Punjab Punch...History, Politics & Culture: December 2011

interviewA sharp eye on education 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.