May 2, 2004

Certain politicians and their like-minded cohorts in the media have indulged in a litany of lies to force the government on the back foot over the issue of curriculum reforms

OVER the years, many people have worried about the state of education in Pakistan and have sought to bring about some kind of reform. The need for reform has been emphasised in countless speeches by political leaders, in government reports, parliamentary debates, some books, scholarly essays and research, newspaper articles and editorials. But in all these years, it is hard to recall if there has ever been anything like what has happened in the past few months.

During these months, the content of our education system has been passionately debated as right-wing politicians and the right-wing press denounced and reviled a recent report by a group of scholars, teachers and educationists about the many problems with the national curriculum and text-books used in our public schools. They have also attacked the government, accusing it of having made changes to the textbooks under American pressure.

At the heart of the controversy is a report entitled The Subtle Subversion: The State of Curricula and Text-books in Pakistan — Urdu, English, Social Studies and Civics. It is available in full from the Sustainable Policy Development Institute (SDPI), in Islamabad, and on the web at www.sdpi.org.

The report grew out of a study started in June 2002, when the SDPI brought together 30 experts on Pakistan’s education system from around the country to assess the problems with the national curriculum and textbooks and to propose reforms. The goal of the study was to understand how the education system was helping foster a culture of sectarianism, intolerance and violence.

Leaders and governments have long recognized the enormous power of the education system in shaping the ideas and interests of a whole generation, and thus the future of a nation. In November, 1947, at a conference on education, Mr Jinnah had argued, “The importance of education and the right type of education cannot be over-emphasized ... There is no doubt that the future of our state will and must depend on the type of education we give to our children and the way in which we bring them up as the future citizens of Pakistan.”

In our country, no government understood this more clearly than the military regime of General Ziaul Haq. It engaged in a wide-ranging and sustained effort to reconstruct our national identity through changing the national curriculum and the textbooks. In a 1984 essay for a book edited by Air Marshal (retd) Asghar Khan, Pervez Hoodbhoy and I showed how school history books were being rewritten to foster a conservative and militant Islamic identity. We warned that as the children growing up in the 1980s became adults, their newly received ideas would have profound consequences for our society and our politics.

Many others — Dr K.K. Aziz, Dr Mubarak Ali, Dr Rubina Saigol, Dr Syed Jaffar Ahmed and Dr Tariq Rahman to name but a few — did more detailed scholarly studies. The conclusions were inescapable: the education system was distorting our society and our understanding of our selves. We can now see the consequences all around us.

Let me now turn to the SDPI report, which was an attempt to see where our education system was twenty years after General Zia’s efforts, and to take up General Pervez Musharraf’s promise of supporting reforms that would find, in his words, “solutions to the problem of sectarianism and extremism”.

To these ends, the study group collected and reviewed the official curriculum documents, that had been revised and published in March, 2002, and the officially approved textbooks in Pakistan Studies, Social Studies, Urdu, English and Civics covering the range of classes from 1 to 12.

The questions asked were: what is the religious content of textbook material in subjects other than Islamic studies? What kind of hate material is in the textbooks and how prevalent is it? What, if any, are the distortions, by commission and omission, in the narration of our history? Which values and personalities are projected? To what extent ISLAMABAD: militancy inculcated in students? What gender biases exist in the learning material? And, lastly, what role does the curriculum, prepared by the Federal Ministry of Education, play in determining the content and character of the books published by the provincial textbook boards?

We went through the books, line by line, section after section, chapter after chapter. We hoped that our answers would give way to an informed national debate about what our children were actually being taught.

Let me explain some of what we found, and then the storm we met. Take first the case of teaching religion. We found that Islamic teachings are a systematic part of the textbooks in Urdu, English and Social Studies that are compulsory for students of all faiths. For example, the report shows that on an average about one-fourth of the lessons in Urdu textbooks published by the Punjab and the Federal textbook boards have religious content.

The report also looked at the example of the integrated primary level course, which is taught to all children. Since it is integrated, Islamiat is a part of it. This is a clear violation of the fundamental rights guaranteed by the Constitution. Article 22(1) of the Constitution of Pakistan says: “No person attending any educational institution shall be required to receive religious instruction, or take part in any religious ceremony, or attend religious worship, if such instruction, ceremony or worship relates to a religion other than his own”. Or are we to infer that the education system works on the basis that only Muslim citizens of Pakistan send their children to school?

The report brings out example after example of statements from textbooks on Social Studies as well as Urdu which clearly seek to create prejudice and hate against Hindus and India. One textbook says, “The religion of the Hindus did not teach them good things”; another teaches the child that the “Hindu has always been an enemy of Islam”; yet another says, “the Hindus lived in small and dark houses”; and, as a final example, consider the story used in an Urdu textbook that has a Hindu character explain that “Hindus please the goddess Kali by slaughtering people of other religions at her feet’.

How is the child of a Hindu citizen of Pakistan to read this? Would anyone blame it if he grows up feeling alienated from Pakistani society? Is this not subverting the society from within?

On issue after issue, we found more than what we had feared. There were the instructions to textbook writers to emphasize jihad and shahadat; the obvious lies about history, even that which was within living memory; the sustained focus on wars and military heroes rather than peace and development and the countless people who have struggled for human compassion, peace and justice; and the deeply disturbing representation of women. The report documents all of this.

