An ill-advised venture

Not all ideas turn out to be good, and some are revealed as positively bad both literally and metaphorically. Occasionally embarrassingly so. One such idea that should never have seen the light of day was the decision by the Sindh government to introduce the Chinese language as a compulsory subject for classes VI to Matriculation in schools across the province. The education department earmarked Rs121 million in order to activate the project and now, doubtless to the relief of educationists, parents and students, it seems to be quietly dying an unlamented death.

To be scrupulously fair to those who conceived this initiative, a kind of logic is faintly discernible in their thinking. China is one of our closest allies with whom we enjoy the warmest of relations, and Pakistan is going to be seeing a lot more Chinese people as work on the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor progresses. Mandarin Chinese is one of the world’s most-spoken languages, and what better way to honour our allies than teaching their mother tongue in our schools? The logic thus far is sustainable, but it all falls apart when exposed to the realities of the education system in Pakistan. To teach Chinese you need teachers who are fluent in it. Oral fluency may be achieved at a basic level by a very competent student in six months, but written fluency in the pictographic, non-alphabetic script takes years and constant study by rote even if using the modern ‘simplified’ script. To date it appears that the programme, despite much rhetoric, is not being implemented anywhere. Officials are tight-lipped when asked about progress and private schools have refused to implement it on the grounds that they are already teaching Urdu, Arabic, English and Sindhi. Further embarrassment may be avoided by allowing this duck to quietly expire and reallocate the earmarked monies to something more achievable. By all means learn Chinese — but only after national and regional languages are mastered.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 4^th,  2015.

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