Thanks to Mohammed Farooq for answering my questions about the
difficulties of improving laboratory safety in Pakistani organic
lab courses. The answers are quite informative but at the same time
raise new questions. For example, in reply to my question:
I find this answer remarkable because it points to some fundamental differences
between lab courses as I have experienced them in the US and lab courses
in Pakistan. Let me try to articulate them.
(i) I have never had to wear a lab coat, but I have had to wear goggles.
Why?

(ii) Whatever I have ever been expected to use in a laboratory has been left
in the laboratory. I have never been expected to bring anything from >home
that I might need in the laboratory.
No person with little common sense should take laboratory apparatus

(iv) The assignment of individual equipment cabinets to students does not
mean that all students get individual lockers for their courses. Rather,
there are a certain number of cabinets available and they are associated
with work areas in the laboratory. In each class, one student is >assigned
to a work area, uses the associated cabinet and the equipment in it,
and returns the equipment to the cabinet at the end of class. When more
than one class uses the same lab at different times, more than one
student uses the same cabinet, but at different times. One of the purposes
of the lab fee is to provide an "account" on which the department can draw
to replace items that are broken or which disappear from the cabinet the
student uses. I think pilferage is usually not a big problem, but in
situations where it is really necessary to monitor individual
responsibility, there can be inventories of cabinets at the end of each
class period. Sometimes it is drawers, not cabinets, that are used.
We have to work in groups of two or in extreme cases five depending

(v) I did have a personal locker when I was in junior high school. When I
was in high school, I had a personal locker for my gym class but no other
locker. I never had or needed a general purpose locker except for gym
classes at any further point in my education.
As far as I know there is no concept of lockers in schools and high

(vi) I think that if American universities made the same requirements on
students to bring lab coats and other stuff with them to labs that
Pakistani labs do, they would have the same problems, and they know it,
so they generally don't require it. The best they can hope for is that
the students have their lab books and the instructions for the particular
lab to be done, and maybe also their calculators.
I feel you are saying that lab coats are NOT compulsory in the

Student labs in the US are designed with cabinets to be used for the purposes
I have described above. From MF's description, it sounds as though Pakistani
student lab rooms and lab buildings are designed differently.

As I mentioned above, one of the purposes of the lab fee is to cover such
losses. Also, students in the US are not expected to take pipets home.
As I said no one would have taken the pipets home, but might have

I'm very curious to know how Pakistani universities decided on this way of
managing lab supplies issued to students. Is there some reason why the
equipment can't be left in the laboratory and reissued as needed each time
the lab meets?
I think this the way it happens here. Sometimes the apparatus is

I don't think goggles would be as high a priority in American labs
if departments were not vulnerable to lawsuits in case a student lost
an eye when a test tube exploded (although I'm sure they would feel just
awful about it, even if they blamed the student). So, this raises the
following question:
if a test tube explodes and a student in Pakistan loses an eye, what
liability does the university incur and what legal responsibility do the
administrators of the laboratory facility bear?

More important is the lack of books,modern instruments and trained
faculty. Foreign qualified teacher are soon going to retire in tow or
three years.

What will happen to the quality of education after they retire?

Very recently, the Government of Pakistan has decided, in
principle, to do away with the pre-medical and pre-engineering
streams at Higher Secondary level. The new scheme proposed will
introduce a single-science stream comprising Biology, Chemistry,
Physics and Mathematics.
That was an absurd idea, a student who wanted to study mathematics

Does this mean the caliber of the students taking the single-science stream
will be on the average lower?
Why? I think a student taking biology, mathematics, physics, and

I realize that doctors and engineers have a reputation for being smarter
than high school teachers, but also have a reputation for having to
memorize everything they learn. That is probably an exaggeration, but as
I mentioned in earlier postings, I met one doctor socially who asked
me whether hydroxide was an element, and no one who commented on it
thought that was unusual.
You are right. Whenever people ask me what I am studying, if I say