Language in Education in Pakistan: Recommendation for Policy and Practice is the outcome of an extensive research carried out by two scholars involving different stakeholders, teachers and students from different sections of Pakistani society. The two British scholars are Hywel Coleman and Tony Capstick. The former is known as an established scholar in the area of teaching English in large classes and in the area of language and development, the latter is an English Language teacher who has taught English in a number of countries and claims to have taught English language in Pakistan for the last four years.
While a lot can be said on the quick methods employed by the researchers without attending to the issues of translation, transcription and presentation of facts, I will focus only on the recommendations of the report which form chapter 12.
The authors suggest that quality education should be accessible to every child. No one would disagree that such statements are very vague and general as they do not tell us anything in particular. They also do not give us as any direction. One would have expected a more focused discussion and relevant points from the researchers. Even if one agreed with the imagined “quality education should be accessible to every child”, it becomes unimaginable considering the sociopolitical and educational structures of Pakistan.
Access to good quality education cannot be standardised/packaged in a context where providing basic literacy education is still a tall dream. The report gets into the old rhetoric of providing early education in children’s L1 and then gradually moving on to English and Urdu. The suggestions of the shift from L1 to English and Urdu are made without investigating classroom language practices?
As a classroom practicing teacher, I find the argument rather simplistic on mainly two grounds: First, the classroom discourse in Pakistan rarely remains monolingual. According to Khan (2011), “Students and teacher often code-switch into different languages, in Pushto-dominated regions, teachers code-switched into English, Urdu and Pushto on task, off task, in class, out of the class.” The situation will not be very different in other regions of the country. As a result, to assume that teaching in one language is far from the reality of classroom discourses in Pakistan.
According to the authors of this report, national and international languages should be introduced when a child is ready for them. As a teacher and mother of a young child I believe it is very difficult to say whether the child is ready for a new language or not because children in Pakistan get multiple language exposures from day one.
Besides, how will it be determined whether the child is ready or not? Who is going to assess the linguistic attainment of children in a context where the linguistic repertoires of every individual are rather unique and complex? The decades of variationist sociolinguistics research tell us that it is foolish and political to claim that people have similar linguistic repertoires and that transition from one language to another is a mechanical process which could be structured into different classes The report argues that active participation in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) programme will provide detailed information about the extent to which a student can think about the world mathematically and scientifically in the language which is his or her medium of instruction. Again, the problem of assessing what the student can think about the world will be assessed.
The innate/natural ability to use language to communicate is a rather slow process. Its transition from one language to another cannot be assumed as mechanical as given in the report. Whereas, the report seems to promote the language diversity present in Pakistan, it remains silent on the issues of market conditions that constrain people choices for languages. While I am sentimentally attached to my mother tongue Urdu, I know what languages my children know in order to go ahead in life.
The research also aims to identify the current language policy within each province and the focus seems more on the practices of local language(s). The focus should be on whether the teachers teaching these languages come from the same background where they were taught different subjects in local languages instead of the national or international language? But this involves a discussion on the local politics in the country, hence very tactfully handled in this report.
The authors ask that in a situation where a local language is used as the medium of instruction, what provision is there for the students who are not native speakers? Understanding language and learning language are two different approaches. For example, a student opting to go abroad for further education might still understand the subjects taught abroad even if those subjects are not taught in the student’s L1. Use of national/local language is not a justification towards learning to think and understand the world scientifically.
The author suggests that the parents need to be convinced that in the long run their children’s English will be even better if they are allowed to become literate in their mother tongue first. But the elitist schools here focus more on the use of English as a foreign language, thus making it more easy for young learners to adapt at an early age. English is after all the language which is not only the medium of instruction but source of education in general at all levels. The books studied in high schools or universities are mostly in English. As a teacher of English language, I strongly believe that it becomes easier for them to understand the book if they adapt to English at a very early age. A standard need has to be maintained. The difference between the elite and less elite will remain there but at one point they both need to follow a similar pattern.
In short, the researchers do not demonstrate their understanding of the problems that Pakistani children, teachers and parents face in their everyday cycle of life. Despite these short comings, it is still a very good example of descriptive research.
The writer teaches at a private university in Karachi.