Aijaz Ali Mangi.
Single national curriculum (SNC) is introduced by the PTI-led Government with the vision to bringing the whole nation on the same morals despite the diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds. Such efforts are made in past as well but remained futile. The significant reason is the whims and self-centered goals of the rulers that are mostly, not for the well-being of the educational system but to serve their purpose. The already faltering educational system of Pakistan will likely touch the ground if coercive tactics are used to implement the SNC.
Prime minister Imran Khan believes that enforcement of the SNC will end the divisions among society. The child enrolled with the government school in a backward area of the country will have the same opportunity of learning as of child studying in some elite school of Islamabad or Karachi. He envisions that children in far remote areas of the Kohlo can compete for the student of Islamabad, but this vision is premised on wrong thinking.
The content introduced in the SNC is vastly based on the closed mindset of ethics. These ethics are only approved by self-proclaimed pious sections of society. Increased focus on faith and narrow nationalism will not bring us at par with the modern world but surely downgrade us more.
It is fact that we are lagging behind many developing nations in science and technology. Review the history of last two decades, no significant contribution is visible in terms of research. In a pandemic, we relied on other nations for the provision of vaccines rather than conducting our own scientific research to produce cost-effective medication. Even we failed to become part of the international academic consortium for making some contribution in research.
Education has remained on low preference, this compels parents to send their children to private schools, though the private sector is more focused on generating revenues rather than imparting quality education. Government schools are devoid of many of the attributes and facilities to call them modern schools. This is the main reason that most parents strike out the government schools from the priority list. Rather than addressing the core issues of the educational system, the PTI government approach is focused somewhere else. SNC will not serve the purpose either way, neither it will improve the education nor it will provide a quality curriculum. What is needed is to put more budget to better build the infrastructure, introduce modern scientific tools for training, establish laboratories and libraries.
One basic problem of our system is that our textbooks are frozen in the refrigerator of history and are regressive. No one took the effort to change them, SNC has reinforced the retrogressive thoughts in a better way. It’s great to conversant with the past but it’s wrong to always celebrate the past with jingoism. We need to be pragmatic when teaching our children. SNC promotes to see past with narrow prim of jingoism.
What is needed to be done is to enhance the education budget at a significant level, revisit the textbooks and bring them to par with the modern world, teach children in their mother tongue, Otherwise jingoism closed mindset will push us more towards down the path.