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The Tyranny of Language in Education: The Problem & Its Solution. Revised and Expanded Edition.
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Category Archives: Guest Contributor
A plague of saviours
By Rifaat Hamid Ghani
Musharraf’s specific contribution to the toxic cauldron in which Pakistan’s polity stews and bubbles was the imposition of his military will without a declaration of martial law. The visible outcome a bit more than a decade later is a widespread non-perception of any infallibly observed and consistently applicable laws at all. Civil law was clearly treated as of no consequence in the ‘countercoup’ and it died without a whimper. No one heard justly esteemed legal personae renowned as civil rights champions and constitutional experts haranguing military trespass.
The simple fact on the ground was that Nawaz Sharif was using his party’s once popular absolute parliamentary majority (there had been extensive disgust with the presently hallowed Benazir in her second tenure) to make legal nonsense of its origin: The legislature or rather too many of its members were on the verge of legislating the PM’s office repugnant dictatorial political powers. Musharraf averted Sharif’s obtaining these legally by appropriating them for himself unlawfully. Why was the interventionist COAS more representative of popular as well as intellectual sentiment at that juncture than the democratically elected prime minister? Because he blocked the misapplication of Islam in politics that Nawaz Sharif was using to whitewash his proposed 15th Amendment.
The point to be made here is that it is not just a COAS Vs PM tussle our political experiences have familiarised us with, but a religious practice Vs democratic practice choice that is constantly if variously posed us. There is a lingering and misleading assumption that a martial law or fidelity to the supremacy of civil authority choice is mirrored in what we view as an Islamization or parliamentary democracy option. Civil politicians and military dictators have, as demanded by the times, been exponents of either. Continue reading
Language fracture
By Rifaat Hamid Ghani
THE importance of education is reiterated so passionately that the phrase has become an end in itself: We stop dead after asserting its importance. Duty has been done and homage offered.
There has not been a single attempt at government – civil or military – that has not set up its own national education reform commission, taskforce, or whatever rubric the jargon of its moment favours. The labels change but one may comfortably hazard a guess that the substance of reports, the diagnosis and prognosis of the malady, are rather similar. The same sage recommendations and prescriptions have been heard over and over again, and whatever is attempted never really gets going. Yet, outstanding blunders perpetrated in the field resonate despite policy change or retraction – think Bhutto’s nationalisation and Zia’s madressas.
This article’s purported focus is higher education and language: the medium of instruction. I will forbear – but only after reminding clichés survive because they are valid – from the clichés as to the advantages of instruction in the mother tongue and the advantages of English as a global language. Look instead at what we have and what we want – not from the perspective of the arbiters, the consultant expert advisers on system – but from the point of view of their captives – Pakistan’s students and teachers: For students approaching higher education, and teachers as they receive and dispatch them, Continue reading
The neuter gender
By Rifaat Hamid Ghani
THE Pakistani woman: can she be defined? For that matter can the Pakistani male? Somehow we don’t think that much about defining the Pakistani male – its women are so much more interesting! Pakistani society is stratified and its cultures mixed; yet its male value stereotype is almost constant. Feudal lordling or serf, bureaucratic grandee or babu, urban or rural, whatever the income bracket or professional tag or social exposure, men are convinced they know better than their women – whether they indulge them or control them. They retain the right to intervene be it as wise men or tyrants.
But the Pakistani woman’s attitude to the male in her orbit varies dramatically depending osocial standing. The plane of stratification and the cultural mix make an enormous difference to her mental attitudes and responses. One could say that women are still evolving and the men have evolved – which is a polite way of saying that they are Continue reading
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Posted in Culture and the Arts, Education, Guest Contributor, History, Human Rights, Islamisation, Social Issues, Women
A Visit to Vietnam
By Rabab Naqvi
Once you step out on the streets of Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam, it is hard to believe that this is a country that was devastated by war not long ago. My cousin, Rashida, responded to my email from Vietnam, “I am glad you are having a nice stay in Vietnam. My mind still carries the war ravaged scenes of that country of 40 or 50 years ago”. To find remnants of war today one has to go to the War Museum and the Cu Chi tunnel complex. Hanoi, which was bombed during the war, buzzes with life. Amidst restaurants, hotels, shopping plazas and bazaars pretty women and handsome men scurry around. Vietnamese are blessed with good looks and good figures. Men and women both drive motorcycles on roads and highways. Vietnam has the highest number of two-wheelers per capita. Whole families somehow manage to fit on one motorcycle. It is amazing how they can carry an incredible amount of stuff of varying shapes and sizes on a motorcycle. It appears to be their main mode of Continue reading
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Posted in General, Guest Contributor, History, International Politics, New, Social Issues, View from Abroad, War and Peace
Aser Nama: A citizen’s learning accountability survey
By Baela Raza Jamil
Nowshera: Each year it is the luck of the draw as we venture into the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) survey on interrogating children’s learning levels across all districts of the country -in each district a random sample of 30 villages is selected, dividing each village into four quadrants and from each 5 houses are visited for the learning survey of 3-16 year olds. ASER takes us to fascinating places across the country – enjoying our beautiful geography and even more beautiful people. Perhaps ASER is a good example of edutourism and why not? If we can have medicaltourism we can surely promote edutourism! I say so because as I entered the famous village of Ziarat Kaka Saheb in Nowshera district in Khyber Pakhtoonkhwa home of a famous politician, I could not take my eyes off the beautifully constructed brick and slate walls standing impressively from centuries –the old havelis – awesome archways and well-designed drainage, reminding one of a time when this would have been a very famous place. Of course it is still famous due to two reasons; it is home to a beautiful shrine of revered sufi saint Syed Kastir Gul affectionately known as Kaka Sahib who answers many prayers and Continue reading
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Posted in Children and Youth, Development and Poverty, Education, Guest Contributor, Language
Malala’s Pakistan
By Rifaat Hamid Ghani
MALALA – the world’s youngest Nobel Laureate – and why: because she was shot at and almost killed in her country for speaking up for education for girls. On Dec 10. Pakistanis shed tears watching her receive the prize – so well-deserved; so devastatingly earned.
