Monday, December 26, 2011
Saturday, December 10, 2011
interview aamir riaz: A sharp eye on education
By Ather Naqvi
Aamir Riaz has closely watched the state of education in Pakistan especially since 2006, when the government was doing a mid-term review of the education policy of 1998 under a federal commission and he was tasked to do a comparative analysis of the 12 education policies announced by then, including the one in 1998. The white paper of the work was published in 2007 and he plans to publish the findings of the study in a book form soon.
He has recently — in August 2011 — completed a research study in Urdu titled ‘Hum Apnay Bachon Ko Kiya Parha Rahey Hain? Punjab Textbook Board ki Nisaabi Kutb Barey ik Jaeyza’, with support from Actionaid and Jaag. As part of the study, he took 34 books, approved by the government and published by the Punjab Textbook Board in 2010, from four subjects (Urdu, English, Islamiyat/Ethics and Pakistan Studies/Social Studies) from Class I to Class X and analysed them in the light of around “45 questions”.
Of all the 871 lessons that he analysed in these 34 books, the conclusions that he has drawn are astounding, to say the least. The lessons are biased, distorted, factually incorrect, gender insensitive and lack on a number of counts.
TNS sat with him in his office behind the Readings bookstore in Lahore where he is currently working as general manager of Ilqa Publications to discuss the findings of the report.
The News on Sunday: What is the underlying message of the report?
Aamir Riaz: The thrust of the report is that despite adhering to religious beliefs and nationalism, one could still allow some room for peace and tolerance. The problem is that our education policies are not inclusive. For example, instead of formulating a syllabus of Islamiat which would take into account sensibilities of various sects, we published a separate book for the Shia sect during Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s government in the 1970s. This was contrary to the Sharif Commission formed in 1959 that suggested that syllabus for religious education shall not contain material unacceptable to any sect living in the country.
This aspect has been rather reluctantly stated in the Education Policy of 2009 as well. But the problem of a textbook writer is that he can not do anything except follow the guidelines of the state policy.
Then another important issue is: what to teach our children. In the reports preceding the one in 1969, it was clearly stated that all non-Muslims would be imparted education keeping in view their religious beliefs and sentiments. This statement was removed from the 1969 report and reappeared years later in the education policy of 2009.
We do not give a correct version of history of Punjab in the Punjab textbooks. Same is the case with the history books of Sindh, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan. The message of this report is that we should accept various types of diversities in our society and reflect them in our textbooks.
TNS: What method of research did you employ for the report?
AR: I framed 45 questions in all, covering the relevant and important aspects of the research, such as religion, nationalism, modernity, gender and rural and urban bias, etc, and divided them into five sections each. We looked for answers to these questions in the textbooks. The textbooks were our respondents.
This does not mean that the textbooks in Sindh and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa are free of errors. But we gave greater importance to the Punjab because about 56 per cent of the total population of the country lives here.
I had access to some education documents of the federal government but they were insufficient. So, I had to meet people from various sections of society and connect the dots.
An important fact we discovered during the research was that according to the government’s latest data, about 40 million boys and girls are studying in class I to X, and out of these, 13 million go to private schools and a few thousands go to madrassahs. That means more than 60 per cent students still go to schools in the public sector. Therefore, we are imparting a biased education to a majority of our schoolchildren.
TNS: How do you compare the Punjab Textbook Board’s books with those used in private schools?
AR: I have seen some textbooks of private schools and they too are not satisfactory. The content has no social, ethical or religious affinity to our land. They seem to be preparing a lot that would end up in the Western countries.
TNS: So who do you hold responsible for this mess?
AR: The civilian governments had hardly any time or space to formulate an education policy responsive to our needs. It is very difficult for them to correct the historic wrongs. For instance, interestingly, there is no mention of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in the chapter on Second Islamic Conference. In the same way, Nawaz Sharif is not mentioned in the chapter on atomic explosions conducted by Pakistan in 1998.
