Getting it right

Punjab education department is planning changes to the school curriculum to promote religious and social tolerance

Amidst the national grief and mourning after the attack on Army Public School in Peshawar, it would be easy to lose sight of the reality that not everything is lost, and that there are positive reports from around the country to be read. One such news is that the higher education department of Punjab is planning significant changes to the school curriculum. In recent times, curricular revision has appeared to be in the control of obscurantists rather than those blessed with a more enlightened view, and the government of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa may want to consider, very carefully in the light of what has just happened, what it is that the Punjab government is proposing. The proposals are original — for Pakistan — and revolutionary. They will seek to promote religious and social tolerance in the context of a society that is multi-faith and has a significant minority population.

This has come about in large part as a result of a Supreme Court ruling on July 18 regarding the protection of the rights of minorities. Federal and provincial governments have been required to submit reports with regard to compliance and it is in that context that the Punjab HEC has had an outbreak of common sense. “Myopic interpretations” are to be discouraged and students will interpret religion through the prism of Islamic liberalism. They will be taught that we are all members of one race — the human race — that is diverse in culture and faith beliefs. The human race faces common challenges the world over no matter what faith is practised and we are all “different worshippers of a peaceful God”. The spirit of pluralism embraced in the Holy Quran will be inculcated and sectarian, ethnic and racial biases discouraged. There are some very specific detailed changes on the table. The major challenge now is to get these proposals turned into actual changes in textbooks and classroom teaching methodologies. This is the direction that Pakistan needs to be going in regarding curricular revision, looking forward rather than backward and promoting an agenda of peace in the classroom. We warmly welcome this development.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 19^th,  2014.

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