The Single National Curriculum Disaster

Source: geo.tv

Perhaps one of the biggest reasons to oppose the government of the currently ruling Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) political party has been its education policy. Seemingly egalitarian and innocuous if not revolutionary, this education policy is anything but. Championed by social conservative nationalists, even PTI urban liberals who come across as socially liberal, this policy has been more about turning secular education in private schools into madrassa education. While even the national ethos in Pakistan is not exactly the most exemplary in the world, the idea of unifying the diverse peoples within Pakistan under the same curriculum could only end in a disaster.

The main executor of the Single National Curriculum vision was Harvard graduate and Lahori liberal Dr. Marium Chagtai. Not only did she supervise this disaster unfold for the children of the country but also shamelessly defended it citing the Islamic provisions of the Constitution of Pakistan when confronted by
secular liberal intellectuals like Pervez Hoodbhoy. This reminds me of all the urban liberal nationalists who thought that a PTI government would be a good idea for the country. Though it really should not be a surprise because this is the “intelligentsia” that makes up the rotten idea of the (Islamic) Republic of Pakistan. They are true to the legacy of their communally-minded demented forefathers.

The Single National Curriculum is unfinished business from the Zia period as per academic A. H. Nayyar, and the hypernationalist theocrats making up the PTI hybrid regime are overzealously keen to complete it. As the process of this horrible transformation of the local private and public sector schools for the common citizen of Pakistan is underway, you can still find nationalist urban liberals defending the Single National Curriculum. They are still defending the celebration of the Hijab on state textbooks. And they will continue to do so as long as their safe spaces are not invaded by the theocratic extremists.

If you are having children or already have who are supposed to grow in a schooling system in Pakistan, be very afraid. The irony is that these urban PTI liberals will send their children to the Cambridge education system, which is completely isolated and safe from these “revolutionary changes.” They would rather satiate their hideous sense of patriotic national cohesion by imposing madrassa education on the lower middle class who want to pursue some semblance of quality education in a hopelessly theocratic society.

The PTI urban liberal experiments on the lower middle class for their stupid nationalist projects must stop.