The report came to the conclusion that the curricula and the instructions contained in them, and the Curriculum Wing of the Federal Ministry of Education were the most fundamental source of the problem. It is the Curriculum Wing that has the final authority to vet the books prepared by provincial textbook boards. This conclusion was borne out from a couple of more recent examples that have come to light.

In December 2003, the Curriculum Wing rejected a proposed English language textbook for Classes IX and X from the Sindh Textbook Board. The Curriculum Wing raised two “serious” objections. One objection centred on a lesson containing a letter by the Quaid-i-Azam’s daughter Dina to her father; it was considered unacceptable because she was not a Muslim. The second problem was about a lesson that talked of a family where both husband and wife worked and in which the husband was shown to share household chores with his wife.

A second, even more recent example shows just how little has really changed since General Musharraf’s regime came to power. In February, 2004, the Curriculum Wing expressed its disapproval of a class IV textbook on Social Studies because the book did not contain enough material on jihad. The SDPI report has received extensive comments in the press both in the country and outside. It attracted a great deal of support for its proposals for urgent and sweeping reforms. It also met with hostile criticism from right-wing and ultra-nationalist groups, and their like-minded commentators in certain sections of the media. Like on all such previous occasions, the government, despite being a military regime in all but name, made a hasty retreat, and has failed again to take any kind of principled position or action in favour of its much proclaimed reform agenda.

Among the Urdu press, a Lahore-based national daily has launched the most sustained and virulent campaign against the report. It is determined to present itself as the upholder of the national interest, which it sees embodied in a sanctified political slogan of the ‘Ideology of Pakistan’, and to denounce all who may think otherwise.

The following are just a few examples from the newspaper where it has falsely attributed arguments and conclusions to the report, and planted false news. Since the report is published, it should not be hard to determine what it says, and what it does not say. Only the most determined and wilful misreading could lead to these and other such claims made in the media.

On April 5, an editorial said: “The writers of the SDPI report have proved their mental bankruptcy by raising several objections to the thoughts and philosophy of Iqbal.”

A day later, on April 6, a news report said: “The SDPI report had recommended removing the words Rehmatullah Alaih from the names of Muslim conquerors for being painful to Hindus.

On April 7, a write-up by Dr Hussain Ahmed Paracha said: “From the beginning to the end, the SDPI report writers have targeted Islamic history, Islamic system of punishments, Islamic laws, the Thinker of Pakistan and the Founder of Pakistan.”

The report, to be sure, contains nothing of what has been insinuated above.

This same newspaper also published a completely false story of the Education Minister Zubaida Jalal calling up the SDPI for help, and meeting a couple of people in the Parliament House cafeteria. The purpose of this report was ostensibly to strengthen the claim the newspaper has been making that the Minister for Education was being advised by the SDPI.

The facts are very different. Earlier this year, as the SDPI report began to attract public support for its proposals for urgent and sweeping reforms in the education system, the Ministry of Education created a committee to review the report. The ministry chose to give the responsibility for hosting the review committee to the Curriculum Wing, despite the fact that the SDPI report had recommended that the Curriculum Wing be abolished.

In March, the Minister for Education informed the National Assembly that following the review, her ministry had rejected the analysis and recommendations of the report. The National Assembly was not informed that the 15-person review committee had, in fact, endorsed the SDPI report by a vote of 9 to 6, and supported its most significant proposals for reforming the national curricula, textbooks and the ministry itself. Whatever side the minister is on, it is not that of the report and its reform proposals.

Another part of the campaign has been to attack the SDPI for being an NGO and to suggest that it must have an agenda defined by its supposed foreign funders. The same tactic is used against the government. Consider for example the following newspaper claim, purportedly citing a statement by US National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice.

Columnist Irfan Siddiqui has quoted Rice as saying: “Educational reform in Muslim countries is the top-most priority of the US government ... Reforms are being introduced in Muslim countries, curricula are being changed. Pakistan’s education minister is a wonder woman. I had met her in Washington last year and exchanged views on Pakistan’s educational curriculum”.

Condoleeza Rice’s deposition is available in its entirety on the internet. Search it for the word ‘curriculum’; it is simply not there. Search it for the word ‘education’, and there is only one paragraph, which is:

“... (O)ne of the things that we’ve been very interested, for instance, in is issues of educational reform in some of these countries. As you know, the madrassas are a big difficulty. I’ve met, myself personally, two or three times with the Pakistani — a wonderful woman who’s the Pakistani education minister. We can’t do it for them. They have to do it for themselves. But we have to stand for those values. And over the long run, we will change — I believe we will change the nature of the Middle East, particularly if there are examples that this can work in the Middle East.”

It is clear that Rice’s statement refers to Madrassas and says nothing about the curriculum of the public education system. What is more disturbing is that it is not just a columnist misinforming his readers. Much of the Urdu press, including major columnists like Hamid Mir and Ataul Haq Qasmi, also now carry the misquote. None of them ever bothered to check Rice’s speech. For many readers, a lie has now become the truth.

When some newspapers are willing to use their power to mislead public opinion and to incite religious and national passions in this way, it is hard to understand how we can have a serious, thoughtful and informed debate about the fundamental character and content of our education system.

To Mr. Jinnah’s point that “the importance of education and the right type of education cannot be overemphasised”, we must add that there is equally no doubt about the need for a free press and the press that takes seriously its responsibility to inform and educate its readers. Without this, there can be no democratic debate, and, without such debates, democracy cannot be made to work.

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