In Pakistan, Education has always been affected by political activities. That may be one reason why history is no longer taught in our schools. The less one knows of the past the less likely it would be to decipher the ways in which education is manipulated to advance political interests.
The government created the textbook board to ensure that the government’s policies have been reflected in the textbooks. The new policy also involved a massive revision of textbooks for history and the social sciences which actively discriminated against minorities. Today the effects of Zia’s times are still felt. A recent review of the content of Pakistan’s curriculum and textbooks revealed. It is after 1971 in Pakistan and after 2000 in India that the heroes of history were divided between the two countries on the basis of faith.
Pakistani children are being educated in an exclusive, nationalistic, and religiously inspired way which automatically puts them in conflict with each other. As children and their families generally believe what they are taught at school and what is written in state-sanctioned education materials, one can safely assume that a lot of the lies will be swallowed without question.
Great Post! I was thinking about how our history books perpetuate these state-sanctioned narratives. To substantiate this claim, we can look at how the state spreads the curriculum's " us vs. them " narrative. There are two ways to observe this- firstly, through the Single National curriculum. While I believe the Single National curriculum is a step in the right direction, we also need to look at how it does not adopt an inclusionary approach towards Muslims and other religions. The dominant ideology perpetuated through the Single National curriculum is that of a Sunni Muslim perspective. One can also look at it from the gendered experience. An instance is a poem (A Nation’s Strength) from the grade 5th English book that discusses ho…