Education Reform in Pakistan Crisis Group Asia Report N°257, 23 June 2014 Page 7 III. The Language Controversy A. National vs. Local The state imposed Urdu, the language of the mohajirs who dominated the ruling Muslim League and bureaucracy at independence, as the national language and mode of instruction for a largely non-Urdu speaking population. 29 Prioritising Urdu at the expense of regional languages fails to value Pakistan’s linguistic and cultural diversity, creates an additional learning ba rrier for children whose mother tongue is different and hampers the involvement of their parents, particularly mothers, in their education. To be sure, the use of local languages in education and government has often been highly politically charged. Mohajirs respon ded violently to the decision of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto’s Sindhi-dominated PPP government to make Sindhi a compulsory sub- ject in secondary schools and the province’s official language. 30 The language contro- versy largely receded after th e Sindh government allowed instruction in the mother tongue, while the regional or national language was taught as a subject. According to provincial education authorities, Sindhi-m edium state-run schools teach Urdu as a subject in Sindhi majority areas, while Urdu-medium public schools, generally in the urban areas of the province, teach Sindhi as subject. 31 Private-sector schools, however, still resist teaching in the mother tongue. According to the Sindh education ministry, more than 500 private schools in the non- Sindhi-speaking areas of the province do not teach Sindhi as a language. 32 In 2012, the ANP-led KPK government passed the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Promo- tion of Regional Languages Authority Act, for the promotion of regional languages, including by “recommend[ing] to government a curriculum and syllabus for the gradual teaching of the regional languages spoken in the province”. The government made Pashto a compulsory subject in public and private primary schools in majority- Pashto speaking districts. For the 2013/2014 school year, it also introduced four other regional languages (Seraiki, Hindko, Kohistani and Khowar) to be taught in pre-primary classes where thes e are the mother tongue of a majority of children, aiming to make such language classes gradually compulsory throughout primary school. 33 Implementation has, however, lagged, partly due to confusion regarding the proposed changes. Many teachers and even provincial education department of- ficials have reportedly misunderstood the pl an to introduce regional languages as a separate subject as an attempt to adopt them as the medium of instruction. 34
Posted on: Fri, 16 Jan 2015 14:49:30 +0000
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