Recipe for obscurantism – A.H. Nayyar
Recipe for obscurantism – A.H. Nayyar
THE new National Education Policy released last week needs a careful and clear-headed national debate. It was intended to be a first step in the long overdue process of reforming our education system.
It is clear, however, that the new policy has missed its target. It is a step backwards and shows every sign that yet another weak and insecure government is sacrificing the education system to placate hard-line Islamist parties.
The new education policy was supposed to correct the dangerous flaws in the education system that were created in the early 1980s by the military dictatorship of Gen Ziaul Haq with the help of Islamist political parties who supported his regime. Under Gen Zia, Islamiat was fused into nearly all the subjects from Class I to higher education. The system was focused on encourag ing a particularly narrow, sectarian, conservative understanding of Islam and actively promoted jihad and the concept of shahadat. This structure was left in place by successive governments fearful of inciting the mullahs and their supporters.
The new education policy contains a chapter on Islamic education. The successive policy drafts contained no such chapter, until some obscurantist elements protested that Islamic learning in the new policy draft was given no more importance than any other subject. The government immediately succumbed to the pressure and added the chapter. The new chapter lays out the curriculum for Islamiat, detailing what is to be taught to children in public schools and who should teach it. There is no similar chapter on science education or on the teaching of mathematics or languages.
The new education policy declares that Islamiat is to be a compulsory subject from class I up to class XII, and if one reads carefully, this condition could extend even to higher education. It seems little changed from the old policy.
While making the teaching of Islamiat compulsory from class I, the new policy says that classes I and II would have an integrated curriculum. An integrated curriculum by definition has all the subjects put together in one book, which means that Islamic Studies will also be a part of this book, which all children will use. As a result, non-Muslim students in class I and II would be required to study the subject with the rest of the children.
This is in clear violation of Article 22(1) of the constitution that says: “No person attending any educational institution shall be required to receive religious instructions, 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.” There are other troubling similarities between the new and the old policies.
The Islamiat curriculum spelled out in the new education policy includes teaching students the virtues of jihad. Similar provisions in the old education policy allowed curriculum designers to focus unduly on this topic, and fostered textbooks that include chapters on jihad that would not look out of place in the promotional literature put out by jihadi organisations. Many examples of such material can be found in the 2003 SDPI report The Subtle Subversion detailing the content of our public schools’ textbooks and curricula.
The new education policy promises to employ well-qualified teachers to teach Islamiat and Arabic in schools. Who would these teachers be, other than the graduates of madressahs? If each school employs only one teacher for both Islamiat and Arabic, it will open up employment in public schools for nearly 250,000 madressah-trained mullahs. This proposal opens the way for a tidal wave of mullahs bringing their obscurantism, sectarianism and militancy into our classrooms.
It will not just be public-school stu dents who are exposed to mullahs as teachers. The new policy says: “Islamic teachings shall be made a part of teacher-training curricula and the curricula of other training institutions. Arabic teachers preferably having the qualification as qaris shall be appointed in such institutions.” Who will teach Islam to would-be teachers and where are the qaris to teach Arabic to come from? Only madressahs produce such people in numbers. This is a scheme to extend the influence of madressahs to schools through teacher training.
Finally, the new policy also seeks to reform madressahs by introducing standard school subjects, such as science and English, in the madressah curriculum. This approach was tried by the Musharraf regime. It did not work then and will not work now, largely because madressahs are opposed to it.
Policymakers have erred in neglecting the proposal by the esteemed religious scholar Javed Ghamdi, who suggested that madressah education should be regarded as professional education, akin to the study of law, engineering and medicine, and should be allowed only after 10 to 12 years of mainstream schooling. If this approach had been adopted, there would be no need for yet another futile effort at reforming madressahs.
The promotion of radical Islamist ideology through madressahs and in public schools for over 30 years has brought Pakistan to the brink of civil war. The struggle is being waged with a terrible cost to lives and national well-being. Left unchallenged, the new education policy will condemn another generation of young Pakistanis to the same kind of indoctrination that has brought the country to its current perilous situation. There needs to be an urgent national debate about the new education policy and possible ways to finally rid our education system of the legacy of Gen Zia. ¦ The writer formerly taught physics at Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad.
