Singular National Curriculum= The Madrass-ization of Education by Rizwana Khan
Imran Khan, the Prime Minister comes out of his office with his cronies and speaks of madrasas and its importance especially in Pakistan. Every time he speaks he starts on Pakistan maintaining madrasas and giving them the level field to jobs. While his speeches are all about that the country’s education but we can hear the faint ticking sound of impending doom as Single National Curriculum enters our school system .
It is obvious that improving the quality of education cannot be achieved without a heavy financial input. Education department has a low budget and how to go around a corner is a problem. But the federal government reveals their new task that is to implement SNL in the provinces on that low budget. On the other hand private schools did well in developing a viable curriculum that match well with the modern strategies. In addition, there is no indication at all of any serious effort to move the examination system away from rote learning. All of this means that, if the new curriculum is imposed on the elite private schools, their educational standard will suffer.
The educational equality is said to be the reason behind the need for a SNL. As is well known, the Pakistani education system is split along three broad lines: a tiny sliver of expensive private schools preparing students for foreign examinations; low-to-middle end public/private schools that follow the federal/provincial curriculum; and madrassa education, that aims to produce the clergy.
Now federal government becomes the flag bearers of Islamic education. In 2006 or post 9/11 most madrasahs were persuaded by the Musharraf government to introduce contemporary subjects such as English, Mathematics, Science, Social Studies, Computer Literacy, etc in their list of courses
Tariq Jamil and others consider themselves as the custodians of Islamic tradition, culture, values and ethos and brag of controlling so may madrassas in the nation. Others who are more likely to be found to be going in the private schools consider another point of view. They think that the children should get their values from home and not the schools. They consider the private schools as the sole cause faced by nation today, citing their role in sectarianism, and now in westernized values also. The graffiti war outside on the wall reflects different point of views that creates class rifts in the society.
Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) surveys for over a decade highlights the quality of learning in public and private, urban and rural, schools. The Ministry of Federal Education and Professional Training (MOFEPT) refers to their data rather than that from the official National Educational Management Information System.
Further shuffling off reason of existence of madrassas is political. Consider the leaders of madrassas followers like Tahir Qadri and Hafiz Rizwan who are able to come out on the roads with nation stopping rallies. Their support in the lower and middle class of the society is strong and palpable. Therefore the humanities and sciences are never considered as a top teaching priority in the madrassas. The Islamic theological disciplines, can’t debate intricacies of belief and practices. So critical thinking is discouraged.
If the history be revisited four centuries ago Galileo the astronaut is killed for saying the Earth is round and that the earth orbits the sun. But, the idea of a heliocentric solar system is so controversial that the Catholic Church classifies it as a heresy, and warns the Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei to abandon it.
So what’s the point of supporting madrassas? The madrassas exist to produce clergy to keep the knowledge of Islam alive as it is hundred years ago. Further the poor children are admitted and get the option of lodging and food on its premises.
When the nation turns to look for progress the war happens with the neighboring countries. USA and Saudi Arabia realizes that the importance of Pakistani madrassas rests on their producing Mujahideen and Talibans that fought against Russia and then Al Qaeda. The madrassas’ importance rises and the religious parties push their importance on everyone.
Why were madrasas important to the Muslim world? They encourage young men to develop military talents and find the job as a mercenary. These men are sent to Occupied Kashmir, Bosnia, and then Afghanistan to prove themselves as martyrs the highest level of death.
After 9/11 with changing environment of information and technology medium of communication, the madrassa is somewhat transformed. Imran Khan think that Madrassa students equipped with communication skills, media sciences and Information technology skills can turn around the face of Pakistan and Islam in the world.
The rest of the education taught in private schools, and government schools are ripped down to the level of madrassas so that everyone gets the playing level field. Madrassas curriculum is taken to the private schools and the work load is increased.
Now finishing off the class segregation, the government wants to pulls off the standards used in the private schools to level off with the government public and madrassa schools. Thus SNC serves to knock down the tiny sliver of expensive school preparing students for foreign examinations. The parents know how expensive their children’s education is in private schools charging exorbitant fees. The drivers, cars and private tutors are expensive and only rich can afford. Their demand for education that is based on Western methodologies becomes redundant.
Regardless of what kind of schools people want their children to learn English, they know that job opportunities open up if proficient in English only. The progress is measured in English, therefore.
