The news
Textbooks in Pakistan’s public schools have become more antagonistic
toward Christians and other religious minorities in the past five years,
a new report says.
“The trend toward a more biased curriculum towards religious minorities
is accelerating,” it says. “These grossly generalized and stereotypical
portrayals of religious minority communities signal that they are
untrustworthy, religiously inferior, and ideologically scheming and
intolerant.”
The source
The report, scheduled to be released 12 April
in Washington, D.C., is sponsored by the U.S. Commission on
International Religious Freedom, an advisory body to the U.S. Congress
and state department. By law, the commission’s assessments of religious
freedom in other countries are required to figure in to American
diplomatic relations around the globe. Click here to download the report.
Why it’s important
1. Textbooks are an expression of national policy. According to the
report: “School textbooks represent the political perspectives and
national ideologies of whole educational and government systems. As
such, school textbooks are one of the most important indicators of
official and popular perspectives of the cultural and political
communities they depict both in words and images.”
2. The textbooks “continue to violate the constitutional rights of
religious minorities by integrating Islamic ideology into most subjects
and to promote a national Islamic identity at the expense of Hindu,
Christian, and Sikh children.”
About the study
It was conducted for USCIRF by the Peace and Education Foundation, a
Pakistan-based non-governmental organization. It claims to have “trained
more than 11,000 religious actors in Pakistan, including madrasah
teachers and faculty, mosque imams, and interfaith leaders.”
The researchers started by consulting a 2011 USCIRF review of textbook bias.
From that review, the researchers took 25 examples of religious bias,
and examined 78 current textbooks to see if they had changed. The books
are used in grades 5-10 in four Pakistan provinces: Punjab, Sindh,
Balochistan, and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Together, those four encompass 95
percent of Pakistan’s population. Pakistan has more than 260,000 schools
where more than 1.5 million teachers have contact with 41 million
students.
What it found
- 16 of the biased elements had been removed
- 9 remained, either in their 2011 form or changed in ways that did not remove the bias
- 70 new examples of religious bias in 24 textbooks
Pockets of improvement were found in Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
Why? Researchers said they had been able to meet directly with the
Punjab governor, and with education ministers in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
More than eight of every 10 new examples of bias were found in Balochistan and Sindh.
Examples:
Removed by 2016
“Anti-Islamic forces are always trying to finish the Islamic domination
of the world. This can cause danger for the very existence of Islam.
Today, the defense of Pakistan and Islam is very much needed.”
Grade 5, Punjab
A 2011 example that was changed but without removing bias
2011: “Christian Missionaries took full advantage of the British
occupation of Asia and, under their patronage, started converting people
of different religions to Christianity.”
2016: “The influence of Christian pastors had increased immensely and
they were openly preaching their religion aided by their rule. They
freely visited the cities and villages, organized gatherings to describe
the qualities of Christianity and degraded other religions.”
Grade 8, Sindh
Added since 2011
“After getting rid of the proscribed and ignorant rule of the Church,
Europeans progressed in the fields of knowledge/education, political
acceptance and in arts and crafts.”
Grade 6, Punjab
Key findings
Heavy emphasis on pre-partition period. A major thrust
of Pakistan’s public-school curriculum is “the desire to teach a sense
of patriotism and nationalism and instruct students about the rationale
for creating Pakistan,” the report said. The result is a focus on the
“alleged animosities Hindus have of Muslims and tensions between Muslims
and the British (and Christian) colonial power in pre-partition India.”
Islam is key to Pakistani identity. “Students are
taught a version of history that promotes a national Islamic identity of
Pakistan and often describes conflicts with India in religious terms,”
the report said.
Overemphasis of military war heroes, “educating Pakistanis in the most superficial way.”
Suspicious of Christians. “Christians also are
portrayed as untrustworthy missionaries, and as aligned with British
oppressors who were colonizers and continue to conspire against
Muslims.”
In sum: Pakistan’s curriculum “places religious
minority students in a precarious status of either inherently flawed
Pakistani citizens at best, or foreigners and enemies of the state at
worst. If the theme is carried further, religious minority students are
not only outsiders, but also dangerous contaminants to the Islamic
national identity by virtue of their non-Muslim faith.”
Conclusion
“The public school system is still fundamentally intolerant of
religious minorities and Christian children are taught that ‘Christians
learned tolerance and kind-heartedness from Muslims.’ This represents a
public shaming of religious minority children that begins at a very
young age, focusing on their religious and cultural identity and their
communities’ past history.”
Recommendations
"Constitutional guarantees provided to all Pakistanis of religious freedom should be reflected in textbooks’ contents.
"Negative indoctrination must end and impartial content for better critical learning should be adopted.
"The curriculum should inculcate a sense of constructive patriotism rather than a sense of fear.
"Overemphasis on Islam as being the 'only correct' faith must be
eliminated from the textbooks. "Historical omissions and
misrepresentations of different events must be eliminated to avoid
controversial historiography, and diverse viewpoints should be
included."
Courtesy: World Watch Monitor
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