understanding the difference

[Sabah Hunzai]

Education and politics of exclusion



By Dr Shahid Siddiqui ‘Schools reproduce class relations by reinforcing rather than reducing class-based differential access to social and cultural capital’ — Pierre Bourdieu


HUMAN history is replete with the struggles of different interest groups with each other. Marx views history as a constant class struggle where different classes are engaged in tactics to acquire, sustain and resist power.

A more recent interpretation is offered by Bourdieu, a French thinker, who believes that the constant human struggle is for social distinction which establishes itself through culture and education.

A number of ways and means are adopted to gain supremacy and dominance over other groups. One fundamental means is to construct ‘others’ by excluding them. The process of exclusion is constituted by the use of various social institutions including educational institutions, lawmaking organisations, interpretations of religion, and the media.

Before we move ahead, let us look at some daily life examples of exclusion. Historically, the caste system was a powerful system of exclusion where a certain caste was completely barred from the ‘respectable’ chores of life. This lower class was the class of ‘untouchables’ and arrangements were made to keep them at a distance. This desire of excluding others is reflected in different forms. For instance, in most public offices in Pakistan, washrooms for officers and staff are separate and staff members are strictly banned from using the officers’ washroom. In most toll plazas in Pakistan, army personnel are exempted from payment.

Until recently, 98 per cent of the population was excluded from politics by the passage of a law that made a Bachelor’s degree mandatory for contesting elections to the national and provincial assemblies. In 2008, a number of interested candidates could not participate because of this condition. Another concept linked to exclusion is ‘silencing’ where a certain group is pushed to the extent where it is deprived of the opportunity to voice its feelings. The structures are designed through language, education and culture in such a manner that marginalised groups do not come up to ‘standards’ and are thus discouraged socially from participating in politics and power.

A pertinent example is the silencing of women in the domain of literature in the past. Women were not expected to write. Literature was considered not worthy of ‘ladies’. Virginia Woolf talks about periods of silence in the history of women’s writing. She focuses on 16th century England when “the dramatists and poets were most active, but the women were dumb”.

In all the above examples, one point is common: the rules were set by the powerful. These rules were bound to favour the interests of dominant groups and marginalised groups always fell short of these standards or norms. The dominant groups in society are not necessarily representing the majority. It is power that gives them the ‘right’ to set the rules of the game. It is to the advantage of the dominant groups to monopolise the fruits of power by depriving the ‘others’. Mutual differences are highlighted, and at times created, to exclude others.

According to Virginia Woolf, “law and custom were of course largely responsible for these strange intermissions of silence and speech”. Other important factors include education and language. These play an important part in constructing, legitimising and perpetuating certain stereotypes which are based on labelling and categories. These categories are constructed in such a manner that one category appears superior while the other looks inferior, e.g. good and bad, superior and inferior, etc.

The makers of these categories are usually the dominant groups in society who possess the discourse and ‘legitimate knowledge’. This legitimacy of knowledge is certified by the socially accepted educational institutions in society. The hegemony coming from educational institutions through a certain brand of education is so powerful that Bourdieu rightly calls it ‘symbolic violence’.

Class differences, boundaries and categories are constructed and perpetuated by the educational system in an effective manner. The market value of students taking their ‘A’ level exam is far greater than of those who sit for local intermediate exams. Similarly, private educational institutions are more in demand than public-sector institutions. Education that needs to lead us to bridge the differences is not only sustaining them but is also widening the gap. Ultimately, people with meagre resources are excluded as they are deprived of the opportunity of getting into such educational institutions.

In Pakistan, we see an educational system which is full of segregations. There are public schools, elite English-medium schools, cadet colleges, forces’ educational institutions (army public schools, fazaia schools, etc), Urdu-medium schools, lower English-medium schools and street schools. Then we have schools for the elite ruling class like Aitchison College and Lawrence College that only the children of elite class can enter. These different segregated educational systems are strengthening class boundaries.

There is a serious need to reduce the artificial differences which are being constructed and perpetuated by education and our social practices. This, we must appreciate, is a challenging task. Every government announces its intention of introducing a one-uniform system of education in Pakistan with an identical curriculum for all institutions. But like many other political statements this has not been implemented, the reason being that we cannot plan effective strategies in education unless we recognise socio-political realities.

Education cannot be improved in isolation unless there is support available from the socio-political set-up in the country. This fact must be kept in view while planning projects for the qualitative improvement of education. One central problem with Pakistan’s educational system is that all major decisions at the policy and implementation levels emanate from the rulers’ short-term political interests. There is a lack of consistency in policies. Every new government, instead of improving implementation, immediately embarks on the preparation of a new education policy.

One of the reasons for not achieving the goal of meaningful and sustainable change is ad hoc political arrangements which encourage gimmicks in the name of educational change. The result is that the existing educational system is still acting as a catalyst for the process of exclusion and widening class differences.

The writer is director of Centre for Humanities and Social Sciences at Lahore School of Economics and author of Rethinking Education in Pakistan.