This girl-child’s was the most effective voice – the one bigots needed to silence them. Pakistan’s child Malala’s glory indicts Pakistan’s adults. Continue reading
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Posted in Children and Youth, Education, Guest Contributor, Human Rights, Law & Order, New, Social Issues, Terrorism and Violence, War and Peace, Women
Countdown to 90?
By Rifaat Hamid Ghani
THE PTI dharna’s sameness and the government’s passivity are fraying nerves: It’s not a good feeling to be stuck in an unpleasant place and going nowhere. Is the democratic light Imran’s adherents set out to see at the end of their leader’s tunnel vision nearing? Is his effort trailblazing and ground-breaking? Not really, Pakistan’s political history has been much too packed with event and surprise; vision and mirage for that. It didn’t need an Imran-Qadri duo to teach the people their democratic rights or how to ask for them. For Pakistan was born out of mass political consciousness; and it is the first uninterrupted completion of a deplorable democratic term in office that has made people so mindful of post electoral delivery and demanding of better governance from the serving government. Overall, 2013’s election results were acceptable to the voters or they wouldn’t have waited for Imran to sound the clarion call about a robbed mandate from atop a container so many months later. Continue reading
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Posted in Administration, Constitution, Guest Contributor, History, Law & Order, New, Politics, Terrorism and Violence
How Young Pakistanis Help Themselves
By Nudrat Kamal The challenges that Pakistan’s young people face today are significant and pervasive, and can be addressed only through sweeping systemic changes. Notwithstanding these challenges, many young people are defying great odds to become conscientious and engaged members … Continue reading
A friend of 50 years
By Zubeida A.Dossal
This article is my loving and fond tribute to Anita — Anita whom I was honoured and privileged to have as a friend for more than fifty years. She was indeed a friend in every sense of the word — loving, appreciative, caring and ever so helpful. Her many gifts of head and heart have helped many a person and friend. She made happy things happier and sad ones a little less so by her sympathy and her sharing and care, which she did so gracefully.
What I enjoyed was her joie de vivre, which she passed on to those around her. Here I recall my first meeting with my friend. Very vivid till today (50+ years later) is my meeting or rather my first view of Anita Ghulamali.
I was then the headmistress of the SMB Fatema Jinnah School and had been asked by Mrs Zaibunissa Hamidullah the editor and owner of the Mirror, to interview Anita Ghulamali. I did not know her, but rang her up to request an interview. I told her I was new to Karachi and did not know the roads very well and might be a little early or late. Continue reading
The tsunami’s vortex
By Rifaat Hamid Ghani
There have been many who have played a destructive role in Pakistan’s politics but Imran Khan may well come to head the list.
He has never had the kind of stately intellectuality or revolutionising party political standing another eventual political disaster did so one does not want to honour him by comparison with the giant; but if Bhutto’s political use of the Punjab-dominated western wing of Pakistan culminated in the loss of east Pakistan, Imran’s focus on the Punjab mass might take care of the remains.
Bhutto had the capacity to revitalise a truncated defeated nation: Would anyone wager that Imran has the capacity – or even the will – to collect the pieces of the Pakistan he is pushing towards implosion? For that could well be the way the curtain falls on his political dramatics if he persists in routing democratic leadership the Azadi March way. It is a pity as well as a national humiliation that so shallow a political entity has to be taken so seriously in terms of the damage he can inflict. And it saddens that Imran Khan, an individual who has used his privileged position to significantly positive social effect establishing ShaukatKhanum Hospital; and his cricketing gifts to delight and animate nationally should be cutting the kind of political figure he now does in his August antics. Continue reading