16.06.2013

Education woes
A peep into history to know what was the educational
philosophy of the fathers of Pakistan, what principles they wanted our educational institutions to be based on and how they wanted it to be organised
By Yaqoob Khan
Bangash

A few days ago, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf government in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa announced that it was going to introduce a common curriculum in all institutions, public and private, in the province from the next academic year. As we await the details of such a revolutionary development, my mind turned to ascertain the roots of education policy in Pakistan. I wanted to know what was the educational philosophy of the fathers of Pakistan, what principles they wanted our educational institutions to be based on and how they wanted it to be organised.

Our current education system is quite simply in crisis. We do not have an adequate number of schools, resources, developed curricula, and teachers. The 18th Amendment to the constitution made education a fundamental right under Article 25A, but even after the passage of a couple of years, proper legislation and processes have still to be formulated to realise this right. But getting students to properly equipped schools is just the beginning of the educational process. Our system is fraught with the problem that our students never learn one language adequately: they mostly cannot read or write their mother tongue, are conversant in Urdu but cannot handle it at a higher level, and a large majority is simply unable to string together a grammatical sentence in English. So at the end of school (or even university) Pakistani students are hardly proficient in even one language.

Therefore, I dug up the speeches of our first education minister, Fazlur Rahman, to determine what were the issues he was dealing with at the inception of the country. What I found was really interesting, and in a way, astonishing, and to a large extent reflected the problems we are grappling with today.

At the creation of the country, education did not get an independent minister, but was given as an additional department to the interior minister, Fazlur Rahman, whose role as interior minister gave greater gravity to his comments on education.

One of the primary concerns of Fazlur Rahman was that he wanted to create a ‘new’ educational system. This notion was predicated in the eagerness of the government to provide a ‘third way’ as Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan argued. For us now it might seem like a distant memory, but in the late 1940s, with the advent of the Cold War, the global battle between Communism and Capitalism was a crucial concern for almost everyone. Therefore, Rahman noted, at the meeting of the Advisory Board of Education in 1949, ‘...my mind is appalled by the extent to which, as a result of the conflict in political faiths, the world has been divided into hostile camps. There is on the one side the old order based on Capitalism and on the other hand a new order based on Communism, with its uncompromising denial of God and the right of private property...Unless we offer to the world an ideology that will provide an effective answer to both Communism and Capitalism, we may not be able to keep at bay the influences that emanate from them. It is my faith and conviction that Islam supplies the ideology we are looking.’

The eagerness to find another option, coupled by a romantic notion of the golden age of Islam, it seems, was the main driving force behind these ministers believing that they had something new, unique and fulfilling to offer to the world. This reminds me of the writings of Saadat Hassan Manto, the famed Urdu writer, where he once noted that when he tried to bribe someone for a ticket he was strictly told: ‘This is not done in Pakistan!’ This sense of being at the threshold of a new age inspired many novel initiatives.

In his speeches, Fazul Rahman speaks of the complete transformation of the educational outlook of the country, strictly on ‘Islamic ideology.’ This again is rather interesting since most people in Pakistan believe that the words ‘Islamic ideology’ and its official application are later concepts. However, at the first All-Pakistan Education Conference in November 1947, the education minister had already stated: ‘It is, therefore, a matter of profound satisfaction to me, as it must be to you, that we have now before us the opportunity of reorienting our entire educational policy to correspond closely with the needs of the times and to reflect the ideas for which Pakistan as an Islamic state stands.’

He again emphasised in February 1949: ‘But mere lip-service to Islamic ideology will be as foolish a gesture as Canute’s order to the waves of the sea. We must see to it that every aspect of our national activity is animated by this ideology, and since education is the basic activity of the State, I realised that a start had to be made there.’ Rahman clearly knew what this change meant — it was not a mere realignment but a radical transformation. Rahman noted at the Academic Council of Dacca University in 1948: ‘What is wanted is a complete transformation of the spirit and content of education, and unless the spirit reflects the higher conceptions of Islam, our education will be a counterfeit and a sham.’

These statements, most of which were made during the lifetime of Jinnah, should make us wonder if the often repeated claim that Jinnah wanted to create a ‘secular’ Pakistan is indeed true. Could a minister appointed by Jinnah himself publicly declare that the educational philosophy of the country would now be based on ‘Islamic ideology,’ if the founder of the nation wanted a secular republic? Perhaps we mistakenly lambast General Zia ul Haq and his Islamisation since he was merely following through the wishes of the founding fathers of Pakistan?

The education minister was also clear to the extent to which Islamic ideology should form the basis of education in Pakistan. Elucidating his views on teacher training, he stated that teachers should unmistakably formulate their teaching philosophy on Islamic ideology.

