Pakistan's education and militancy
Pakistan's education system deteriorating state
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July: Rebecca Winthrop and Corinne Graff, both Fellows at the Brookings Institute's
Centre for Universal Education have brought out their report titled "Beyond
Madrasas: Assessing the links between Education and Militancy in Pakistan." The
analysis by the authors rests its premise on the emerging body of global data
showing a strong connection between education and civil conflict. |
Global
data has come up with evidence that the lower the enrollment rates at primary
and secondary levels on the average, the more likely the risk of conflict
erupting in that country. The research then seeks to look at the fact-based
evidence drawn from the field in Pakistan to find a link to militancy through
educational conditions. However, despite the presence of large gaps in
the empirical research evidence available in Pakistan in this regard, the report
draws heavily from a number of sources and studies that have looked at the
deteriorating state of Pakistan's education system since the 1980s and its
subsequent consequences to the stability and peaceful co-existence of its
populace. Thus, the report highlights the power of education reform as a means
of supporting security and stability in Pakistan. It specifies the areas
which should be given priority in guiding policy interventions in the education
sector while seeking to create dialogue within Pakistan on the possibility of
how best to use education for bringing peace and stability back to Pakistan.
In stating its purpose, the report reveals that a great emphasis was
laid on the role of madressahs in being responsible for militancy to the
exclusion of other educational factors within Pakistan which could be causes as
well. Its findings disclose evidence which absolves madressah education from
being a prime culprit in fostering militancy in Pakistan. The analysis
states that except for a few militant madressahs that did promote militancy, by
and large madressah education is confined to less than 10 per cent of the
school-going population of Pakistan. The prime motive of parents in opting for
madressah education is religious instruction and is confined to evening classes
rather than a full school day. To quote from the report, "What is often cited by
parents is the importance of a religious education for instilling good morals
and proper ethics. In the words of one Balochi mother, 'Islam is a good
religion, and we want our children to benefit from all it offers. It is only
certain interpretations that give it a bad name.'" Nevertheless, since
madressahs are affiliated with different schools of Islamic thought with a
narrow pedagogy to indoctrinate, sectarian violence may be an offshoot of the
same. The report examines the implications of key findings that have
plagued the state of Pakistan's education sector in the past 30 years. The
picture of the dire state of affairs in the educational sector leaves little to
the imagination. Enough reporting has been done by donor agencies and UNESCO in
highlighting the deficiencies in education provision. Pakistan comes third after
Nigeria and India in the number of children out of school and educationally
remains at the bottom of countries in Asia. With continued terrorism a
growing concern in Pakistan, a growing body of research is finding connections
between poor education provision and conflicts in countries. Consequently, it is
not surprising that the report finds that Pakistanis rank violence and extremism
as their top concerns; nine out of 10 see crime and terrorism as the most
serious challenge facing their country, and 79 per cent are concerned about the
rise of Islamic extremism. Historically, Pakistan has used its education
system to further political gains and foster narrow worldviews. In the 1980s
when Pakistan Studies was made compulsory, the books written for the new
subjects tampered with historical objectivity and used the contents to give a
one-sided and narrow view of the creation of the country. The stance was meant
to instill a narrow and fixed view of the events. Not surprisingly, the
lacklustre teaching of the subject further aggravated a tendency to rote learn
and not question the written content of the books. Instead of debate and
discussion to bring out tendencies for good citizenship, a polemic and dogmatic
outlook was formed in vulnerable minds. No wonder in rural settings and far
flung areas of the country, the effect must have been manifold. For extremism to
take root is easy when pedagogy is confined and restricted. Recent research in
the UK on educating against extremism has also found that teachers' pedagogy
plays a crucial role in mitigating extremist worldviews and recommends a range
of strategies around listening, open discussion and practicing critical
discourse. An "extremist" worldview is one, in the words of Archbishop Desmond
Tutu, that does not "allow for a different point of view" and encourages one to
"hold your view as being quite exclusive, when you don't allow for the
possibility of difference." The Brookings Report underscores five
mechanisms which are contributing factors for militancy in Pakistan apart from a
couple of militant madressahs. These five mechanisms are as follows and the
study finds one salient feature in each: • Education management for
political gain, which highlights important education-sector governance issues