We started deviating from the path of liberalism and tolerance after the education policy of 1969. This policy was blatantly anti-India, among other things. The four education policies before that clearly showed we were trying to strike a balance between religion and modernity. The element of extremism had not found its place yet. There was nationalism but there was also clear space for languages such as Bengali as one of the national languages. Same was the case with other local languages such as Sindhi, etc. In contrast we had the education policy of 1959, also known as the Sharif Commission Report. Mr Sharif was a professor at the Government College, Lahore and there was no bureaucrat from the civilian or military setup in the 12-member policy formulating team, other than the secretary education. It also had Dr Abdus Salam as one of its advisers.
While comparing the education policies, I found out that while some work is being done on the policy level, there is little attention being paid to what we are actually teaching the students.
TNS: Do we have other instances of content analyses of textbooks?
AR: There is not a single comprehensive content analysis of our education policies so far. The ones that have been undertaken relate to specific areas such as minorities, women, etc. One does not get the whole picture reading those reports. And unless you get the whole picture, it is difficult to go in the right direction.
TNS: How have the local languages been affected?
AR: The issue of mother tongue is very important. We have the example of India where they formed a commission in 1948 which gave recommendations to the constitution committee, pointing out that 96 languages were spoken in India and out of them 26 were spoken by not more than 5,000 people but they should be given the right to primary education in their mother tongue. And they were allowed to do that.
We should understand that there is no clash between the mother tongue and Urdu. But some sections have deliberately done that for their vested interests — to promote centralism. In the first education conference after Pakistan came into being, it was recommended that the provinces’ languages will be kept in view while making policies but this point was later removed. The idea of one language, one nation, and one religion goes against the very presence of diversity in the Pakistani society. Quaid-e-Azam never meant that Urdu will be the national language when he said that it will be the “lingua franca” of Pakistan. There is a clear difference between a lingua franca and the sole national language. In the very next speech of Quaid-e-Azam in 1948, he said that I have no objection to Bengalis declaring Bengali their national language. In his Allahabad speech, Iqbal acknowledges the linguistic, cultural and religious diversity.
TNS: What is the way forward?
AR: Broad but unambiguous education policy guidelines should come from the federal government with the main input from provinces after consultations with the civil society. Words like enemy etc, being taught to a student of a primary class do not make sense. Education reform is not a one man show; the parliament will have to put in its share.
Friday, December 9, 2011
All About NEWLINE Books...Available @ READINGS, Lahore
All available books are at Readings, Lhore
Monday, November 28, 2011
Our flawed syllabi
Our flawed syllabi
What are we teaching our children?
While curriculum and quality of education issues have especially been highlighted since 9/11, albeit from a rather narrow perspective, concerns about what we are teaching our children have been around for much longer. And even now the post-9/11 emphasis, triggered by concerns about terrorism, is more focused on issues of madrassahreforms. But, from quality of education perspectives as well as domestic citizenship and harmony reasons, we should be more worried about what is taught in all of our schools and how it is taught, irrespective of whether these are public or private schools.
Although we keep arguing that majority of the country lives in rural areas, yet very few of the lessons in our textbooks depict or talk of issues related to rural life. It might be the case that the state, by emphasising city living, is and wants to encourage urbanisation, but since popular rhetoric of the state does not support this, we have to assume that this neglect of rural life has more to do with policymakers’ and writers’ biases and little to do with thought-through objectives. When these lessons do not confront the reality of rural children, how can we expect them to relate to their lessons?
There have been a number of studies that have touched on issues of low quality and biases in curriculum as well as books. But these analyses have seldom gone down to analysing actual lessons in textbooks in detail to have a better idea of what is being taught. Aamir Riaz, in a recent (August 2011) Urdu report titled ‘Hum Apnay Bachon Ko Kiya Parha Rahey Hain? Punjab Textbook Board ki Nisaabi Kutb Barey ik Jaeyza’,done with the support from Actionaid and Jaag, has gone to this level. The observation given above, about lack of coverage of rural life, is coming from Aamir Riaz’s report. Aamir Riaz took 34 books, approved by government and published by the Punjab Textbook Board in 2010, from four subjects (Urdu, English, Islamiyat/Ethics and Pakistan Studies/Social Studies) from Class I to Class X and analysed them using a number of questions that, apriori, seem reasonable.
