Daily Times

In November last year, Prime Minister Imran Khan had announced the establishment of a National Curriculum Council (NCC) to work towards standardisation of curricula taught in schools across the country.

The purpose of a standard national curriculum is to end class-based disparities in the education system and to promote a national narrative among children from across classes, regions, and social groups. These are both highly important tasks, but the lack of any follow up on the announcement puts question marks over the PTI government’s political will to undertake the task.

We realise it fully that being at the helm of affairs is not an easy task, and that executive authorities have to divide their time between a whole range of concerns. But given the importance of educating our future generations, we request the PM and the minister concerned, Mr. Shafqat Mahmood to take some time out from their schedule and proceed with the establishment of the Council.

It is of utmost importance that only those with the brightest track record in the academia, the policy and the development sector and the research community must be included into this Council. To make the government’s task easier, we may also identify who should not be made a part of this crucial body. There should be no room on the Council for bureaucrats, expect in their capacity to liaison with ministries and to oversee administrative affairs. Similarly, the Council must not have any representation of those engaged in the business of schooling. The task of educating our children is too important to be handed over to those who have made a business out of key public service.

The next step will be to ensure that the national narrative to be promoted through this curriculum is extensively debated in the Parliament, as well as in the press. All the contrasting viewpoints must be heard in this debate, and none of these viewpoints must be discouraged through recourse to baseless allegations. This will require us to recognise that the concocted view of history taught to successive generations of our children in public schools was far from the politics and vision of founding leaders of the Pakistan Movement, including Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah. The ideological project underpinning this narrative was closer to that of Islamists like Syed Abu’l Ala Maududi. Therefore, it will be crucial to remove all distortion of facts and to include missing viewpoints from our history in the national curriculum. This will go a long way in strengthening the federation, and truly paving the way for a pluralist social order. *

Published in Daily Times, January 15^th 2019.