The Washington-based International Centre for Religion and Diplomacy and the Sustainable Development Policy Institute partnered in 2011 to conduct field research in all four provinces to analyse the curriculum of public schools and madrassas.
Their report pointed out that Pakistan’s public schools and privately-funded religious madrassas have an “unmistakable tendency to devalue minority religious groups, fostering a climate conducive to acts of discrimination and even violence against them”. Another such is a recent report by the Islamabad-based Peace Education And Development (PEAD) Foundation, which scrutinises the content of textbooks for Pakistan Studies, Islamiat, Urdu and English for classes one to 10 in schools in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. This study, too, entails disturbing findings about the quality, nature and connotation of the content being imparted to nascent minds.
The two themes that stand out in the Islamiat textbooks for classes three to nine are ‘glorification of war’; jihad, and the ‘other-isation’ or stereotyping of non-Muslims. The presentation of reality in a unidimensional way is the third recurring theme which essentially distorts history.
Overemphasis on subjects such as jihad is also common. The chapter on this in religious studies books for students of class eight, for instance, defines ‘jihad’ as, ‘doing everything possible and utilising all of the strengths for the purpose of fully practicing Islam and taking it to other people’. Jihad is also explained as a process of clearing the way for Islam to spread and getting rid of ‘fitna’, which is defined as the creation of hurdles in the way of Islam. Such definitions not only express reality through a unidimensional prism, but also paint non-Muslims as ‘others’ and the world outside of Islam as inherently bad. Such texts can very easily sway emotions.
Absence of knowledge on other religions and their teachings, or minimal mention of women (as equal members of society), are also common features in the textbooks that were studied. The whole idea of teaching Islam to students, without any comparative model of other religions like Christianity and Hinduism, amounts to perpetuating ignorance about their teachings, the implicit signal being that the latter are not worth studying.
The PEAD report essentially tried to investigate instances of glorification of war, stereotyping of other faiths and cultures, and classification of gender roles — elements that easily and negatively impact the mental development of the students. This report analyses the textbooks used by the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Textbook Board and compares them to textbooks used in other provinces. It finds that the KP textbooks are no exception when it comes to the predominance of religious discourse in their content. It also states that traditional stereotypes of gender roles in society are reinforced in the textbooks. Surprisingly, the provincial government had taken the lead by revising textbooks after 2006 recommendations, yet they still contain the flaws mentioned above.
As a whole, despite the attempts so far to rationalise the overemphasis of religion in the mainstream curriculum, Pakistan’s educationists have to go a long way in reforming study materials. A multi-layered bureaucratic structure, along with the inhibiting mindset, still seem to be the biggest hurdles in the way of broad-based curricula reform. One would hope that devolution of education facilitates rather than obstructs the revision of Islamic and social studies courses. Therein lies our future social security and harmony.
Published in The Express Tribune, January 13th, 2012.
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I think it is high time to focus on the process rather than the product approach. I have been hearing and reading many things about our previous curricula. It is a good sign to point to a weakness in the previous curricula or educational policies, but one must also need to look at the ways for rectifying or improving or overcoming that weakness. In addition to that one must also look at the positive aspects of the previous curricula. There is no doubt that several well-known scholars, educationists and people from different walks of life took part in the designing and development of previous curricula. In this respect, one must be very careful while declaring something as a result of all problems that the country is facing today. For this purpose, one needs to look at the broader level (international domain) and identify the forces that influence / shape our curricula. Then one would be able to understand the present education system of Pakistan. Nevertheless, after 18th Amendment to the constitution, education has become a provincial subject and each province has its own aims and objectives. It is hoped that this time we have curricula of international standard and it would focus on knowledge, skill, attitude and value.
I don't know what is taught in pakistan but it seems from above article and comments that you are glorifying demolishers of your own civilisation. Looters from arab evaded sub-continent and tried to demolish sevral thousands years old civilisation and great universities of NALANDA VIKRAMSILA and TAKSHSHILA. They masscred thousands of peace loving priests and monks and raped their women folks.They set on fire the great antique library of Nalanda and lots of literature. Still you glorify them as heros of Islam .This is an insult to Islam itself. It was Sufism which made you to covert to Islam not these misanthropist. I hope one day you will realise your own identity and pass it to yonger generation by reform in your syllabus.
@Ali Tanoli: You are absolutely right...every body glorifies their religion. But only your religion says death to the others; and considers others as sub-human. That is what you teach to kids in schools and madrassas, and when they grow up..it is a shock...to see the real world.
@Shakky Why there are theology colleges every where in the world what they teach?. please see some religouse t.v chanels every body glorifys there religion.
