Iqbal Saleh Muhammad emphasizes on according highest respect to teachers

Pakistan News & Features Services

“Teachers are the most respectable and honourable persons in a society who are worthy of the highest esteem. They must be accorded the admiration they so richly deserve.” 

These observations were made by Iqbal Saleh Muhammad, Managing Director, Paramount Books, during his address in the 35th Society of Pakistan English Language Teachers (SPELT) International Conference 2019, hosted recently by Iqra University in Karachi. 

He reminded the august gathering of teachers, trainers, experts, educationists, intellectuals and scholars about the incident in a courtroom of Italy where, upon learning that Pakistan’s great writer Ashfaq Ahmad happened to be a teacher, was given a standing ovation by the honourable judge as well as everyone present there on the occasion. 

The soft-spoken Iqbal Saleh Muhammad, who himself has been rendering momentous services to the country by promoting the literary craftsmen, emphasized on treating the teachers with utmost care and they be granted total reverence at all times.

“It’s the responsibility of our society to respect the teachers if we desire to progress. Otherwise it won’t be possible to move forward. We must keep in mind that we have to give them the highest respect in order to make advancement,” he added. 

The Society of Pakistan English Language Teachers (SPELT), founded in 1984, is a registered, non-political, non-government (NGO), voluntary body of English Language teachers from schools, colleges and universities. 

Dedicated to improving the standard of English teaching and learning in Pakistan, the SPELT functions on the principle of team work and self-help to enable maximum exploitation of the limited resources available in the country.

As a body it attempts to be well informed about recent developments in teaching techniques, which invariably need to be modified in order to suit the needs and limitations of the Pakistani situation. It is affiliated with a number of international organizations like TESOL (USA), IATEFL (UK), RELC (Singapore), TESOL (Greece).

Its objectives include providing a professional forum for English language teachers in Pakistan besides serving as a centre for the dissemination of current ideas and developments in ELT.