Pakistan:Education and extremism

MUHAMMAD AMIR RANA

IN reaction to Malala Yousafzai’s speech to the Youth Assembly at the United Nations in July this year, the Pakistani Taliban advised her to return home and to join any madressah for girls. In return, they offered her ‘amnesty’.

Interestingly, Taliban commander Adnan Rashid, who made the offer in a letter to Malala, did not have any objection to her right to education but to the medium of education. Not just the Taliban, a segment of the madressah establishment, too, opposes formal education provided by the public sector, looking on formal education as un-Islamic and believing this system spawns ‘secular’ generations. On the contrary, social scientists and educationists are concerned about the curriculum taught in public schools and think it is fixated on religion and ideology and that it needs to be reformed. Many studies on the syllabi in Pakistan corroborate their view.

At the same time, a segment of Pakistan’s secular elite opposes campaigns for the equal right to education for all citizens. They have a set of reservations which reflects a pessimist mindset. Their major objection is also related to the curriculum. They argue that it is producing generations that will push the country further into extremism. They also argue that the economy cannot afford the burden of more literates and the market has already absorbed more than its capacity.

Interestingly, both the madressah establishment and secular segments of society oppose the formal education system for divergent ideological reasons. Though these anti-public education segments do not represent the majority of their class, they do contribute to the state’s attitudes towards education. Despite the Constitution’s Article 25A, which ensures an equal and compulsory right to education for every citizen, the federal and provincial governments are not prioritising education in their development discourse.

Both segments are the beneficiaries of their own educational systems. Both madressahs and elite educational institutions target the public-sector formal education system and demand reforms. At the same time, they contest demands for reforms in their own education system. Both have active alliances and unions to resist any attempt at the reform of their respective educational systems. These alliances also enable them to safeguard their so-called class interest through resisting educational reforms.

The formal education sector in Pakistan is believed to be catering to the needs of 75pc of the population, while less than 4pc of students go to religious seminaries. Elite schools enrol an even lesser percentage. Both the public and private services sectors heavily depend on the formal education sector. The increasing number of technical training institutions in the public and private sectors not only fulfils the internal demand for skilled labour but also for labour abroad. Increases in foreign remittances are linked to skilled Pakistani labour abroad.

The pessimist mindset is not ready to realise that education is a social instrument for developing human resources and for human capital formation. Pessimist elites in India and Bangladesh had similar fears until a few decades ago. But both countries gradually saw that literacy leads to education and results in empowerment, which enables one to contribute to community development. As far as the question of extremism is concerned, it has its own dynamics which are linked largely to state policies as well as to the ideological and political ambiguities created by the establishment and its beneficiaries. Foreign and local scholars have done extensive research on the subject and are still exploring the changing dynamics of extremism and thinking patterns but nobody has proved education to be the sole factor in extremism. If this was indeed the case, then all social classes and educational institutions would not be facing extremism of equal levels within their respective spheres.

Interestingly, radical and militant groups also follow class distinctions and are quite aware of their constituencies and areas of support among different classes in Pakistan. For instance, sectarian and local Taliban factions function mainly in the lower middle classes and consider these an important support base.

Urban-based militants including Lashkar-e-Taiba and factions of the Punjabi Taliban (affiliates of Al Qaeda) depend on the middle class and have encroached into formal and private educational institutes. Radical groups such as Hizbut Tahrir and Al Huda are active in indoctrinating elite classes and have established their networks in their institutions. Al Qaeda is also a beneficiary of radical tendencies found among the elite as it is continuously producing terrorists like Omer Saeed Sheikh, Khalid Sheikh and Faisal Shazad.

Extremism is a complex phenomenon and cannot be understood in general terms. There is a need to evolve a consensus approach at both the state and society level to tackle it. Linking education to ideological, social and economic challenges is not the right approach. Such an approach cannot provide any solution and is nothing but an attempt to draw a curtain over the wrongdoings of the state and influential classes in the field of education. Blaming the education system alone will not help resolve the problem.

No doubt, the current education systems including the formal, the elitist and the religious education institutions need massive reforms, but on the baseless fears of extremism, a small job market and economic burden, the nation cannot be kept illiterate and ignorant.

There is a dire need to combine all energies to promote and reform the education sector. Instead of blaming the education system for the common man, there is a need to focus more on literacy and educational reforms.