THE latest flurry of efforts to make changes in the curricula for the various categories of students offers little hope for the emergence of a rational outlook on the subject.

Last week, the prime minister discovered the need for including lessons on democracy, constitutionalism and accountability mechanisms in textbooks for primary to the highest classes. He gave the Higher Education Commission only two months to revise the textbooks in English, Urdu and Pakistan Studies. The point that the HEC has no authority to design the curriculum for classes one to 12 is valid but there is no bar to the federal government’s plan to use the HEC as a think tank for developing reform proposals that could be presented to the provincial authorities.

This exercise needs to be carried out with due care as the provincial governments are unlikely to allow any dilution of their authority in any matter related to education. The success of the National Curriculum Council, recently set up at an inter-provincial education ministers’ conference is also debatable because the provinces are right in insisting on incorporating local and regional cultures in textbooks along with core values shared nationwide.

The prime minister’s initiative obviously reflects his current anxieties. Although it is doubtful that conscious citizens will start loving democratic institutions only because they might have read about their theoretical foundations in schools and colleges, the proposal to inform students about the Constitution and the importance of democratic governance is unexceptionable.

Equally obvious is the need to structure civic education courses in a manner that children begin learning about the history, geography and culture of their village, town and district in their early classes and move on to broader provincial and national themes in higher classes. The material for the textbooks must obviously be selected with a view to promoting humanitarian and civilisational values.

There is an urgent need to focus on what should be excluded from educational texts.

Much is being said about what should be included in textbooks. There is an urgent need at present to concentrate on what should be excluded from educational texts. A number of studies on textbooks for civic studies have brought out the harmful effects of lessons that foster discrimination against women and minority communities or present distorted versions of history. The curriculum of all public and private institutions, especially madressahs, must be purged of hate-preaching and material that fuels intolerance and violence.

Besides, it is essential to save education and protect young minds from the overzealous reformists of the kind recently observed in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. They are rewriting textbooks in a manner that should alarm all lovers of education. Apparently inspired by the born-again fundamentalists of the Ziaul Haq era they are interfering with not only history books but also with physics and chemistry books and the maxims of sciences.

The KP education minister’s explanation of the changes in textbooks arouses serious apprehensions about his department’s bona fides and capacity both. One may not say anything about replacing ‘good morning’ with ‘assalam-o-alaikum’ in a book on English for want of access to the relevant texts, but what is wrong with telling students that Bangladesh won freedom from Pakistan?

The attempt to extend the rhetoric of religiosity to textbooks centres on the teaching of jihad. It is essential to ascertain as to what interpretation of jihad is being offered to impressionable minds. The theories of jihad propagated by a minority school in Islamic fiqh justify killing of innocent Muslims who disagree with armed militants. By allowing incitement to violence under cover of jihad the state is clearly inviting disaster.

Not far behind the conservative clerics are state functionaries with outsized censorial ambitions. While the prime minister’s kitchen cabinet was finalising his observations on textbooks, the Higher Education Commission was making a fresh bid to control thought processes on university-level campuses.

A four-sentence HEC directive begins by reminding the universities and all degree-awarding institutes of their responsibility for promoting the “ideology and principles of Pakistan” through, “teachings, formal and informal gatherings and social discourse”.

The commission has observed that some activities at the universities/degree-awarding institutes are “contrary to the ideology and principles of Pakistan” and “such instances not only tarnish the image of an institution but fortify negativism and chaos.” The universities are asked to remain very vigilant and forestall any activity that in any manner challenges the principles of Pakistan, and/or perspective of the government of Pakistan thereof.”

The directive clearly seeks to strengthen inquisitorial mechanisms at the campuses. As if Pakistan has not paid enough of a price for the mischief spread in the name of ideology, we now face the bogies of “principles of Pakistan” and the “perspective of the government of Pakistan”. When, where and by whom have the “principles of Pakistan” been defined? And what is meant by the “perspectives” of the government if the suppression of dissent is not meant?

Apart from the assault on the fundamental right to freedom of inquiry and expression of teachers and students, the directive is a bid to stultify the mental faculties of the students. Such tactics will only produce crops of mindless morons and not scholars worth the name. Knowledge flourishes by challenging the conventional wisdom of authority and scholars both, by meeting the challenge of scepticism and not by burying one’s head in sand. The sooner the state authorities stop blocking the flow of ideas and opinions, especially on educational campuses, the better it will be for all concerned.

Tailpiece: Congratulations to the Muslim majority of the Islamic Republic that their flock has been increased after the abduction of a 12-year-old Meghwar (an underprivileged Hindu caste) girl, her conversion to Islam and her marriage to a Muslim. Greetings may be addressed to the dargah at Dharki, Sindh, where the girl saw the light and the court in Sadiqabad, Punjab, where her statement was recorded.

Published in Dawn, November 6th , 2014