When you think of a classroom, what comes to your mind?

Everyone who has been fortunate enough to see the inside of one, can narrate their own experience. But besides the exquisite calligraphy and alphabet charts; the unusual science paraphernalia; the posture-distorting seats; the students with heavy eyelids and blank faces; it is always the teacher that makes the classroom complete.

Armed with knowledge and affection, teachers are supposed to inculcate in their students a hunger for making the unknown known. On the other hand, they also have to maintain a stable, disciplined learning environment, with a healthy mix of appreciation and punitive measures.

To this end, the most harmful weapon available in their arsenal used to be the dreaded exam results, but that just might change.

Editorial: Problematic security

Of the more strange decisions to come after the Peshawar school massacre, the one about teachers getting firearm training and permission to carry weapons within school premises in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province is certainly way up there.

It almost seems unreal that the people who bicker over the detrimental effects of one syllabus over the other have shown little discomfort with the introduction of guns in classrooms.