17 July 2004	Saturday	28 Jamadi-ul-Awwal 1425

ISLAMABAD, July 16: Peace and quality education are the fundamental rights of the people which they have been denied for the last may years.

It is the state's responsibility to ensure that these values are inculcated into the minds of the youth. The school textbooks mostly glorify war, narrow nationalism, create hatred and teach Jehad values.

This was the gist of the arguments presented by Prof (Dr) Tariq Rehman, while discussing the "Education and its implications for peace with special reference to Pakistan" here on Friday.

He also deliberated on the myths which helped the state to maintain a high level of militarization and aggressive nationalism. "History, social studies books and a few other textbooks teach war and hatred to the children against enemy states and India in particular", Prof Rehman remarked.

He said that Pakistani rulers should study the examples of Sweden, Belgium, Norway and Canada which had provided these rights to their citizens. These were nations which had promoted peace, discouraged wars and encouraged harmony in their school textbooks.

Dr Rehman referred to the example of madressahs students, now termed as "terrorists", were once recruited and used by the US with the help of Pakistan governments in the Jehad against the defunct USSR.

He also stressed that peace must prevail within ethnic groups and between societies.

Prof Rehman strongly criticized the education system that had three major types of institutions: the government vernacular-medium schools (Urdu and Sindhi-medium), English medium schools (private elitist state-influenced public schools and cadet colleges and the non- elitist private English-medium schools), religious madressahs of different sects.

The professor said that students in English-medium schools were better off in the sense that they were less hostile towards non-Muslims or India because of the books prescribed for these schools were written by foreign writers compared with students in government Urdu-medium schools and religious madressahs who only learnt hatred and were being encouraged to wage war against non-Muslim states.

The scholar said that rights of people depended on the nature of the state. In a truly democratic state rights were acknowledged and ensured. "There is lack of awareness among masses and so they cannot take their rights from the government that are stated but not provided. A change in the education policy towards betterment and peace will be a silent revolution," he maintained.