[lg policy] Pakistan's education reform | The language enigma

[Harold Schiffman]

Pakistan's education reform | The language enigma

Whither education reform?

Islamabad, Sep 03: It has been our great misfortune that, for decades,
our political bosses have been products of military influence – some
through nurturing, others by coercion. While the military may have
been sincere, in its own perception, in choosing political masters for
us, still given its very institutional culture, it imposes views,
ideas, strategy, tactics etc. Hence, only closed minds willing to
pursue pre-determined courses are amenable to accepting such a drill.
While such politicians may be clever, they cannot have a transcending
vision.

While Ayub Khan picked up his political protégés for promise of
calibre, in addition to loyalty, the dictators after him developed a
strategic framework for enlistment of politicians chosen for the
army's patronage. They were required to accept the fantasies evolved
by the military's ideologues and not vent their intellectual
capabilities to develop a vision of what they wanted this country to
be. Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto was, perhaps, our last visionary leader;
unfortunately his evidently tragic flaw led him to end in a
Shakespearean tragedy. Ziaul Haq had a strategy for intellectual
enslavement of the people under the heavy burden of ideology;
essentially as a ploy to prolong his power. He fed the army on fantasy
and the common man on submission.

So what do we have now? A breed and generation of politicians entirely
engrossed in the daily chores of retention of power. They are clever
people: power savvy, street smart, adept at mutual protection across
political divides, masters of manipulation and traders of intrigue.
But they have no vision. They cannot revolt against the limiting
myopia of thought imposed upon them by their handlers, both domestic
and foreign. Consequently, the governance seems focused merely on
remaining in power. Public policy is, therefore, limited in extension
and interest. The government takes decisions primarily under
compulsion of circumstance. Their policies are reactive and not
proactive. While, per force policies are worked out in the fields of
economics and security, there is little interest in long gestation
policies of the social sector, though they are more fundamentally
pervasive.

Let us refer to the much pursued education policy, pending now for
four years since a review began under the last government. Between
2007 and 2008 the policy exercise was sacrificed at the altar of the
whims of a self-righteous, egotist Federal Minister. Since this
government came in, the draft policy has been lying in the cold
storage of disinterest and inefficiency.  Education is a fashionable
interest of politicians. Hence, every other government formulates a
new education policy. But the favourite governance culture of our
governments – autocratic, supply driven imposition of whimsical ideas
– inhibits a visionary approach to education with a breadth of
perception.

The civil society has been clamouring for an education policy cleansed
of the garbage of prejudice and dogma, focused on the state providing
the environment and resources essential for the citizen to acquire
knowledge through learning processes that help him or her realise his
or her full potential. A new education policy now awaits cabinet
consideration. The draft betrays that the present government is trying
to impose a hotchpotch by stealth – as if to get rid of a
discomforting burden by producing an innocuous document of impressive
verbiage, grandiose promises but little efficacy. While the 1998
document represented one individual's private agenda through a
propagandist policy for a gullible public, the current document is
lost in a directionless, wayward, wandering. The government seems to
have no understanding of the issues and the constitutional obligations
of the state. It merely uses MDGs, EFA and Vision 20-30 as fashionable
crutches on which to build a policy.

Some space is provided to make the right noises about quality, access
and relevance of education. But no desire is concrete for universal,
free, publicly-funded education up to secondary level, as guaranteed
by the constitution. Instead plaudits are showered on the for-profit
private sector's contribution of 35 per cent in this sector. That only
caters to the needs of the elite. An achievable framework for quality
public education is sorely missing. Therefore, the masses are damned.
The policy rightly identifies poor implementation as a major stumbling
block to realisation of goals in the education sector, but provides
only simplistic answers to the problem. Governance and management are
recognised as a major issue, but no identified, agreed and committed
answers are provided. It promises to ultimately expend seven per cent
of the GDP in this sector. But on whose commitment and guarantee can
such a claim be made? Have the Ministry of Finance, the Planning
Commission, Economic Affairs Division (the donors' commitment) and the
provincial governments committed to such a provision in an agreed time
frame? Have we developed the capacity to plan, implement, monitor and
evaluate an outlay of that size? Who is the government trying to fool?
The ordinary citizen, really.

Simultaneously, there is a cowardly acquiescence to the peddlers of
dogma, in the name of Islamic education. It appears that, for the sake
of convenience, the Ministry of Education is trying to repeat the 1998
document in a new parlance. Our great religion provides the moral
bases of our lives. Though religious education remains primarily the
responsibility of the family, it is imperative that school education
ensures an enlightenment of young minds with the ethical values that
Islam demands. The state should be concerned with only such religious
education.  Giving in to merchants of blackmail, the latest document
fails to chart ways for the ethical development of the school child.
It merely plans to provide for learning the Quran by rote without
understanding it. That will only provide employment to turbaned thugs
who were till recently killing women and burning schools in Swat. Are
these the ushers who will lead us into the Garden of Eden?

Education is so fundamental to a society's upbringing that we should
not deal with it with a flippant hand. To ensure that -- and also to
ensure ownership by all stakeholders -- and evolve a mechanism for
full implementation, the policy must be taken to the parliament. If we
have wasted four years already, a month's parliamentary debate will
only yield something positive.

Javed Hasan Aly - The writer is the author of the White Paper on
Education, 2007. Email: javed. hasan.aly at gmail.com (The News)

http://www.interface.edu.pk/students/Sep-09/Education-reform-Language-enigma.asp

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