By Zubair Torwali

The News  December 15, 2014

Whether curriculum needs to be in line with the cognitive needs and interests of the target group – children – or if it should be based on geopolitical and ideological wrangling is a question that has not been resolved in Pakistan yet. With such an immensely polarised society, the popular discourse never allows any consideration of the country’s religious, cultural and linguistic diversity. Education in Pakistan is sandwiched between the political ideologies of political parties, pressure groups and extremist outfits.

A study of education policymaking in Pakistan clearly shows that it has always favoured the ‘religious extreme right’ and the ‘bourgeoisie’ – and that both safeguard each other’s interests.

In the wake of the 18 Amendment in 2010 many subjects were devolved to the provinces by abolishing the concurrent list which included education. The provinces can now legislate on education, and decide both the ‘content’ and ‘medium’ of it. Since both have deep political and ideological connotations, these issues have taken over other problems in quality, access and budget allocation in education sector. For instance, curriculum in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa becomes a hot topic but lack of access for girls to education in Indus Kohistan, the least developed district in the province, never becomes news.

Issues of access to education, its quality and retention by students are in a way effects of the ‘medium of instruction’ and the ‘content’, added to by other factors such as lack of education infrastructure, security, and quality of teachers.

The medium of instruction in Pakistan has been oscillating between Urdu and English. Urdu is Pakistan’s national language and English is overwhelmingly considered the ‘language of development’ in Pakistan. Favouring Urdu as the medium of instruction over all other regional languages, despite being the mother tongue of only seven percent Pakistanis, it is asserted that Urdu is understood by the majority of Pakistan. Of course a majority understands it, since it is now the language of the mass media in Pakistan, and in India, where it is called Hindi. However, those on the rural fringe in Pakistan still don’t understand it.

Whatever your memories of your school days, for most of us, they were not ‘the best years of our lives’. That became painful when we were ‘forced’ to speak an alien language, or taught in some other language that we never used at home or in our immediate environment. We were made to feel that our own languages were backward, embarrassing or simply irrelevant.

While English has been made a Holy Grail and Urdu a ‘drive of patriotism’ in Pakistan, any concern regarding children’s mother language fall on deaf ears here.

The former government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa led by the ANP initiated a somewhat inclusive policy conducive with the immediate environment of the majority of the children in the province. In 2012 the then provincial government made Pashto – the major language of the province – a compulsory subject and the medium of instruction in public and private primary schools in the 17 majority Pashto speaking districts. For the next academic year, it also introduced four other regional languages – Seraiki, Hindko, Kohistani and Khowar – to be taught in pre-primary classes where these are the mother tongues of the majority of children, aiming to make such language classes gradually compulsory throughout primary school. But in the 2013 elections the ANP was routed by the PTI, which formed a coalition government in the province. 

The PTI-led government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa announced a new education policy. It abandoned the initiative by the previous government and in early this year opted for English as the medium of instruction from grade one, claiming the change would be incremental. Interestingly, despite being a strong adversary to the PML-N’s federal and Punjab governments, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa copied what the Punjab province had adopted in 2009 and reverted it to Urdu this year as the medium of instruction – with English from grade four.

PTI leaders have been asserting that they want a ‘uniform education system’ in the country wherein every child will have equal right to ‘quality’ education. According to them the only way to eliminate this disparity in education is to make English the medium of instruction as early as in grade one in public schools. The KP government says it has prepared new textbooks and plans to train 350 teachers, who will in turn train 23,000 teachers. (As per the report, ‘Education reforms in Pakistan’, published in June 2014 by the International Crisis Group)

This argument ignores the socio-cultural processes in language acquisition especially for a second or third language. It is not even considered whether teachers are prepared to teach in English; and whether schools or children’s immediate environment provide them the socio-cultural settings for English. Cognitive linguists suggest that to assure cognitive and academic success in the second language, a student’s first language system, oral and written, must be developed to a high cognitive level. This asks for a child’s mother language as the medium of instruction for him/her at schools, at least for the first 4-5 years of education.

For a multilingual country like Pakistan educationists suggest a trilingual plan: the child’s mother language at the early stages, at a later stage a second (national language) to be introduced; and afterwards a third language (English) must be incorporated.

As for curriculum content Pakistani students have always been very unfortunate. They have been taught distorted history, biased science, half-true social studies with boring and repetitive Pakistan studies. Even the languages – Urdu and English – are taught through books full of lessons on religion. Every government in Pakistan has tried to infuse what the ruling party or even individuals like General Ziaul Haq hold dear, irrespective of its relevance in the contemporary world.

The distortion of facts has a long history in Pakistan. It started from the days of our Independence and only increased with time. During General Zia’s regime it attained its peak. Zia not only changed textbooks at the school level but also changed the entire curricula of higher education. This stopped critical thinking as well as skill development. Today we have a large number of people swathed in extremism, bigotry, and conservatism as a result of Zia and his legacy.

Any reforms in the curriculum are rejected in a second by dubbing them as an international conspiracy against Pakistan and the ‘Ummah’.

The Jamaat-e-Islami, although a junior coalition partner in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, has virtually forced its big partner, the PTI which seems confused unfortunately, to concede to purging the province’s curriculum of ‘objectionable’ contents. They want to incorporate ‘jihadi teachings’ in the curriculum, which will nourish extremism further rather than stemming it in the province. The provincial secretary of the JI rationalises the change in these words: “our homeland is under threat. It is being droned by American forces, and we have to defend ourselves against the Americans. In these circumstances, is teaching our youth the ideology of jihad a sin?” (‘Education Reforms in Pakistan’, International Crisis Group, June 2014.)

Instead of instilling their own whims and political agendas in the minds of Pakistan’s future generations our policymakers must take stock of the needs of the country’s children. While the language in which students are taught matters, what is taught in school is even more important if intolerance and extremism are to be challenged.

The writer heads an independentorganisation based in Swat. 

Email: ztorwali@gmail.com