But in SNC the schools are forced to turn back to Urdu and memorize Quran. They have to follow the SNC from now onwards. During the regime of General Zia ul Haq the Urdu medium was introduced for one year.
The students weighing to the ground with their backpacks load up in the rickshaws, vans, cars, and motorbikes will be studying this new curriculum. They will prepare for exams that require rote learning. While minority of the students barely makes it to the university, the rest drop out. Also 24 percent children don’t even go to school. This is the second highest figure in the world after Nigeria. Instead of making the curriculum engaging the curriculum is weighing down the children.
These schools work on a very low budget and the curriculum needs improvement and so does teachers training.
The parents don’t have any choice but to continue sending children to the schools where they know they won’t last. The parents hit and tackle with the education that government department spends so little upon and probably will not spend anything more with SNC, either.
On one end of spectrum are madrassas that are usually free of cost or charge minimum while on the other hand are private schools with exorbitant fees. The goal of the private schools is to create professionals while madrassa produces clergy. In SNC every school is required to get a clergy to teach specific subjects.
Prime Minister recognizes that madrassas at the lowest rung of job opportunities. But lest no one forget that madrassa’s already have the science subjects as others. Similar to the public schools, madrassas assessments is based on rote memorization. The new SNC should be changing the existing curriculum by developing modern assessment that hinges on critical thinking and not rote memorization.
Instead SNC goes ahead overloading the curriculum of all three tiered schools the extra religious subject material that requires extra memorization. In religious studies The rote learning plays an important role. As nobody can question the religious tenets there is nothing to stall its implementation in SNc. Instead of developing the modern methodology and sciences, the curriculum implements religious education.
The main perception why the greater dose of religious education is injected in the curriculum is because it will produce more ethical citizens of Pakistan and a strong clergy class.
It is a contradiction to the Pakistan’s goal set by Prime Minister that remittances from abroad will increase. If the greatest revenues come from foreign remittances why is SNC forms to influence education that deters job skills like critical thinking. The human resource when not well-equipped will have a problem getting jobs abroad.
The teaching style implemented in madrassas is peppered with a flurry of blows when mistakes in memorization are made. So it leads to singular thinking dictated by the instructor. Therefore the assessment is based on memorizing sheer quantity of information. As the children are overloaded with information that they can’t dissect and make sense of anything that they are taught they drop out.
In SNC because of the sheer quantity of information rote learning and memorization becomes the primary focus of assessment. The religious counterpart requires a large amount of memorization in Arabic and, in places, in Urdu translation as well. Further It requires memorization of ahadith in Arabic and in Urdu When rote learning is important in government and madrassa syllabus, critical thinking is central to modern knowledge becomes a second priority.
One would think that in madrassa the curriculum is a lot more than other schools. But SNC has made it clear that the Islamic curriculum is going to be much heavier in public and private schools than in madrassas. Besides memorization SNC wants books published by the Education board to be given out to all schools
A heavy investment in high-quality textbooks is an essential requirement for improving educational quality. The textbooks provided by the state are of abysmal quality, both in content as well as in presentation. Pakistani textbook boards are unable to provide good-quality learning material. A comparison between the books used in public schools with those used in the elite private schools easily shows the differential quality. There is no reason to restrict the choice to local authors and printers. For the sake of investment in our national future, we should keep open the option of buying the best teaching material regardless whether it’s from abroad as long it engages the students in different schools. These books have been edited because of local cultural sensitivities.
In private schools, imported text books come and with large fonts and clarity in subject matter encourages thinking. But in SNL all the schools are required to engage only published by Pakistani textbook boards. The small education government budget produces bad quality books .The government’s schools are published on bad quality paper and small fonts.
The public examinations of today only require reproduction of text. Unless the assessment system is radically altered, the quality of education in the public schooling system cannot improve. Those who set high-quality examinations do not come cheap.
As the SNC turns down the private schools’ syllabus that produces good results and installs the curriculum that is already inapt. For example, the 2019 national survey of public and low-fee private schools by ASER shows that 15 percent of grade V students still cannot read Urdu sentences, 11 percent cannot read English sentences and eight percent cannot do simple two-digit subtractions. These are all recorded in the annual ASER reports. Universities lament the poor quality of their new admissions, and employers are unhappy about the quality of graduates they receive from universities.
