LAHORE, Nov 15: The education system in Pakistan is creating jingoism and class conflict, and is, therefore, required to be rehashed to give humanist colour to the present hatred based contents of the textbooks.

This was stated by Dr Tariq Rahman of the National Institute of Pakistan Studies and the Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad, while delivering a lecture on ‘Education, inequality and the potential for conflict in Pakistan’ here at the National College of Arts (NCA) on Friday.

He said the element of hatred was included in the textbooks after the 1965 war with India and accentuated during the Zia era. In India, Congress concentrated on creating hatred against Pakistan in the textbooks while the BJP government was adding Muslims to the list.

Dr Rahman said the creation of hatred through the textbook was leading to conflict both within and outside both the countries and preventing the governments to change their stances towards each other.

He said in Pakistan the elitist English medium educational centres were breeding tolerance but were pro-West and contemptuous towards Pakistan and its culture. The mainstream Urdu medium institutions and seminaries were pro-Pakistan but breeding contempt for other religions and sects. The Sindhi schools were nevertheless concentrating on tolerance because of the liberal conditions there.

Dr Rahman said the continuous policy of maligning others through the textbook had been trapping the governments, rendering them unable to adopt a policy opposite to this trend.

He said the Pakistani education system was creating class conflict as it was allowing a higher place in society to those who could obtain marks higher than the others. The race for marks to have prestigious position in life was also giving rise to the use of unfair means in the examinations.

Dr Rahman said seminaries were responsible for creating intolerance towards other religions and sects among their students at a large scale. A majority of young people were being attracted to these seminaries as they provide them food and shelter.

He said this trend could be stopped by improving the educational institutions and providing students with facilities which the seminaries were offering.

Dr Rahman said colleges and universities were the places where students from the English and Urdu medium streams used to get together for higher education. But now with the establishment of elitist English medium universities those from this stream were going there, making the public sector universities and colleges merely ghettos.

Again, he said, majority male students were going for job oriented technical education like the information technology, increasing the number of women students in the mainstream public universities and again making them ghettos.

Dr Rahman said the education system could be improved by pumping in more funds and changing the content of the syllabi.