Education in Islamic world top US priority .....

Mazher · #1 Wednesday, March 21, 2007

WASHINGTON: The US has decided to focus its technical assistance funding on ministries of education “which have demonstrated a true and tangible commitment to education system reform,” Elizabeth L Cheney, principal deputy assistant secretary at the State Department, told a Senate hearing on education and terrorism here on Tuesday.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee, presided over by chairman Senator Richard Lugar, also heard testimony from Dr Samina Ahmed of the International Crisis Group, Islamabad, former World Bank official Shahid Javed Burki, Dr Bassem Awadallah, Jordan’s minister for finance and a number of US officials, including James Kunder of USAID.

Sen Lugar said that “outdated and poorly-funded education systems in many Near Eastern and South Asian countries have led to an education deficit. This gap has contributed to the rise of extremist ideologies that have provided fertile ground for terrorist recruitment over the last decade.” This is the third major event concerning education reform in Muslim countries that has taken place in this capital in the last three weeks, an indication of the emphasis being placed by the Bush administration on the issue of education and the rise of jihadi or extremist movements.

There is now across-the-board consensus in the administration and Congress that the most effective way of fighting terrorism and extremist ideas is through education reform and the spread of literacy in the Islamic world.

Kunder of USAID told the Committee that his agency supports the 9/11 Commission’s report recommendation that the “US should reach out to young people and offer them knowledge and hope.” He said the current education challenges in the greater Middle East and some countries of Asia were lack of access to functioning schools, low quality and irrelevant curriculum, a large number of out-of-school youths, high illiteracy rates, particularly for women, and unemployed youth without the skills to find gainful employment.

“We have responded to these challenges by focusing our programmes in creasing equitable access to education opportunities, improving the quality and relevance of education, improving literacy and strengthening workforce skills,” he added.

Frank J Method, one of the experts who appeared before the Committee, said that the majority of madrassas in Muslim countries were run by responsible people and there was “little reason to oppose such education.” Shahid Javed Burki, economist and a former Pakistan finance minister, impressed upon the Committee not to “throw money” into education without first ensuring that the entire system of education in Pakistan was subjected to fundamental reform. What was needed was “total overhaul” and that could not be achieved simply by the deployment of additional resources.

This was tried before by the donor community under World Bank auspices Social Action Programme and it did not succeed.

He said a child could not gain literacy through a mere five years of schooling. The period had to be increased to at least 10 to 12 years. He said that in a recent meeting with President Pervez Musharraf, he had told him that he, the president, should make education his “passion”, with special attention to women in whose way all kinds of obstacles had always been placed. He also felt that the quality of governance in Pakistan needed to improve and the element of politics taken out of it.

He told the Committee that the process of devolution set in motion by the present government held out a great deal of promise as governance will be taken down to the local, grassroots level.

Burki said the Pakistani Diaspora in the United States was one of the largest in the world and its annual income was equal to 25 percent of Pakistan’s GDP.

Last week, the former World Bank vice president had told a conference on education that the Pakistani Diaspora’s income equaled 30 percent of Pakistan’s GDP.

He described this as an “enormous resource” that could be pressed into the service of education in Pakistan.

He said he could state confidently that Pakistanis living abroad were willing to make a contribution to the uplift of education in their country.

Some organized efforts were already underway. Money had been raised in the US by Pakistanis taking advantage of US tax laws, but obviously a larger effort was required.

He also impressed upon the committee that it was not the role of state to manage public sector institutions, but only regulate them, and he called for wide-ranging reform of the educational syllabi. He presented the committee with a set of 10 specific proposals that he suggested should be the guidelines for the reform and expansion of education.

Dr Samina Ahmed who flew in from Islamabad to tender her testimony, brought to the Committee’s attention a report on the state of education and sectarian relations in Pakistan (carried by Daily Times on Monday).

She said though large donor funds for education had come to Pakistan since 9/11, the desired results had not been achieved. She attributed this to “a lack of government commitment, political interference, and a deteriorating physical infrastructure.” She also analysed the problems facing the education sector in Afghanistan and Bangladesh.

Many of the problems she identified appeared to be common between the three countries.

She said the outcome of President Musharraf’s education reforms was going to be crucial given Pakistan’s key role in the war against terrorism.

Dr Ahmed emphasised that the United States could not dictate to government what their education systems should be, because it was the governments themselves that should see to the proper regulation of the system of education in their countries.

She said in Pakistan there were three different education systems all functioning at the same time. This should change. She said what was required first and foremost was the political will to reform. She observed that the Government of Pakistan was lagging far, far behind when it came to political will. The government, she stressed, should be made to stick to its commitment.

She also advised the US not to provide funds for madrassa reform alone, but for the reform of the entire public school system.

Dr Ahmed said that both in Pakistan and Bangladesh, Islamist radical groups continued to be harboured as they went about seeking recruits from poverty-stricken and education-deprived areas. Increased jihadi rhetoric in madrassas and mosques, including calls for an anti-American global jihad, was a major cause of concern. Without a viable public school system that expands students’ economic opportunities, more and more children were likely to drift towards extremism, she said.

She said the Musharraf government had acknowledged the problem and “made education reform a centerpiece of its modernisation drive but had failed to follow through.” She said there were three main obstacles that beset meaningful education reform.

First, the Pakistani government has proved reluctant to divert more of its own resources to education. Secondly, Pakistan’s education bureaucracy was highly centralised and inefficient and thirdly, the government had repeatedly yielded to political pressure from religious parties that have openly opposed education and madrassa reform. “These lobbies have managed to hijack curricular content to promote their own theological and political agendas,” she added.

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