Denizens of Alien Worlds: A Study of Education, Inequality and Polarization in Pakistan

221 Pages·2005·2.205 MB·English

by  Tariq Rahman

DENIZENS OF ALIEN WORLDS:
A Study of Education, Inequality and
Polarization in Pakistan

By

Tariq Rahman Ph. D

Professor and Director, Chair on Quaid-i-Azam
and Freedom Movement
National Institute of Pakistan Studies
Quaid-i-Azam University
Islamabad
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Whatever (harm) a foe may do to a foe,
or a hater to a hater, an ill-directed
mind can do one far greater (harm).
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Contents
List of Abbreviations
Glossary
Preface
1. Introduction
2. Educational Policies
3. Urdu-medium Schools
4. English-medium Schools
5. Madrassas
6. Higher Education
7. Recommendations
8. Conclusion
9. Annexures
10. Bibliography
11. Index
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List of Abbreviations
Less used abbreviations are given in the text where they occur. This is a list of
abbreviations, which are spread out at several places in the text.
A‘ Level Advanced Level School Leaving Certificate of British Boards
of Education
D Dawn [English daily]
J Jang [Urdu Daily]
LAD-WP Legislative Assembly Debates-West Pakistan [Used for
legislative assemblies no matter what they were called
M The Muslim [English daily]
MLR Martial Law Regulation
MN Morning News [English daily]
N The Nation [English daily]
NGOs Non Government Organizations
NW Nawai Waqt [Urdu daily]
O‘ Level Ordinary Level School leaving certificate of British Boards of
Education.
PT Pakistan Times [English Daily]
WAPDA Water and Power Development Authority
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Glossary
Jihad Religious war for the sake of Islam. The Muslim concept of bellum
justum (just war). Also used for any struggle for righteousness.
Madrassa Religious seminary
Maktab Religious school for small children. Also used for all schools before
the arrival of the British.
Maulvi Muslim religious figure who leads prayers and performs the
functions of a priest.
Munshi Clerk, accountant.
Raj Rule
Shaheed Martyr
Ulema Islamic religious scholars.
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Preface
The idea of this brief study came to my mind when Professor Craig Baxter asked
me to contribute a chapter on education for his forthcoming book on Pakistan. I had
already been working on aspects of education in my previews three books published by
the Oxford University Press: Language and Policies in Pakistan (1996); Language,
Education and Culture (1999); and Language, Ideology and Power: Language-Learning
Among the Muslims of Pakistan and North India (2002). As such, I thought it would be
easy to write such an introductory chapter. Much to my chagrin I discovered that this was
not to be. What I had written was outdated or purely historical or from the point of view
of language policy. I simply could not confine myself to a cut and paste job!
I then made my usual forays in the field and the libraries and concocted a chapter
of sorts which, as was the requirement, quite brief. Then an unusual thing happened. Dr.
Kaiser Bengali, Acting Managing Director of the Social Policy and development Centre
(SPDC) in Karachi, met me and asked me to contribute a report on the schooling system
of Pakistan. He said he would pay me for this research---something which has happened
only once before in my research experience. The sum he offered as consultancy fees
seemed somewhat extravagant for me but he smiled and reassured me that I had never
been rewarded adequately for my labour before. I told him that, if truth be told, I had not
known how to get the ‗rewards‘ and so I had never got into the consultancy business.
However, I also told him that sums of money made me apprehensive about my freedom
whereupon he assured me that I could also publish my work---warts and all---whenever
and wherever I wanted provided I made it clear that the survey and money for research
for the schools came from the SPDC. So we agreed and the research started.
I hired two research assistants, Shahid Gondal and Imran, who had three months,
December 2002 and January-February 2003, to take questionnaires (for survey 2003) to
schools and madrassas. I went myself to the elitist English-medium schools and other
institutions of Rawalpindi, Lahore, Karachi and Peshawar.
Shahid Gondal went to Mandi Bahauddin (his hometown) and Imran went to
Multan, Faisalabad and Lahore. I thank both Shahid and Imran without whose efforts this
survey would not have been completed. I thank the SPDC for having paid both of them
and making life comfortable for me. I have written in all my previous books without
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being unsupported by any institution and have had to undergo great discomfort and
personal expense for my research. This time was different. Now I know how these
consultants do research.
Anyway, the school survey---minus the section on cadet colleges/public schools--
-was over by February 2003 when I was made Professor and Director of the Chair on
Quaid-i-Azam and Freedom Movement. Here I had funds for research as well as the
services of a dedicated researcher, Rao Iqbal, who is Research Fellow on the Chair. I,
therefore, decided to do some more research on the universities and the cadet colleges.
Mr Rao Iqbal went to Bahawalpur, Faisalabad, Lahore and Hassanabdal and I went to
Murree in order to collect data and to administer questionnaires to students and faculty.
This part of the research was all paid for by the Chair and I am highly grateful that
somebody had the wisdom of establishing such a chair for research on Pakistan.
My thanks to Mr. Rao Iqbal are difficult to express. He was highly dedicated to
the whole project from the beginning to the end. He also helped with the proof reading
and made the index. He is an asset for the Quaid-i-Azam Chair and I am sure he will
continue his efforts to produce quality research.
This book has some defects and some strong points. The defects are passages on
the history of schools, madrassas and universities are based on my previous research
which is given in Language and Politics in Pakistan (1996): Language, Education and
Culture (1999) and Language, Ideology and Power (2002). This is the major defect but it
was necessary for understanding the historical background of education in Pakistan at
present. The other defects are for the reader to find.
The strong points are that all the data pertaining to education in my books and
articles has now been brought in one place. Moreover, and this is really worth noting,
new data has been obtained on all the educational institutions. Some of this data is really
remarkable because it has never been published before. The significance of this data is
that we now have an empirical base for making the assertions we are fond of making
otherwise---that elitist education gets funded whereas the mass are starved of funds. I
have also consulted other sources, both secondary and primary, and met teachers and
students in many parts of the country from the end of 2002 to the summer of 2003. Such
meetings have given me insights which, I hope, will make the reader forgive the
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repetitions which, in the absence of these redeeming features, would have made the book
less worthwhile than I believe it is now. Another redeeming feature is that there is a new
survey of students and teachers of schools, madrassas, colleges, private universities and
public universities. The socio-economic class of these respondents has been determined
and questions on sensitive issues have been asked through questionnaires in Urdu and
English. This is new data which should be of interest for those who want to understand
how Pakistani society is divided according to class and how polarized different classes
may be.
It is usual to say that all mistakes are those of the author. Of course they are! But
some are certainly of those who refused to cooperate; refused to give data and did not
even agree to filling questionnaires and getting them filled from others. Such people and
institutions make research that much more difficult. However, let me end by thanking
those countless others---teachers, students, administrators---who helped me and made this
book possible. Because of them one does not despair---research is possible in Pakistan.

