Laughter is strictly prohibited?

Express Tribune

15-06-2025

The writer is an educationist based in Kasur City. He can be reached at [e-mail]
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The first synonymous idea of school that comes to mind is a place of strict discipline. All the moral policing at the early stages of the growth of a child is expected to be done within the school premises. Hence, came the term 'schooling' in public discourse, meaning discipline, reproof or reprimand.
The success of educators and students is gauged by the pindrop silence in the classroom. Mentally engaged students, no doubt, show that the class is busy in the learning process. But absence of comic relief can turn teaching and learning into something insipid, boring and uninspiring.
In the mad pursuit of lesson plans, deadlines, exams, attendance and discipline, the first casualty is the loss of smiles within the school perimeter. We must not forget that the distinguished feature of Mr Chipping's teaching in James Hilton's novella, Goodbye, Mr Chips, is his humour. Students at the Brookfield School waited anxiously for Mr Chips' latest joke that would become talk of the town at the school. The students never thought of missing his class.
The educationists with a formalist approach towards education speculate that to make students laugh blurs the boundary of proprieties between an educator and his learners. Laughter encourages frankness which sooner or later ends in cheekiness among students. However, to laugh at students and with students are two diametrically opposed approaches and often the difference between the two is obliterated to mask the educators' lack of proficiency in their subjects and failure in bonding with their students.
Research has shown that students learn much more in the pleasant classroom milieu than in that where sternness prevails. Care must be taken that laughter should not be at the expense of a student's self-respect. What is learnt in untargeted humour gets etched on memory. Students don't have to memorise and revise to regurgitate in the exams.
Humour is needed to transform bland traditional decantation of knowledge into experiential learning which our education system is severely lacking in. Run-of-the-mill pedagogy promotes absenteeism among students and widens the communication gap between an educator and his students, whereas according to Victor Borge, "Laughter is the shortest distance between two people."
Teachers are required to act as the dispensers of information. Have we ever asked ourselves, "Did I laugh today? Were there smiles on my students' faces? Or were there just smirks all around?" Charlie Chaplin says, "A day without laughter is a day wasted."
Children are known to laugh like there is no tomorrow, but now the taunt of "act mature" has shrunk childhood and caused the earlier onset of adulthood anxieties. The grind of the school routine, the taxing burden of coaching centres and truckloads of homework have left students with little space for moments of reflexive delight and mirth.
The robotic routine has pushed children towards binge watching reels and shorts. It has mutated laughter from being a group enjoyment to a personal engagement, justified with the need for privacy. The universal human language of laughter, consisting of words with short vowel-like syllables "ha-ha", "ho-ho" or "hee-hee", is on the verge of extinction in this age of production hysteria.
Biologically speaking, a laugh makes the brain release endorphins, the body's natural pain relievers and mood boosters, which make the human mind more receptive to and retentive of learning. Laughs and smiles don't weaken the authority of teachers; rather they build trust and enhance approachability – the prerequisites for a milieu enabling students to speak their hearts out and ask questions which if remain unanswered muddle the mind. Comic relief saves students from burnouts, too.
Bereft of all zinger, quip and riposte to parry cheeky questions, the self-deprecating touché and mea culpa, however, demystify authority and burst the angelic halo of teachers, humanising their role and presence in the classroom.
Students can forget formulae, equations or grammar rules, but what they can't is the teacher who made them smile and the moments wherein they laughed away the stress of the school grind. It is said that "a day you didn't laugh is a day you didn't live."