that appear to exacerbate core grievances. • Poor learning and
citizenship skills development, which bring issues of education quality into
sharp focus illustrating the extent to which key skills are not being
cultivated. • Fostering narrow worldviews, which highlights aspects of
curriculum and teaching that appear to support more pro-militant
outlooks. • Lack of relevance of schooling to the marketplace, which
demonstrates the dangers associated with education systems that produce
graduates with little relevant skills for available jobs. • An
inequitable provision of education, which describes the grievances inflamed by
highly inequitable education systems. No doubt nations have employed
education systems in shaping social and political agendas, including identity
formation and nation building. In Pakistan's context, it has been used for
narrow political gains at election times and subverting young minds to follow a
narrow curriculum based on religious and political agendas. Unfortunately, the
deteriorating educational standards since the '80s contributed to a culture of
rote learning in public schools exacerbating the impact of the narrow-minded
syllabi on offer. The restricted worldview of the students became vulnerable to
ideologies that promoted violence in the name of religion. The report
brings to light a vital factor that in Pakistan's context aggravate the effects
of a narrow curriculum. The teacher's style of teaching varies widely between
public and private schools. Accordingly "Pakistani scholars, such as Pervez
Hoodbhoy, argue that many teachers in public schools use rote learning methods,
asking students to memorize and recite lessons out loud and copy verbatim in
their notebooks lessons written on the blackboard." In the context of
the above, recent educational reforms under the Musharraf regime improved
curriculum and brought in an open door policy in textbook production. Schools
now have the choice to select textbooks but the Curriculum Wing has again become
an approving body for "passing" textbooks of their choice. These textbooks will
be used in public sector schools whose intake is still 70 per cent school-going
children in Pakistan. However, there is little impact in the classroom of a
broader curriculum and corresponding textbooks utilising new methodology. The
report emphasises "an increased focus on teaching pedagogy in addressing the
content of what is taught in school is an important way to contribute to a
culture of peace in Pakistan." This is because the worldviews of
students are strongly shaped by teaching. A focus on improving pedagogical
approaches, including more interactive strategies that foster critical analysis
and questioning, is just as important as revising curricula. The study makes
known the views of parents who are forced to send their children to public
schools. These parents "have a clear idea of the importance of teachers, versus
school buildings or supplies, in providing a high-quality education. The
majority of parents surveyed thought that schools without dedicated teachers but
with very good infrastructure or free school supplies were "bad" or "very bad."
Close to 80 per cent of parents thought that those schools with poor
infrastructure and no free school supplies but with dedicated teachers were
"good" or "very good." One weak area of the Brookings study is its
inadequate depth of research on the language issue that faces Pakistan and
continues to radicalise groups of people who do not have access to the English
language. The study says, "For example, in 1947 the new national government of
Pakistan selected Urdu as its national language and the language of instruction
for schooling. In this linguistically diverse country, home to six major
linguistic groups and 58 minor ones, this decision was not received positively
by all." It fails to find the underlying reasons for such a decision
that it became the lingua franca of the country and a unifying factor across
provinces. It does not mention the social divide caused by the rulers eventually
of running two medium of instructional languages — Urdu and English — in schools
and furthering the grievances of the have-nots in being denied a language that
they feel advances job opportunities. UNESCO's many studies bring to
light the feasibility of the mother tongue at elementary level to improve
literacy in Pakistan. Latest studies also uncover the phenomena of learning the
mother tongue proficiently up to grade five, which makes the acquisition of any
further language — national, second or third — unproblematic. Pakistan's
polity has to look deeply at the language issue as a sure way of curbing
militant tendencies towards civil conflict suggested by the other five
mechanisms that the study has disclosed. The Brookings study concludes
that "Although hard data on education and its links with militancy in Pakistan
are limited, a thorough review of the evidence indicates that the education
sector and low attainment rates most likely do enhance the risk of support for
and direct involvement in militancy. Furthermore, it would be wise to assess the
implications for policy, ultimately concluding that the right set of
interventions in the education sector could play a significant role in
mitigating militancy and promoting security in Pakistan." -By Ismat Riaz : The writer is
an educational consultant based in Lahore (Dawn)
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