Uniform curriculum will be taught in Urdu

Education minister says provinces will be allowed to use their mother tongue as well

ISLAMABAD:

The medium of instruction for the new uniform curriculum unveiled by the federal government recently will be the national language of Urdu.

This was disclosed by the Federal Education Minister Shafqat Mahmood on Wednesday while addressing a three-day International Urdu Conference organized by the National Language Promotion Department to celebrate Independence Day. Three sessions were held on the first day of the conference.

In the opening session, Mahmood stressed the promotion and implementation of the national language.

He added that the Urdu will be the main medium of instruction for the new curriculum which will be implemented from class one to five in the next educational year.

However, Mahmood clarified that the provinces will have the choice to use their major languages along with Urdu to instruct children, adding that this was in line with the provisions in the Constitution.

The federal education minister expressed the hope that the conference will provide the government with new and practical solutions for promoting the Urdu language.

Comparable literature

Urdu literature is no less than the literature written in any other language in the world but, unfortunately, there is a certain inferiority complex which prevents its recognition.

These views were expressed by National Heritage and Culture Division Federal Secretary Nausheen Amjad, during an online discussion on "Freedom and the Narrative of Urdu Novel". The discussion had been organized by the Pakistan Academy of Letters (PAL).

The British ruled over the region for almost a hundred years, so everything from the West has become important and this translates into the attitude toward Urdu literature, participants said, adding that over the past 20 years, excellent Urdu novels have been written in Pakistan.

Amjad said that whenever translations are presented to us from English or any other language, we are immediately attracted to them.

“Our new generation knows of Paulo Coelho but has no knowledge of people like Qaratul Ain Haider, Abdullah Hussain whose writings have now become classics in Urdu,” Amjad said, explaining that the only reason for such an attitude was the belief that English is the standard of knowledge.

We have assumed that those who write in English, or who will be translated into English, will become great writers. This misconception needs to be dispelled, the federal secretary said.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 13^th, 2020.