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Pakistani national curriculum
Pakistani national curriculum. Note that this is NOT the madrassa system. This is the stuff taught in the SECULAR school system

The fault lies elsewhere

By Kaiser Bengali

ADDRESSING the nation in the aftermath of the London bombings, General Musharraf has rightly said that England too needs to do more to deal with the problem at hand. Evidently, he was responding to the British prime minister’s pointed accusations of the role of Pakistani madressahs in the bombings.

The sense of outrage expressed by British, US and western leaders is certainly understandable; what, however, cannot be so is their collective amnesia of their own role in first introducing terrorism in Afghanistan in the 1980s and, in the process, building the terrorist network in Pakistan; of which the madressahs were an integral part.

Now, when the menace of terrorism is affecting their own societies, western governments are continuing to rely on the same traditional allies that had been their instruments in spawning terrorism until recently. The West certainly needs to do more, but what it needs to do is to introspect and try to fathom the underlying institutional factors spewing militancy and terrorism in states run by their own client regimes.

The bombings in London and the involvement in it of men of Pakistani origin with alleged links to religious seminaries in Pakistan has refocused international and national attention on madressahs in the country. However, madressahs comprise only a part of the problem. After all, just about one per cent of school students are enrolled in madressahs, while over 70 per cent of them are enrolled in public schools. The larger problem is, as such, the education system as a whole. Defining the education system, however, is the political superstructure that has come to be dominated by the military-mullah nexus that was patronized by the West — particularly in Pakistan — up until the end of the 1980s.

Education in Pakistan reflects the prevalence of social inequality in the country and suffers from a situation akin to apartheid. There are two broad streams of education, characterized basically by the medium of instruction. One stream uses English and the other uses Urdu. Elite English-medium schools represent one end of the spectrum and madressahs the other end.

However, the bulk of the students occupy the middle: non-elite English medium schools and Urdu medium schools. They follow the official curricula that may be described as secular, but with a heavy stress on ‘Islamic Ideology’. Income is the primary determinant of the type of school a child goes to. Upper income households generally send their children to English-medium schools and lower income households send their children — if at all — to Urdu-medium schools or madressahs.

Education plays a key role in shaping concepts, ideas, opinions and worldviews. In this respect, education in Pakistan has been conspicuous more for its role in indoctrination than in promoting pedagogy or learning. The element of indoctrination begins with the teacher.

The National Education Policy 1998-2010 considers the teacher as “the focal point for dissemination of information on fundamental principles of Islam as laid down in the Holy Quran, and as applicable to the development of an egalitarian Muslim society. For this purpose, an extensive in-service training programme will be conducted. The curricula of pre-service teacher training shall have a compulsory component of Islamic education ... This concept shall be interwoven in all the subjects of professional training institutions”

The guidelines for training programmes are explicit in that “Pakistan being an ideological state, all efforts towards the reconstruction of curricula have to be based on Islamic foundations of life”. Training in selection of content is required to emphasize “understanding the process of Islamization of the curriculum in Pakistan”.

The aims of teacher education, as described in the Curriculum and Syllabus of the Primary Teaching Certificate (PTC), include: to inculcate the spirit of Islam and develop the qualities of tolerance, universal brotherhood and justice, to help teachers understand that an educational system is the action plan for translating a nation’s philosophy into practice, to acquaint the teachers with the ideological basis of education in Pakistan and to sensitize them to their key role in nation-building and social development, to acquaint teachers with Islamic world-view, Islamic epistemology and Islamic approach to teaching, and so on.

The curricula, syllabi and officially prescribed textbooks for students are loaded with sermonizing and moralizing in the name of Islam. The National Education Policy 1998-2010, which informs the curricula, syllabi, textbooks and teaching methods, states thus: “Education is a powerful catalyzing agent which provides mental, physical, ideological and moral training to individuals so as to enable them to have full consciousness of their purpose in life and equip them to achieve that purpose. It is an instrument for the spiritual development as well as the material fulfilment of human needs. Within the context of Islamic perception, education is an instrument for developing the attitudes of individuals in accordance with the values of righteousness to help build a sound Islamic society”.