Tariq Rahman Ph. D

Professor and Director,
Chair on Quaid-i-Azam
and Freedom Movement
National Institute of Pakistan Studies
Quaid-i-Azam University
Islamabad
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CHAPTER-1
INTRODUCTION
There are a number of books and official reports on education. Indeed, as
Pakistanis look at the increasing violence and inequality in their society, they blame the
educational system. Almost all problems---increasing population, corruption, political
instability, technological backwardness, feudalism, the increasing power of the coercive
apparatus of the state, lack of human rights---are blamed on lack of education. Ironically,
both democrats and those who do not believe in democracy, justify their analysis of
society with reference to education. Those who believe in ‗benevolent‘ dictatorship (no
matter what they call it) argue that in a country with so much illiteracy and such poor
standards of education, it is unrealistic to expect democracy to flourish. The number of
people who have made this argument include presidents Iskander Mirza and Ayub Khan
and, of course, this belief is as strong now as it was earlier. Those who argue otherwise
claim that formal education does not make people any more altruistic or dispassionate
than the lack of it. Moreover, they add, if people are not educated that is the fault of their
rulers. To further take away the power of vote is to compound the injury.
Because education is such a preoccupying subject one would expect it to have
been well researched. Unfortunately, that is not true. There is a plethora of data; there are
repetitions of policies; there is much rejoicing about quantitative increases in schools and
teachers and so on---but there is very little analysis.
For instance, Umme Salma Zaman‘s Banners Unfurled (1981), which calls itself a
‗critical analysis‘ of education, gives chapters on such contentions issues as politics, the
bureaucracy, language and Ayub Khan‘s regime. However, though the book has some
critical remarks about specific matters, it fails to give an overall analysis in terms of an
explanatory analytical concept such as power, class, ideology and so on. But Zaman‘s
book is among the better studies of education in the country. Most other books tend to
take a moralistic line which aims at defending the government‘s policies while talking
vaguely about what ‗should be‘ rather than ‗what is‘ and, more importantly, why is it the
way it is? For instance, Syed Abdul Quddus describes all aspects of the educational
system of Pakistan but his analysis of ethnicity is essentially moralistic and refers to
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conspiracy theories for support. For instance, in his chapter on national integration he
says:
It is high time that we should educate our simple and innocent people to look
through the dirty game of the vested interests and the unscrupulous politicians.
These who refuse to believe the existence of provincialism, parochialism and
regionalism are living in fools‘ paradise and playing the proverbial ostrich; for the
provincialism is a multi-headed monster [sic]---(Quddus, S.A 1979: 261).

For a book published in 1979, eight years after Bangladesh separated from
Pakistan as a result of a nationalistic struggle because of the denial of its rightful share in
goods, services and power in the state, to call ethnicity as ‗provincialism‘ shows the
theoretical lack of sophistication of the analysis. By this time there were many books an
ethnicity---after all, Nathan Glazer and Daniel P. Moynihan had published their seminal
work Beyond the Melting Pot (1963) sixteen years earlier. They had claimed that, among
other things, modernity creates or reinforces ethnic identity. This meant that language-
based assertions of identity, which Quddus was alluding to, were not hangovers from the
past to be dismissed as ‗provincialism‘. They were realities which the educational system
affected one way or the other. But this required a more sophisticated theoretical analysis
than was provided in that book.
Incidentally, there is a book on ethnicity called Ethnicity and Education in
Nation-Building in Pakistan (1994). The author, Aftab A. Kazi, is from Sindh and wrote
this book at a time when most educated Sindhis were acutely aware of their Sindhi ethnic
identity and the name of Feroze Ahmed, who had written much on this subject, was a
legend in Sindh (see Ahmed 1998). The author has, indeed, taken some major theories of
ethnicity into account and given a good analysis of Pakistan‘s educational history in
relation to ethnicity. He also points out that the ruling elite has overemphasized Islamic
ideology and used Urdu to counteract ethnic tendencies. In his zeal to correct the centrist
tendencies of right wing writers on education, Kazi overemphasizes the Sindhi nationalist
point of view at places. On the whole, however, this book is theoretically more
sophisticated than most other books on education.