Classless education up ahead?
It is official now: Cambridge OA levels and International Baccalaureate will not be touched by the PTI's Single National Curriculum (SNC). This is fantastic news for those who once feared privileged education for the rich was in danger. Parents paying monthly fees between Rs15,000 and Rs45,000 per child in O-A-IB schools are breathing easily today. Talk about equal opportunities for all turned out to be just talk - opium for the masses.
Personally I am pleased foreign certification hasn't been banned. Having taught physics, mathematics, and sociology across a swathe of Pakistani universities and colleges for 47 years, I know there's a world of difference between the analytical and reasoning abilities of O-A level certified students and those of local boards. Yes, I've seen many brilliant exceptions. But exceptions are, well, exceptions. So, although the government's decision reeks of hypocrisy, I'm still happy because I dread a total collapse of standards.
The federal minister of education, Shafqat Mahmood, puts things differently. In multiple TV interviews and Zoom meetings he denies hypocrisy. His government is merely allowing elite schools the right to choose, he says. In just a few years, he claims, the PTI's superior local system will render foreign examination systems unneeded. Sure! Didn't we all hear Imran Khan's announcement atop his container that Pakistan's revitalised economy would never need the IMF again?
Let's see what makes foreign systems so superior to local systems. It is not a matter of curriculum. Blaming inferior education quality upon this is a political stunt. In secular subjects like science and general knowledge all systems cover almost identical topics. The difference is entirely in their education philosophies. Foreign systems stress comprehension, reasoning and problem-solving. Local systems around rote memorisation.
Yoking ordinary schools to madressahs will impair the reasoning capacity of children and job competitiveness. What is SNC and why must it be feared? Parts of it are perfectly innocuous. The new stuff regarding secular subjects is actually rehashed old stuff. Cutting through the verbiage one sees that the released PTI curriculum is a near perfect copy of Gen Musharraf's 2006 curriculum. Of course, neither was accompanied by implementation plans or financial outlays.
What's dangerous and different is that - for the first time in Pakistan's history - ordinary schools will be yoked to
build madressahs. Students in both streams will use the same curriculum and books, and take the same exams. But this is like forcing someone to board two trains at the same time, one going north and the other south. It doesn't matter which train's engines and carriages are in good condition or bad. What matters is that they have different destinations. The analogy is not far-fetched.
Modern secular schools aim at preparing doctors, engineers, businessmen, scientists, etc. Inquiry and questioning are fundamental and exams test conceptual understanding. But madressahs prepare students for the hereafter. Memorisation and a passive mindset are crucial and duly rewarded while questioning and critical reasoning are frowned upon. Were a madressah student to put hard questions to his teachers he would likely be chased out.
Teaching science will not be straightforward. A widely watched religious TV channel recently featured young students being lectured to by a madressah head. He told them emphatically that the sun goes around the earth, not the other way around. One wonders what else they have learned.
Hybridising madressahs with secular schools has been tried but failed. Modern-era progressive Muslim leaders like Muhammad Ali of Egypt and Kemal Ataturk of Turkey discovered this well over a century ago.