Students should have contextualised knowledge, there should be positive lessons on all religions, all sects, across gender, across geography, there have to be lessons on tolerance, civic participation, democracy, rule of law, and so on. We should not be giving our children distorted picture of our history and should not be filling their minds with hatred or keep them ignorant about our rich cultural background. Aamir took these ideas and looked at our books to see what information and values are we providing to our children.
Aamir Riaz reports that he analysed all 871 lessons that these 34 books had. He found that there was hardly any lesson in these books that reported anything positive about other religions, or had good characters based on non-Muslims. What message are we giving the minorities of the country? Equally, if not more, importantly, what are we teaching our children? That good characteristics only occur in Muslims and non-Muslims are not good Pakistanis? On the cultural side too there is very little about Punjabi culture in these books and few of the folk heroes, folk tales, Punjabi literature, and the Sufis of the Punjab make it to the textbooks and even if any do they make a very sanitised appearance.
Almost half of our population is female and we talk a lot about female education and reducing gender education gaps as a priority, yet the textbooks seem to take little notice of these goals. There are very few lessons where the main characters are women, and even fewer where they are role models. Women are never pilots, cricket/hockey players, academics, journalists and leaders of industry in our textbooks.
Aamir also points a huge number of factual errors. And some of them are not just biases or errors of omission: they are deliberate and outright lies. Apart from taking things out of context and quoting selected sentences that fit the ideology that the state wants to project, historical speeches of Mohammed Ali Jinnah and Dr Mohammad Iqbal have been misquoted. One can lament the closed-mindedness of writers when they quote things out of context, but actual distortion of historical documents is a criminal act. But, in our desire to demonise ‘the other’ we are not only willing to censor our heroes but actually lie about them too.
Then there are factual errors such as on the same page in one book the authors write we lost the war in 1971, but go on to say that we have fought three wars on Kashmir and won all of them.
There are strong biases against political governments but the military dictators are more neutrally portrayed. Even when prime ministers have done something that the nation chooses to be proud of (the nuclear explosions of 1998, the construction of the motorway, or the Islamic Summit of 1974) the names of prime ministers under whom these things were initiated are not mentioned by name. But usurpers, all of the military dictators, are named and in some cases we tell children that they took over government out of necessity.
There are hardly any positive lessons for the students about public participation, public mindedness, spirit of voluntary service, spirit of involvement in national and other larger causes. Does the citizen not have some responsibilities also, apart from rights? The responsibility to pay taxes, to be involved, qua citizen, in the political process, to hold public office holders accountable, and to ensure the state not only delivers on its mandate, it also does not overstep its bounds. Beyond the state, the citizen has to be involved with other citizens on provision of public goods such as development of community feeling and an enabling environment and so on. Though a lot of this education happens at home and in the community, school lessons have a role here too and our textbooks need to be cognizant of that. But they currently are not.
Aamir Riaz’s report points out the importance of focusing our attention on textbooks as they are one of the main vehicles through which we control/manage what children are exposed to. Biases, mistakes, errors of omission and commission in textbooks come back to bite us in the form of poor education for our children. Aamir did the analysis for four subjects for the Punjab textbook board and he found a large number of major issues here.
One can be sure we will find similar issues with other textbook boards across the country, and with other subjects too. And though Aamir so far has not covered textbooks being taught by private schools, produced by private publishers, but some of the same problems are bound to be there too. We have to not only correct these errors, we also have to figure out how to make the procedures for producing textbooks a lot more robust and reflective of the needs of our children. We ignore this issue at our own peril.
The writer is an Associate Professor of Economics at LUMS (currently on leave) and a Senior Advisor at Open Society Foundation (OSF). He can be reached at fbari@sorosny.org
While curriculum and quality of education issues have especially been highlighted since 9/11, albeit from a rather narrow perspective, concerns about what we are teaching our children have been around for much longer. And even now the post-9/11 emphasis, triggered by concerns about terrorism, is more focused on issues of madrassahreforms. But, from quality of education perspectives as well as domestic citizenship and harmony reasons, we should be more worried about what is taught in all of our schools and how it is taught, irrespective of whether these are public or private schools.