@Ali Tanoli et al:
Vague references to an imagined shadowy secularist conspiracy with inscrutable Turkish ties notwithstanding, your understanding of Islam appears to be quite rudimentary. Why should Pakistani children be taught revisionist and violent perspectives on religion just because a textbook in some other country contains objectionable stereotypes. And by the way, textbooks in the US are carefully screened to avoid racial, religious or any other kind of bias - something which unfortunately can't be said for many Pakistani texts. The Prophet advised everyone to pursue knowledge and learning. You would do well to follow that advice!
Give us good education give us jobs give us oppurtuties give us more colleges and universitie s give us hospitals and roads and homes give us dignity and respect where every one of us lived diffrence less like usman and bilal were give us good honest leaders give us one language education system would u ????? would u bring all the billions of public money looted by our shorfahs from overseas banks no BIRQ GIRTHY HAI BECHARAY GHRIB PER. Islam is our Deen and we gonna learn that.
Pakistan should become more like a Secular nation and think about development, fulfilling basis needs of their citizens etc. Non-secular forces in Pakistan is restricting the development of this country. They want that people indulge in these rubbish things and they are solving their purposes. In every country and religion, there is a non-secular lobby but they are not like ruling the nation and have their limits.
I fully agree with you. i still remember a lesson from our fifth class history book which portrayed Mahmmood ghaznavi as a religios hero saying that he is a idol smasher not a idol worshipper. This leeson ignored all historical facts and was heavily biased. Mahmud ghaznavi was an ambitious ruler and money hungry. He violated all norms of Islam and decency by destroying places of worship of other religion, looting them from thier wealth. It is absolutely distortion of the history and poisioning the young mind.
@Maaz: Sir the issue is that learning the history of your land is different from learning the history of your religion, the problesm arises when, over here, the history of our land is disguised as the history of religion as well. They both should be kept separate.
people have different opinion regarding jihad and its related stuff but in today world where Muslims are targeted by non Muslims i.e,in palastine in kashmir and so many other places this term jihad(so called terrorism) will remain alive.the discrimination created by by non Muslims if these issues not resolve in near future the term will engulf whole world. developing stop pressing muslims. if america use force we called it national security and Muslim use the power we name it terrorism.
It is really harsh to come down so hard on a religion.
So what should our education system teach? That Jihad is a bad thing and what mother america does is the root of all goodness? Jihad is an integral part of our faith. Like it or not, as long as we our Muslims, we must teach our children the basics of our religion, no matter how much the firangi NGOs disapprove of it. The West is infinitely proud of its support of Israel and justifies it however it can, including in school textbooks (I have seen them myself). Can the author can spare a few moments to write on this issue too.
I am not an analyst... but i do believe that our children must know about the history of Islam.. probably not in an overstated way but still some of the things must be included and made compulsory...
Very good write up, we need gross root level actions to eradicate extremist and fundamentalist tendencies. Zia-era introduced policies which are still harming our country. It is MUST take step to revise curricula and eliminate all such Jihadist and super religious heroism. The factual and realistic outlook should be taught, so that not only sectarian harmony evolve but inter-faith as well.
Ali Tanoli, Clean your own house,rather poking finger into others. You may also learn how to use spell check in your comment. You know nothing about American education system. So refrain from commenting on that.
@Ali Tanoli But for the terrorist mayhem that some of the followers of an archaic belief system conduct around the world, no body in the civilised world would have bothered to think about Muslims any more. It's a pity that inspite of great contributions made in the field of art,literature,science,administration etc by people who happened to be Muslims, the Muslims today are more famous(?) for act of mindless violence and terror. And appologists like you are no less responsible for this.
@Ali Tanoli,: NONE of the 9/11 hijackers were poor.
poverty didn't cause 19 terrorists to slam their planes into buildings.that is a false argument.poverty doesn't cause terrorism.brainwashing religious ideology leads to terrorism.the 7/7 terrorists in england weren't poor nor uneducated.they had jobs,families yet were persuaded by religious hate and bigotry to commit terrorist acts.
all that our history and religious school books do is to misinform our children and promote misoygyn and homophobia under the cloak of religion.aik musalmaan dus kaafiro kay brabar hai and other stuff like that.telling children that you'll get into heaven because you were born muslim and your non-muslim classfellows will burn in hell because of the religion in which they were born seriously corrupts the mind of young children.it's high time that religion be removed from schools as a compulsory subject.we already have too many religious fanatics in our society without creating a whole new generation of them also.
i remember we used to read in the deenyat books the glorious stories of how heroes went and destroyed the worship places of non-muslims and how this was a very good heroic act,which we should also follow.how destroying statues was a good thing.why difference of opinion in matters of religion shouldn't be tolerated. when violence is not only allowed but glorified by calling it jihad,then is it any wonder that we have religious terrorists like Qadri and bin laden who kill people in their delusion that they are doing a good thing.
I have seen least information about islam in american books the reliegen of more than billions peoples and also they gloryfing of cross war and all ways bad aspect of muslim cultur shows in television why like that Mr Gul sahab.