It goes on to amplify that: “The only justification for our existence is our total commitment to Islam as our sole identity ... the National Educational Policy should take into consideration the development of an integrated educational system in which our Islamic values, principles and objectives must be reflected not only in the syllabi of Islamic Studies, but also in all the disciplines”

With specific reference to the curricula and textbooks, it states thus: “Curricula and textbooks of all the subjects shall he revised so as to exclude and expunge any material repugnant to Islamic values, and include sufficient material on the Quran and Islamic teachings, information, history, heroes, moral values, etc., relevant to the subject and level of education concerned.

The framework provided by the ministry of education to the curriculum wing decrees “The highest priority has been assigned to the revision of the curriculum with a view to update the entire course contents so that the ideology of Pakistan could permeate the thinking of young generation and help them with necessary conviction and ability.”

The statement of objectives of the Curriculum of Early Childhood Education designed for children aged 3-5 years states thus: “to mature in children a sense of Islamic identity and pride in being a Pakistani.” The result is contents of textbooks with titles such as ‘Freedom or Death’ and ‘Martyr’.

The curriculum for Class 1-5 Urdu language lists the following as some of the purposes of teaching the national language. The student should: be able to lake pride in the Islamic way of life, and should try to acquire Islamic knowledge and to adopt it; read religious books in order to understand Quranic teachings, listen to events from the Islamic history and derive pleasure from them, and know that national culture is not local culture or local customs, but it means the culture whose principles have been determined by Islam.

It continues thus: Students should be made aware that they are members of the Muslim nation and that is why, according to Islamic values, they must aim to become honest, virtuous, patriotic, serving humanity and daring mujahids and that the ideology of Pakistan should be presented as the absolute truth and never made subject to dispute or debate, and there should be no concept of distinction between the worldly and religious way of life, instead learning material should be produced according to the Islamic point of view.

The learning of language itself is designed to serve religious purposes. Thus, the image that the child develops is that there is a special place for the Muslims and the ‘Islamic’ way of life, which overrides the right of all citizens to be viewed as being equal and to take pride in their own beliefs and ways of living. In view of ideologically motivated suggestions from the education policy and the curriculum, it is not surprising that the textbooks have a markedly communal and chauvinistic attitude.

History books too have been distorted to suit the purposes of indoctrination. Pakistan Studies textbooks, which contain the history portion, do not mention the ancient pre-Islamic civilizations and cultures of the Indus valley (Moenjodaro, Harappa, Taxila, etc.). They commence with the first Arab invasion of Sindh by Mohammed bin Qasim, which is treated as the beginning of history for all practical purposes. They also largely bypass the Buddhist, Hindu and British periods in the history of the South Asian subcontinent and jump to the movement for Pakistan led by the Muslim League.

The specific ideological basis of this structuring is to make children regard the Muslim eras as the only relevant and glorious part of history. The pervasive attitude that is promoted through the textbooks is that only Muslims can be good, courageous and patriotic; thus, cultivating a kind of petty chauvinism.

Clearly, education in Pakistan is crying out for reform. First, however, the West has some critical choices to make. It can no longer command the privilege of running with the hare and hunting with the hounds. If a part of the education system in Pakistan is identified as a factor in world terrorism, it also needs to be recognized that the problem cannot be looked at in isolation from socio-economic and political factors.

The essential prerequisite of effective reform of education in Pakistan is the dismantling of the overarching ‘Praetorian’ apparatuses dominating the country. If the West wants to make the world safe for itself and for all the peoples of the world, it will have to abandon its client regimes and support the process of democratization of societies in Muslim countries. It will also have to accept the fact that democratization will bring nationalist forces to the fore, which may not play the tune required by western financial and commercial interests. The choices are stark, but they can no longer be avoided.
Posted by: john 2005-07-26
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=125094