence. Some have lost parents. Others live with fear as a background noise.

And still, we treat them like they're just misbehaving kids who need stricter rules, not softer hands.

Schools here still work as if they're preparing children for board exams alone, as if the emotional lives of students are irrelevant to education. They continue to operate in a traditional, almost mechanical way, where obedience is prized over expression, and deviation is punished instead of explored.

There are no serious efforts to help children process what they live through. And most teachers are not trained to see past the surface.

This needs to change. Because it's not just about academics. It's about survival.