Let us hope it is - and not the other way around. As wrote William Shirer in his magnificent book, 'The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich':

"And the German people? On August 19 [1934], some 95 per cent of those who had registered went to the polls, and 90 per cent, more than thirty-eight million of them, voted approval of Hitler's usurpation of complete power. Only four and a quarter million Germans had the courage - or the desire - to vote 'No'. No wonder that Hitler was in a confident mood when the Nazi Party Congress assembled in Nuremberg on September 4. I watched him on the morning of the next day stride like a conquering emperor......".

President General Pervez Musharraf rode in four years ago, and he still has his feet on the ground. He does not hear voices from on high. He remains benign. He has, nevertheless, omitted to do many of the things he promised to do. But he now can and should do what he must do for this nation. Significantly and importantly, he still remains the best of the worst to rule over us.

Our hirsute holy brigade, who kill, maim and bully in the name of 'honour', continue to get away with murder and with acid-chucking, and with stripping women naked and parading them through town centres without one gallant man coming forward to help, to cover, and escort the victims safely back home.

In many of its mores, this nation sticks firmly to its primitive ways. It too often seems that we have just come down from the trees (fast disappearing from the land and destroyed even by vice-chancellors of our universities), that we have not shed our tails. The core issue is, as it has been for decades, education - education, education and more education.

In the larger democratic free world education is regarded as a fundamental human right, even a basic human right. But the 1973 Constitution to which (in its various mangled mashed forms and when not suspended) Pakistan has been subjected makes no mention of education in its lengthy listing of the people's fundamental rights. However, the Constitution does hold the state responsible for the alleviation of illiteracy, the provision of free and compulsory secondary education, and the accessibility to the masses of technical and professional education on the basis of merit. But for reasons of expediency and survival, right from the maker and promulgator of the Constitution all the way down to those who operate it today, these exemplary stipulations have been either ignored or put to use in a manner guaranteed to warp and pervert the national mindset.

Most guilty stands President General Zia ul Haq. One of his early objectives was to 'redefine the aims of education' and bring it in line 'with Pakistani faith and ideology'. The subject of Islamiat was made compulsory at all levels of education, all the way up to BA. For over twenty years, the children and youth of Pakistan have been brainwashed and taught but bigotry, violence and hate.

President General Pervez Musharraf has declared his own war against the prevalent religious intolerance, violence and sectarianism, which he stated two years ago were to be 'tackled in a systematic and methodical manner' (still pending). He did not acknowledge that it is the educational system now in place that fosters and furthers these national ills, nor that if Pakistan is to be what he wishes it to be - a progressive, moderate and democratic Pakistan - the entire educational system would have to be radically and completely revamped so that the country's children are able to learn and understand the value of the general's goals, so that they may be taught the truth, rather than a string of untruths, so that they may understand and learn that honesty pays, that equality and justice are universal attributes that are not constrained and personalized by a pernicious religiosity.

A report compiled by Professor A H Nayyar and Ahmed Salim of the Sustainable Development Policy Institute, Islamabad, entitled 'The Subtle Subversion - The state of Curricula and Textbooks in Pakistan' was released last year [www.sdpi.org]. Anyone interested in the true evils of our present education system should obtain a copy - as should our president general.

According to this report, the curriculum wing of the ministry of education undertook a revision of the curricula in 2002. It failed entirely to address the existing distortions and in certain cases has actually added to and magnified the most significant mutilations. The men and women involved are obviously not up to the job - they in fact pose a danger - and new qualified and untainted blood needs to be recruited and put in place.

The main problems with our curricula and textbooks are listed in the Nayyar report :

* "Inaccuracies of fact and omissions that serve to substantially distort the nature and significance of actual events in our history.

* Insensitivity to the actual existing religious diversity of the nation.

* Incitement to militancy and violence, including the encouragement of Jihad and Shahadat.* Perspectives that encourage prejudice, bigotry and discrimination towards fellow citizens, especially women and religious minorities, and towards other nations.

* A glorification of war and the use of force.

* Omission of concepts, events and material that could encourage critical self-awareness among students.

* Outdated and incoherent pedagogical practices that hinder the development of interest and insight among students."

For instance, the textbooks on social studies misrepresent and distort events that are within the living memory many of us, of a good chunk of the population. The lies are glaring, systematic and deliberate.

As for history, its books are littered with omissions, misinterpretations, falsehoods and downright lies. It is totally selective and simply ignores many historical periods of our part of the world, thus making it impossible for any student to sensibly and chronologically interpret historical events. Worse, says the report, is the fact that "the material is presented in a way that encourages the student to marginalize and be hostile towards other social groups and people in the region."

The entire curricula lay an extraordinary stress on the never defined 'ideology of Pakistan'. The phrase was coined in 1962 by a member of the Jamaat-i-Islami to suit his party's special brand of politics. The textbooks equate the phrase with Mohammad Ali Jinnah, putting into his mouth words that would never have entered his head and which he certainly never enunciated.

Our present education system is loaded with religious teachings and more or less leads students to believe that the sole essential education is that of Islamiat, and an Islamiat with a particularly narrow viewpoint, filled with exclusivist and divisive tendencies.

Even the Constitution, wide open to misinterpretation as it is, is deliberately misinterpreted.

The ministry of education, which supposedly controls the provincial textbook boards, is either totally oblivious of the calibre of the citizens its system is churning out, or it has its own sinister agenda in direct contradiction to the stated objectives and principles set and stated by the president-general, the man guiding the fate and destiny of this nation.

The Nayyar report must be widely circulated, it must be quoted, and there must be much more written on the various points and problems it deals with and on its recommendations. Hopefully the men and women of the education ministry, for the first time in Pakistan's history, will heed sensible advice offered for free and not constitute another useless forum to discuss and write another self-defeating report on this report. We have already lost fifty-six years.

E-mail: arfc@cyber.net.pk