Daily Times

Pakistan’s current language situation and the key issues identified in the language policy for higher education have been discussed earlier in part I and II of this article. It is recommended that the state’s ‘elitist’ policy be revisited by language planners so as to enable Pakistan to adopt a cultivation policy that is based on access and equity.

In both studies, students and graduate employees displayed positive attitudes towards Urdu for integrative reasons. They see Urdu as the national official language, important for national identity and national integration. The educated middle-class provides most personnel for white-collar jobs, comprising the Urdu-speaking community because of its historical background, urban residence and traditional reliance on education for social and economic mobility. The results of the study on higher education also support the view that a large number of students (42 percent) come from the Urdu-speaking community while the findings of the second study on employment were similar where 53 percent of the graduate employees were from the Urdu-speaking community. Attention must be paid to development of the current curricula in primary and secondary schools that is outdated and too rigorous and boring. What must also be looked at is the regular training of Urdu teachers whose pedagogy has not changed in over 50 years. New and interesting materials need to be developed to enhance more positive attitudes towards our national language. The state must focus on training bilingual teachers for primary and secondary schooling, and for our public sector universities to offer courses in Urdu for higher education. The Higher Education Commission (HEC) must take serious note of the need for setting up translation departments in all universities for corpus development.

It is important that regional language speakers, especially in the case of under developed areas (the perfect example being the Balochistan youth), be provided an equal opportunity to access higher education and graduate employment, as in the case of Urdu speakers through status and corpus planning. Currently, very few regional minority speakers complete their 12 years of schooling to enter higher education institutions and after graduation get to access white-collar jobs. The high levels of illiteracy leading to unrest and lack of development are due to a large dropout rate in primary schooling due to little or negligible use of their mother tongue because of the Urdu medium policy and lack of educational materials. First of all, studies underscore the need to analyse the relationship between various ethnic groups and how they view language as being part of the sharing of their identity. This would also have to take into consideration the sharing of state power and resources in relation to these multi-ethnic groups of Pakistan.

The importance of English in national development cannot be denied as Pakistan has lagged behind other South Asian countries in both availability and quality of education, particularly in higher education. Pakistani students and graduate employees have revealed highly positive attitudes towards the English language. They do not see the study of English as detrimental to their culture but rather as necessary for Pakistan to become a progressive and modern state. Students want to study English for instrumental reasons and English as an international lingua franca to improve the future of Pakistan. Also, as seen in both studies, it is important for language planners in education to understand that all student graduates must be fluent in English for higher education and good jobs in Pakistan and abroad. It is also a requirement for international trade and for the socio-economic development of Pakistan. The attitudes of students and teachers, as well as the demands of the employment sector must be kept in view while framing a language education policy. English should remain the second official language. A language education policy that is imposed by legislation or even by a martial law ordinance (such as Ziaul Haq’s policy to adopt the Urdu medium and remove the nomenclature of English medium, which had to be reversed) cannot succeed without the cooperation of teachers and students.

As such efforts must be made to implement Urdu as the national official language. We must recognise English as the second national official language and all four regional languages should be given the status of regional official languages to enhance their status. We must develop educational materials in not only Urdu but also regional languages. Regional languages should be used for primary schooling and also made a compulsory subject for graduate studies.

(Part II of this article was published on these pages on October 15, 2015. It is now concluded)

The author is a professor of English at the Lahore School of Economics, author and editor of several books on language and education