Riaz Laghari: A Note to the Students of Twenty-Five Years

 

Beyond the Classroom: A Note to the Students of Twenty-Five Years

For over twenty-five years, I have stood in classrooms, sometimes modest, sometimes well-equipped, but always filled with the same raw material: young minds searching for direction, language, and meaning.

I have taught English Language, IELTS, linguistics, psycholinguistics, syntax, morphology, writing, and thought. But more than that, I have witnessed something enduring: the quiet courage of students who learn under constraint, who think deeply despite limited resources, and who continue to dream even when global knowledge systems rarely look in their direction.

The recent response to my closing note for a Psycholinguistics course has reminded me that teaching is never confined to a semester. Words, once offered sincerely, travel far, sometimes farther than we expect.

Across these years, my students have spoken dozens of languages. Many were bilingual or trilingual before they ever encountered a formal theory of language. Some came from regions where linguistic richness is a daily reality but academic recognition is scarce. They carried intuitions about language long before they learned its terminology.

This has always struck me as one of the great paradoxes of global education:

Much of psycholinguistic research is conducted in a handful of countries, on a narrow range of languages, often among WEIRD populations- Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic. Yet countries like Pakistan, where multilingualism is the norm rather than the exception, remain underrepresented in the very sciences that study language and mind.

And still, students persist.

Over the years, I have seen former students become researchers, civil servants, teachers, writers, and scholars abroad. Many have written back, not to talk about grades, but to say that learning to think clearly mattered long after the syllabus ended. That is the only outcome that truly counts.

If there is one lesson teaching has reinforced for me, it is this:

Conceptual clarity is never fragile.

It survives exams, institutions, and even time.

To all the students I have taught, past and present, know this: your intellectual journey is not defined by where you study, but by how deeply you engage. The future of disciplines like AI, psycholinguistics, and cognitive science cannot remain geographically narrow. It will be shaped by those who bring new languages, new cognitive experiences, and new ethical questions into the conversation.

Much work remains to be done. Most of the world’s languages are still missing from grammar banks, cognitive models, and digital systems. Many have no writing systems at all. This is not a deficit of intelligence; it is a deficit of attention.

And that is precisely where the next generation comes in.

Teaching, at its best, is an act of faith: faith that ideas will outlive the classroom, faith that students will carry them forward in ways the teacher cannot predict.

After twenty-five years, I remain convinced of this:

The most meaningful education does not prepare students merely to succeed; it prepares them to contribute.

To every student who has walked into one of my classrooms and taken language seriously, thank you. You have taught me as much as I have taught you.

And the journey, I hope, continues in pursuit of EXCELLENCE!

Deo volente.

Riaz

your teacher