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The politics of education
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March: (The News) - One of the recommendations of the 9/11 commission
report to ensure that such incidents don't happen in the future is urging the
United States to support Pakistan for 'better education'. For that a large sum
of money has already been allocated. Why is education considered to be that
important by the 9/11 Commission? What is political about education? How
education can be used as a tool for suppression and control? Can education be
used to challenge and put up resistance to control? These are some of the
questions that need to be unpacked. |
More than three decades ago Neil Postman
wrote an intriguing piece, Politics of reading where he candidly suggests that
all educational practices are profoundly political in the sense that they are
designed to produce one sort of human being rather that another - which is to
say, an educational system proceeds from one model of what a human being ought
to be like. The dominant groups, he argues, would advocate some functional
literacy so that subjects should be able to read the orders/rules and follow
them.
The role of educational institutions is vital in the politics of
knowledge transfer. They are involved in the processing of certain kind of
knowledge. The popular notion of knowledge in most Pakistani mainstream
institutions is that it is something fixed and out there. This view of knowledge
leads to a certain kind of education that focuses on transfer of knowledge to
the pupils. So education in this paradigm simply means transmission of
knowledge, skills, and values to the next generation. To comply with this
definition of transmission the most suitable method that is adopted in most
schools of Pakistan is teacher-fronted method where the teacher runs the whole
show. A typical classroom is a one way long, boring, lecture by the teacher
where students sit back and have to listen to the 'sermon' in a passive manner.
A more contemporary version of teacher-fronted teaching is excessive use of
multimedia and over-head-projector. The teacher, during the given time, goes
over the slides, reads them out and thinks that the job is done.
I have
mentioned earlier that a fixed view of knowledge leads to the transmission mode
of teaching. Another factor which is strengthening the fixed notion of knowledge
is the evaluation system. The evaluation system in mainstream schools and
colleges encourage rote learning and seldom test the higher order thinking. So
the transmission mode of education thrives on this kind of evaluation where just
recall is required from students. That is why if we look at the question papers
of different examinations we observe that the majority of the questions are what
type questions where students are required to answer with the help of their
memory. The how and why types of questions are either nonexistent or not
significant in terms of their ratio to other questions. Thus our examination
system sets a tone for the teachers to involve in examination-driven-teaching.
The students do not feel the need to develop thinking skills, as they are not
required by our assessment system any way.
The educational institutions
then become the hub where different components of education, i.e. curriculum,
textbooks, school milieu, teachers, and students are supposed to meet and
interact with one another. Teaching, whether teachers are conscious of it or
not, according to Paulo Freire becomes a political act. This political act is
shaped and driven by the notion of knowledge, education, teaching and
evaluation. Since knowledge is being transmitted in the educational institutions
they become a very important source of impacting the society.
Educational
institutions play a very important role to establish hegemony through civil
society, as Gramscian puts it. They contribute to the hegemonic act in three
important ways. Firstly, they are involved in the construction of stereotypes
that favour certain dominant groups. Secondly, they are engaged in perpetuating
those stereotypes by transmitting them to the young generation. Thirdly they,
being important social institutions, validate and legitimise those stereotypes.
When the students, after getting their education, join the society, they further
establish the already popular stereotypes, which favour a certain group/s
associated with power. Illich in his classical work, Deschooling Society laments
the situation where educational institutions with their stereo type programmes
and teaching turns a society into a 'schooled society' where critical thinking
does not finds its space.
Now let us relate this situation to the thesis
offered by Postman where the sole purpose of literacy is to produce people who
could follow the rules/instructions/orders and further strengthen the agenda of
the more powerful. In such kind of literacy thinking skills are not required and
thus not encouraged. This leads us to the central question? What is the purpose
of education? In the wake of neo-liberalism the answer is simple; to fit into
the job slots of society, the job that promises more money. Interestingly one of
the US based think-tanks recommends more vocational education for the developing
countries. Apparently it looks good that vocational education would bring more
jobs but the flip side of the coin is that we are totally ignoring a very
important function of education, i.e. development of a thinking human being.
Thus social sciences and humanities are pushed back in the neo-liberal world
order as they have a weak correlation with the 'maximisation of
profit'.
Can education be a political? There have been efforts to
depoliticise education in Pakistan during the military regime of Zia and later
on followed by the civil governments. But the paradox was obvious. On the one
hand students' unions were banned to 'purify' the campuses from the germs of
politics and on the other hand a special kind of knowledge was constructed in
the specially designed textbooks. The curriculum and textbooks were modified to
suit a certain perspective. Thus in the efforts to depoliticise the campuses
another agenda was being followed which was highly political in nature but since
it suited the ruling group it became the top priority of education
institutions.
If education is not neutral what could be the possible aim
of education. The essence of education is change: change at personal and
societal level. This change is for the betterment of individuals and society. A
real development, linked with emancipation, should be the target of education.
For that we need to revisit the conservative definition of education that hinges
around transmission. We need to redefine education as a tool for transformation.
To realise the objective of education that focuses on transformation of
individual lives and society we have to wean away from transmission mode of
teaching and move to critical pedagogy. This means a more interactive classroom
where students and teachers both have active roles and where they are engaged in
co-construction of knowledge that is relevant, linked with our life, and is
beneficial to the humanity at large. This is possible if an evaluation system is
developed that encourages critical thinking and analytical skills. Only then we
should be looking for an educational system that produces students not just to
fit into the slots of society but at times challenge some of the taboos of
society.
By Dr Shahid Siddiqui
The writer is a professor and director of the Centre for
Humanities and Social Sciences at the Lahore School of Economics. Email:
shahidksiddiqui@yahoo.com
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| Education News | | Updated: 25 May, 2012 |
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