Our policymakers should let every minority group freely acquire primary education in their respective mother tongues.
ISLAMABAD: Being a resident of Swat, Kohistan I realise the gravity of the problem pointed out by Zubair Torwali. When we were in school, our Pashtun teachers would always look down upon our language. They would discourage us by saying that we can’t receive education because of our different ethnicity. This attitude of teachers, who were from a different ethnic group and who spoke a different dialect, would always result in a large number of dropouts from schools. Now a majority of the teachers in Swat are local. But the provincial government has made Pashtu compulsory. Our policymakers should let every minority ethnic group freely acquire primary education in their respective mother tongues.
Aftab Ahmad
Published in The Express Tribune, December 21st, 2010.
