| Main Menu
SD Conferences
Missing Links in Sustainable Development: South Asian Perspectives
|
|
Sub-ThemesEducation During the last half century, Pakistan has gained excellence in thickening its jungles of educational policies. During these years, at least nine documents have been prepared and produced by the country’s education bureaucracy that could be regarded as education policies or plans. Almost every successive regime, whether civilian or military, Islamic or Socialist, progressive or conservative, did not miss the opportunity to present its version of what the nation needed by way of education as an agent of change, but strictly according its own philosophy and worldview. All educational policies from 1947 to 1998-2010 have been serving the state's major objectives. Thus our textbooks, are repeating the following messages: First, the non-Muslim part of Pakistan is ignored. Second, the borrowing from Hindu culture is either ignored or condemned. Third, the Pakistan Movement is portrayed mostly in terms of the perfidy of Hindus and the British and the righteousness of Muslims. In describing the partition, Hindus are reported to have massacred Muslims while Muslims are not shown to have treated the Hindus in the same manner; India is portrayed as the enemy, which is waiting to dismember Pakistan. The separation of Bangladesh in 1971 is portrayed as proof of this Indian policy rather than the result of the domination of West Pakistan over East Bengal. Above all, the 1948, 1965 and 1971 wars are blamed entirely on India, and Pakistan is shown to have won the 1965 war. (Muashrati Uloom (Social Studies), class V, NWFP Textbook Board, Peshawar, n.d. p.93; and other Social Studies/Pakistan Studies textbooks). The end result of this sustained narrow approach in the realm of educational policy is pretty evident, and on August 14, 2002 the President, General Pervez Musharraf, was obliged to say that "sectarianism, religious intolerance and violence are the major crises facing Pakistan and insignificant minority has held the entire nation hostage to their misconceived views of Islam and their fanatical acts" (August 14, 2002, Independence day speech to the nation, Dawn; The News; The Nation, August 14, 2002). In order to address this critical situation Pakistan's educational bureaucracy is once again busy with the much-eulogized Education Sector Reforms that define the purpose of education as, "developing human resources in Pakistan as a prerequisite for global peace, progress and prosperity" (Salim, A. and Khan, Z., Messing Up the Past: Evolution of History Textbooks In Pakistan, 1947-2000, SDPI Report, 2004, p.17). Another professed aim is to produce enlightened and skilled citizens, and for this the national curricula are being revised. But whether these efforts would yield any tangible results remains an open question. This question will be dealt in the following panel: Panel 1. Educational policies in the South Asia Contact:
|