Although we keep arguing that majority of the country lives in rural areas, yet very few of the lessons in our textbooks depict or talk of issues related to rural life. It might be the case that the state, by emphasising city living, is and wants to encourage urbanisation, but since popular rhetoric of the state does not support this, we have to assume that this neglect of rural life has more to do with policymakers’ and writers’ biases and little to do with thought-through objectives. When these lessons do not confront the reality of rural children, how can we expect them to relate to their lessons?
There have been a number of studies that have touched on issues of low quality and biases in curriculum as well as books. But these analyses have seldom gone down to analysing actual lessons in textbooks in detail to have a better idea of what is being taught. Aamir Riaz, in a recent (August 2011) Urdu report titled ‘Hum Apnay Bachon Ko Kiya Parha Rahey Hain? Punjab Textbook Board ki Nisaabi Kutb Barey ik Jaeyza’,done with the support from Actionaid and Jaag, has gone to this level. The observation given above, about lack of coverage of rural life, is coming from Aamir Riaz’s report. Aamir Riaz took 34 books, approved by government and published by the Punjab Textbook Board in 2010, from four subjects (Urdu, English, Islamiyat/Ethics and Pakistan Studies/Social Studies) from Class I to Class X and analysed them using a number of questions that, apriori, seem reasonable.
Students should have contextualised knowledge, there should be positive lessons on all religions, all sects, across gender, across geography, there have to be lessons on tolerance, civic participation, democracy, rule of law, and so on. We should not be giving our children distorted picture of our history and should not be filling their minds with hatred or keep them ignorant about our rich cultural background. Aamir took these ideas and looked at our books to see what information and values are we providing to our children.
Aamir Riaz reports that he analysed all 871 lessons that these 34 books had. He found that there was hardly any lesson in these books that reported anything positive about other religions, or had good characters based on non-Muslims. What message are we giving the minorities of the country? Equally, if not more, importantly, what are we teaching our children? That good characteristics only occur in Muslims and non-Muslims are not good Pakistanis? On the cultural side too there is very little about Punjabi culture in these books and few of the folk heroes, folk tales, Punjabi literature, and the Sufis of the Punjab make it to the textbooks and even if any do they make a very sanitised appearance.
Almost half of our population is female and we talk a lot about female education and reducing gender education gaps as a priority, yet the textbooks seem to take little notice of these goals. There are very few lessons where the main characters are women, and even fewer where they are role models. Women are never pilots, cricket/hockey players, academics, journalists and leaders of industry in our textbooks.
Aamir also points a huge number of factual errors. And some of them are not just biases or errors of omission: they are deliberate and outright lies. Apart from taking things out of context and quoting selected sentences that fit the ideology that the state wants to project, historical speeches of Mohammed Ali Jinnah and Dr Mohammad Iqbal have been misquoted. One can lament the closed-mindedness of writers when they quote things out of context, but actual distortion of historical documents is a criminal act. But, in our desire to demonise ‘the other’ we are not only willing to censor our heroes but actually lie about them too.
Then there are factual errors such as on the same page in one book the authors write we lost the war in 1971, but go on to say that we have fought three wars on Kashmir and won all of them.
There are strong biases against political governments but the military dictators are more neutrally portrayed. Even when prime ministers have done something that the nation chooses to be proud of (the nuclear explosions of 1998, the construction of the motorway, or the Islamic Summit of 1974) the names of prime ministers under whom these things were initiated are not mentioned by name. But usurpers, all of the military dictators, are named and in some cases we tell children that they took over government out of necessity.
There are hardly any positive lessons for the students about public participation, public mindedness, spirit of voluntary service, spirit of involvement in national and other larger causes. Does the citizen not have some responsibilities also, apart from rights? The responsibility to pay taxes, to be involved, qua citizen, in the political process, to hold public office holders accountable, and to ensure the state not only delivers on its mandate, it also does not overstep its bounds. Beyond the state, the citizen has to be involved with other citizens on provision of public goods such as development of community feeling and an enabling environment and so on. Though a lot of this education happens at home and in the community, school lessons have a role here too and our textbooks need to be cognizant of that. But they currently are not.
