Pakistan’s Public Schooling: Miseducating the Young

Education reform advocates in Pakistan lament that any effort to improve the country’s public school system seems futile as the institutional pressures they have to surmount come from nothing less than powerful forces in the country, including the army, the religious establishment, and the feudal landlords. What reforms are they trying to introduce, and why are they meeting resistance? This article, Poor schooling slows anti-terrorism effort in Pakistan, says that the current curriculum of Pakistan’s public school system centers on the teaching of the glorification of violence in the name of Islam, as it ignores the teaching of basic courses on history, science, and math.

If Pakistani students get the kind of education that would equip them with basic knowledge and marketable skills, ‘the elite would be threatened,’ said Khadim Hussain, coordinator of the Aryana Institute for Regional Research and Advocacy and a professor at Islamabad's Bahria University. He said that if they make education available, ‘the security establishment's ideology may be at risk.’ And that ideology “involves the belief that non-Muslim nations are out to destroy Pakistan and that the army is the only protection Pakistanis have from certain annihilation. Those notions are emphasized at every level in the schools, with students focused on memorizing the names of Pakistan's military heroes and the sayings of the prophet Muhammad, but not learning the basics of algebra or biology, he said.”

The article continues, "The nature of the education system is reflected in popular attitudes toward the Taliban, al-Qaeda and other Islamic extremist groups that in recent months have carried out dozens of suicide bombings in Pakistan, many of them targeting civilians."

This is outrageous, to say the least. Pakistan is doing itself a disservice by withholding from its own people education in the sciences and the humanities. It is raising generations of unskilled and ignorant young people who will not be able to compete in the global market. It is jeopardizing its future as it prevents the flourishing of its human capital. More important, it is depriving generations of young Pakistanis a truly liberating education, the kind that enlightens and sustains the life of the mind that is free from the darkness of sophistry and superstitions. Knowledge-for-its-own-sake is a fundamental goal of every educational system anywhere in the world. Not to pursue it goes against the very nature of education, which is to enlighten, and its purpose, to empower. Knowledge is power. If Pakistan wants to move forward, it must educate its citizenry. To use schools as propaganda machines is self-defeating and cowardly.