Speaking at the third meeting of the Advisory Board of Education in Dacca in December 1949, he noted: ‘What I mean is that they (the teachers) should study the fundamental principles of Islam on which we have based our educational ideology...I would, therefore, suggest for your consideration that there should be a compulsory paper in the teachers’ training course on the contents of Islamic ideology...Teachers so trained should be asked to prepare definite projects on the basis of the chief characteristics of Islamic ideology so that students in their charge may seek to embody these characteristics...’ Therefore not only should teachers be taught and tested on this ‘Islamic ideology’ they should also ensure that this ideology is lived by their students.

Since Pakistan was a new country, and its founding fathers had a great zeal for giving something new to the world, several new (and novel) ideas were also in circulation at that time. For example, the education minister and a number of others were strongly in support for adopting the Arabic script for all the languages in Pakistan.

In a speech at the second Advisory Board of Education, Fazlur Rahman went through all the scripts of the languages in Pakistan and concluded that ‘...on practical as well as educational grounds...it (Arabic) is the most suitable for adoption as the common script of Pakistan.’ He later gave several more reasons for the adoption of a common Arabic script and noted: ‘...the adoption of the Arabic script will be a potent means of promoting cultural homogeneity and unity of national outlook...’ He therefore concluded: ‘We must, therefore, take immediate steps to introduce this script on a nation-wide basis...’

What the honourable education minister failed to note here is that changing the script of all languages in the country, where a number might use an adapted form of the Arabic script, will fuel linguistic nationalism, since any self respecting people will see such moves as degrading their language and culture. Since Arabic has had no real and direct connection with South Asia (except through its influence on Persian), such an imposition would be surely seen as alien as the imposition of any other foreign script.

These tendencies, as well as, continuous efforts at trying to enforce the abandonment of the Bengali script by the East Pakistanis, led to increased tensions between the two wings of the country, ultimately ending in the vivisection of the country in 1971.

The minister was also very adamant that this ‘transformation’ must be state-led and involve a strong control of curriculum and textbooks. Obviously, if education were to impart one ‘ideology’ and develop a common outlook, a strict control of what students are taught is essential. As a result the minister exclaimed at the first All Pakistan Educational Conference: ‘I am, therefore, strongly of opinion that there should be special governmental organisations to undertake the preparation of text-books. This will not only ensure the observance of approved educational principles on which textbooks are to be based, but will also bring together talent of sufficient width and diversity...’

The ultimate aim, the minister crystallised in his address to the Inter-University Board in June 1948, was that universities and other institutions ‘...have to undertake the immediate revision of their syllabuses and curricula with a view to their conformity with the spirit of that (Islamic) ideology.’ This state control of textbooks and their content has been a major hindrance in the development of education in this country since its inception. Quite simply, any ideological based educational system has to teach one sided versions and undermine other views.

After reading speech after speech by the first education minister, one thing is amply clear to me: that the fathers of the country were clear about their aim of transforming the educational foundation of the country from a secular outlook to a firm Islamic viewpoint. The minister clearly noted this in his preface to this compilation: ‘The theme of Islamic ideology...is recurrent through almost all the speeches.’ Therefore, when certain quarters of the country lament the fact that Pakistan began as a ‘secular’ state under Jinnah, and was later taken over by the religious right, they probably need to rethink their proposition.

Fazlur Rahman was very clear that he wanted to change the system in the country and root it in what he called ‘Islamic ideology’. He noted: ‘...our educational system was not based on any ideology and did not provide for the satisfaction of the spiritual and moral needs of the community.’ However, what this ‘Islamic ideology’ meant always remained vague in his speeches and its fundamentals were only referred to as ‘universal brotherhood, tolerance and social justice,’ which being more of less universal values, do not indicate how ‘Islamic’ this new system was supposed to be. Clearly, once it was settled that ‘Islamic ideology’ set the rules, what the rules actually were could be elucidated according to the will of the lawmaker — be they Islamic in spirit or not.

In February 1835, Macaulay in his most famous ‘Minute’ on Indian education stated that the aim of education in India should be to create ‘a class of persons Indian in blood and colour, but English in tastes, in opinions, in morals and in intellect.’ This minute which was based on Macaulay’s understanding that there was not much to learn in the Orient, and that the Oriental languages were not developed enough to be used for modern scientific teaching, created the oft-repeated educational confusion which I have referred to above — that our students are not proficient in any language by the end of even university education, and that even culturally and intellectually they are torn between their local culture, Muslim culture (in Pakistan), or Western inspired culture.

I do not know what shape the education policy of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government is going to take, or for that matter, what policies governments of other provinces or the federation will develop, but let me, at least, argue for non-ideological and ‘liberal’ education. By liberal I mean a broad based system of education which does not pre-decide what the students should believe and follow, but an education which develops one’s intellect to think independently and decide rationally. As one scholar put it, liberal education is: ‘..at once the most enduring and changeable of academic traditions.’ Liberal education, therefore, is something which is not static, exclusionary, or ideological, but literally ‘frees’ the individual to purse the ‘good life’ Aristotle talked about. Only with such a liberal education can a ‘Naya Pakistan’ or any Pakistan develop.

The writer is the Chairperson of the Department of History, Forman Christian College, and tweets at @BangashYK.