Aamir Riaz’s report points out the importance of focusing our attention on textbooks as they are one of the main vehicles through which we control/manage what children are exposed to. Biases, mistakes, errors of omission and commission in textbooks come back to bite us in the form of poor education for our children. Aamir did the analysis for four subjects for the Punjab textbook board and he found a large number of major issues here.
One can be sure we will find similar issues with other textbook boards across the country, and with other subjects too. And though Aamir so far has not covered textbooks being taught by private schools, produced by private publishers, but some of the same problems are bound to be there too. We have to not only correct these errors, we also have to figure out how to make the procedures for producing textbooks a lot more robust and reflective of the needs of our children. We ignore this issue at our own peril.
The writer is an Associate Professor of Economics at LUMS (currently on leave) and a Senior Advisor at Open Society Foundation (OSF). He can be reached at fbari@sorosny.org
Thursday, November 24, 2011
The Lion's Firanghis: Europeans at the Court of Lahore
The Lion's Firanghis: Europeans at the Court of Lahore
http://www.amazon.com/Lions-Firanghis-Europeans-Court-Lahore/dp/0956127010
http://www.amazon.com/Lions-Firanghis-Europeans-Court-Lahore/dp/0956127010
It took Bobby Singh Bansal six years to do the research for his book, "The Lions Firanghis: Europeans at the Court of Lahore," and now you can have it for your collection. Better yet, you can use this elegantly produced manuscript as a gift to your family, friends, and colleagues. By doing so, you will also be doing an invaluable service to Sikh artists in general, and to writers like S. Bansal in particular. They need the encouragement of our community to produce more such amazing works. So, let's support them and their worthy cause.
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
Women in Punjabi folk songs by shafqat tanveer mirza in dawn 12 november 2011 saturday
Women in Punjabi folk songs
SWAANIAN TEY LOK GEET… compiler Izhar Husain Awan; pp 120; Price Rs100 (Pb); Publishers New Line Publishers, 3/8 E. Street No 6, Cavalry Ground, Lahore. E-mail: newline2100@yahoo.com.uk.
The compiler and researcher of the songs collected from Pothohar area is no more in this world. Izhar died in 2008 at the age of 43 while he was serving as a teacher in a college in his ancestral town Bhuchhal Kalan in Chakwal district. In brief, at the early stages of his life he was not interested in having higher education. After secondary school certificate, he left and then after many years he cleared his FA and BA and joined the Punjabi Department of the Punjab University and earned good reputation as a brilliant student. In that position he wished to write a thesis on ‘women in the perspective of Pothohar’s folk songs’ and he was assigned to write… the subject to which an Indian (Pakistani before 1947) scholar Vanjara Bedi had already made a solid contribution followed by Afzal Parvaiz, a progressive writer, poet, musician and journalist. He collected folk songs from the same area and meanwhile his articles and pieces he had gathered were published in installments in the now defunct Urdu daily Imroze.
The most unfortunate aspect of his labour was when he saw the same songs lifted from his articles published in a book form under the title of “Pothohari Lok Geet”….. There were two separate volumes carrying almost the same material with names of different authors. One of them was a well-known teacher and poet of Urdu also while the second one was some unknown fellow. Those were the days when Punjabi was recognised by the Punjab University as one of the oriental languages. The three-tier examination was also offered privately and after clearing these examinations, one was allowed to appear in the English and earn the BA degree. That is why a small space was created for Punjabi books.
Izhar had most probably also gone through that way and reached the Oriental College to be assigned the subject of “Status of Woman in Pothohar folk songs”. The other books from which he sought help were Awan Kari compiled by the late Prof. Shaheen Malik, Pothohar by Aziz Malik and Dhan Malooki by Prof. Anwar Beg Awan.
