Textbook revisions: ANP censures PTI for striking deal with JI to save fragile K-P coalition

The revision project covers the vast majority of students in the province

PESHAWAR: As Malala Yousafzai prepares to receive her Nobel Peace Prize, the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa government is pushing for content in school textbooks that critics claim promotes extreme ideas.

Malala, 17, is set to be awarded for her struggle for the right of children, especially girls, to an education.

The challenge is enormous: some 25 million children aged from five to 16 in Pakistan are out of school, 14 million of them girls, according to Alif Ailaan - an education campaign group.

But the biggest debate surrounding education in K-P is not how to improve attendance, hire more teachers or repair dilapidated infrastructure: instead, the provincial government is attempting to determine how best to reclaim the curriculum in the name of religion.

The move is being led by the Jamaat-e-Islami, the junior member of the coalition led by the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf.

"There are errors in current text books which go against our values," Local Government and Rural Development Inayatullah Khan told AFP.

"We live in an Islamic society, women don't wear skirts here," Khan added.

Awami National Party spokesperson Sardar Hussain Babak blamed PTI for striking a deal with the JI to ensure its fragile ruling coalition survived.

"There is a compromise between PTI and JI. Now JI points will be part of curriculum," he said.

The project, confirmed by K-P Education Minister Atif Khan, pertains to public schools as well as those private schools which do not have the means to procure their own texts - covering the vast majority of students in the province.

Liberals have denounced the moves in mainly English-language newspapers, saying they risk radicalising impressionable youths.

In response to K-P government's plan, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has launched a counter-attack by ordering the Higher Education Commission to seek changes to all texts, from primary to university level, to promote the country's "democratic" heritage over its history of coups.

The main problem, however, is that provinces, not the federal government, have the final say on curriculum in order to cater to the region's particular cultural and linguistic values.

"There is a lot of confusion at the moment," with some provinces refusing to allow the federal government to participate in the writing of texts, explains AH Nayyar, an academic and leading voice for reform.

Current textbooks are already heavily criticised by liberals, who say they project a revisionist version of history that is highly nationalistic, especially over the country's rival India, while also being dismissive towards religious minorities.

A recent US study of 100 Pakistani school texts found that minorities - especially Hindus - were depicted as "second-class" citizens and "enemies of Islam".

The rhetoric is even more worrying for the country's liberals than the rising number of attacks on religious minorities, saying it lays the groundwork for further radicalisation.

Even the country's Western donors, who give millions of dollars in education aid, are privately worried about the trend.

Others see it as simply a populist move with little chance of succeeding in the short term. After the last set of reforms in 2006, authorities took seven years to print new editions, according to one Western diplomat.