The story of this work apart from the tale of the compiler needs more attention. He suddenly fell ill and lost his two legs and two arms. Some parts of his second arm including the thumb were saved and he emerged as shining hope out of total hopelessness. He did his MA, joined as lecturer in the college of his hometown where in the light of his own experiences he established an NGO Irada Centre. Before his sudden death, he had established two schools for disabled persons and a limb center also. Izhar, basically a disabled man got the art to drive a three-wheel motorcycle which made him all the time mobile. From his personal example you may call him an example personified. The only credit he had and with that his moving spirit collected, tapped the required sources for establishing Irada Centre. Its two tiers were completed and on the third, he wanted to get it inaugurated from some known personality and the ceremony was to be held in December 2008. October heart-attack could not spare another two months to Izhar who had in his last days had a look on his MA thesis which saw the light of the day in July 2011.
For Izhar the area in Pothohar falls includes: Thhal (Pind Dadan Khan to Kandiwal, Vanhar (from Manara to Kalar Kahar), Soon (Noshehra, Khabakki), Pakharr (Chinji, Talagang), Ghetbi (Jand, Pindi Gheb), Khttarr (Attock), Dhan (Neela, Chakwal), Kahoon Malot Fort (Dulmial) and Jhangarr (Katas Raj, Choa Saidan Shah). It also includes the whole of Taxila, Rawalpindi, Islamabad and Gujjar Khan tehsils.
Izhar has without any need had very narrowly marked the area of Pothohar, otherwise it is much wider area between river Jhelum and Sindh known as Sindh Sagar Doab.
Though the political interpretation of the folk songs was not part of Izhar’s research but Aamar Riaz in his foreword asserts that the history of the ancient Punjab is found scattered in the folk legacy of the Punjab which needs attention of the scholars who want to put the Punjab in its real perspective. A folk song from the semi-hilly areas of the Punjab has following lines.
(I have spread millet on top of the roof, but immediately will come crows who would spoil the corn. That is another problem for me).
Here “crows” are outsiders-invaders of all times. The Punjab has faced innumerable invasions and about the attacks of Nadir Shah, a folk song’s opening lines are:
Nadir has invaded our country and my husband is either among those who want to fight back or he has already been captured by the enemy).
(It is the regime of the Farangis and they have let loose hell on us. Famine forces me to eat Pohli instead of wheat… Pohli a self-grown corn of very inferior quality usually destroyed by the farmer just to have good crop of wheat). — STM
Saturday, November 5, 2011
dividing the Punjab
ppp under siege
it is PPP’s suicide mission. in the first step they will expel PPP from central Punjab and than gradually fix it in rural sindh. Zia failed to destabilize PPP yet Zia’s followers joined PPP and now they r trying to complete zia’s unfinished agenda. centralist forces are using PPP by ensuring her victory in south punjab. yet in the end PPP will be loser not only in central Punjab but also in south too. withdrawal from central Punjab will be consider as defeatist strategy on political front and will damage it from within.
http://tribune.com.pk/story/28
it is PPP’s suicide mission. in the first step they will expel PPP from central Punjab and than gradually fix it in rural sindh. Zia failed to destabilize PPP yet Zia’s followers joined PPP and now they r trying to complete zia’s unfinished agenda. centralist forces are using PPP by ensuring her victory in south punjab. yet in the end PPP will be loser not only in central Punjab but also in south too. withdrawal from central Punjab will be consider as defeatist strategy on political front and will damage it from within.
http://tribune.com.pk/story/28
Merging history with politics
reviewMerging history with politics
The analysis in Imran Khan’s latest book is not just problematic for the religious right, it is at variance with his own politics
By Aamir Riaz
The analysis in Imran Khan’s latest book is not just problematic for the religious right, it is at variance with his own politics
By Aamir Riaz
Pakistan A
Personal History
By Imran Khan
Publisher: Transworld London, 2011
Pages: 396
Author: Imran Khan
Readings Price Rs 995/-
Thursday, November 3, 2011
Sunday, October 30, 2011
reviews of two Newline publications, Ibr e sang and Swanyaan ty log giat
books published by newline and distributed by Readings, lhore
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