The Dilemma of Textbooks

One can say that there are three things that influ­ence you the most dur­ing youth, which even­tu­al­ly shape your opin­ions, your val­ues and behav­iour in soci­ety. First there are your par­ents and your fam­i­ly in which you grow up. Then there is your peer-group con­sist­ing of your friends you talk to and through whom you get in con­tact with issues not present in your fam­i­ly life. And third­ly there is your school, the place where you spend most of your time. Espe­cial­ly your teach­ers and their opin­ions and the text­books you study will form your way of look­ing at top­ics and see­ing the world — at least I expe­ri­enced it that way.

I remem­ber a dis­cus­sion going on in my his­to­ry class in Ger­many two years ago. We were talk­ing about the fact that only ten years ear­li­er the DDR (the for­mer com­mu­nist part of Ger­many belong­ing to the Sovi­et Union until 1989) was part­ly rep­re­sent­ed in Ger­man his­to­ry text­books as an all in all bad state influ­enced by Russ­ian spies who want­ed to weak­en West Ger­many dur­ing the Cold War. In class we were dis­cussing how dif­fi­cult it is to write an objec­tive his­to­ry book which is not based on prej­u­dices and emo­tion­al­ly-charged per­cep­tions. For­tu­nate­ly, by now Ger­man his­to­ry text­books most­ly do not con­tain hate mate­r­i­al any more. But still it was a long process until that could be achieved.

Today, two years lat­er, I find myself in Lahore, doing an intern­ship at the Nation­al Com­mis­sion for Jus­tice and Peace (NCJP) and work­ing on a project regard­ing text­books of Pak­istani schools to analyse hate mate­r­i­al includ­ed in books. Again I am into the same dis­cus­sions and I find the sit­u­a­tion in Pak­istan with regard to school books def­i­nite­ly worth talk­ing about.

NCJP start­ed their stud­ies on biased edu­ca­tion eight years ago when in 2006, the Nation­al Edu­ca­tion Pol­i­cy was framed. So far two reports have been pub­lished (in 2009 and 2013) reveal­ing a shock­ing fact: After the first report the num­ber of lines con­tain­ing hate mate­r­i­al against reli­gious minori­ties and neigh­bour­ing coun­tries increased instead of being reviewed and mod­i­fied. For exam­ple, in books of Urdu lan­guage and Pak­istan Stud­ies for grades 7 to 10, there were 15 lines con­tain­ing hate mate­r­i­al in 2009 which increased to 86 in the fol­low­ing years. Actu­al­ly, it seems like some per­son of influ­ence read the report and thought “We can do bet­ter than that…” Peter Jacob, Exec­u­tive Sec­re­tary of NCJP, sums it up as fol­lows: “The text­books are not only blind to the fact that Pak­istan is a mul­ti-reli­gious coun­try, but also car­ry sev­er­al dis­tor­tions, angling and twist­ing of soci­ety.”

The Pak­istani minor­i­ty teach­ers asso­ci­a­tion has boykot­ted to review the man­u­script for the sub­ject ‘Ethics’, which is pre­scribed as an alter­na­tive to Islam­ic Stud­ies for reli­gious minor­i­ty stu­dents and has demand­ed the gov­ern­ment to allow every stu­dent to study their own reli­gion and to remove biased mate­r­i­al from text­books.

Right now, NCJP is work­ing on a com­par­a­tive analy­sis of pri­vate school text­books and pub­lic school ones. “The key find­ings until now are that hate mate­r­i­al in pri­vate school text­books (Oxford and Cam­bridge) is 30% less than in pub­lic schools”, Aila Gill says, respon­si­ble for the ongo­ing study.

All over the world the same ques­tion has to be answered: How can stu­dents pos­si­bly devel­op a sense of jus­tice and an objec­tive view on their neigh­bour­ing coun­tries and on reli­gious minori­ties liv­ing amongst them when the state pro­vides text­books con­tra­dic­tive to even the Nation­al Con­sti­tu­tion? (For exam­ple Arti­cle 20 guar­an­tees free­dom of reli­gion for all cit­i­zens, but still there are text­books refer­ring to Hin­dus as “ene­mies”; see Fri­day Times, August 23–29, 2013).

Dur­ing my stay in Pak­istan I learned how impor­tant the work of Pak­istani NGOs is, which work hard to change fun­da­men­tal prob­lems like biased edu­ca­tion, increas­ing extrem­ism and injus­tice. How­ev­er, the main pow­er to improve and update edu­ca­tion pol­i­cy still lies in the state’s hands. Hope­ful­ly, reports like the ones pub­lished by NCJP as well as the ongo­ing media atten­tion the top­ic receives (Dawn, Express Tri­bune, BBC etc.) will make peo­ple in charge real­ize that the spread­ing of hatred in pub­lic schools is not of any help for win­ning elec­tions but weak­ens soci­ety as a whole.

Over the last years a new approach gained strength: Writ­ing his­to­ry text­books in coop­er­a­tion with neigh­bour­ing states. In 2006 for exam­ple, a Ger­man-French joint his­to­ry book was pub­lished. Nowa­days, BBC News titles “Text­book approach to Asi­a’s dis­putes” (18th Feb­ru­ary, 2014). The arti­cle reports on the work­ing process of “agree­ing on a com­mon past among the South East Asian Coun­tries” and their plan to pub­lish a com­mon his­to­ry text­book for South East Asia. Would­n’t that be a task for the sub­con­ti­nent as well? Def­i­nite­ly, it is ambi­tious and a long way to go but I think it is cru­cial for stu­dents to get as much infor­ma­tion as pos­si­ble to make up their own opin­ions.

School is about learn­ing and becom­ing who you are. For that you need an atmos­phere which allows that. In my opin­ion joint text­books are a great step for­ward. Yet, read­ing the reports of NCJP, one point becomes obvi­ous: A lot of work has to be done.

Arti­cle 26, Uni­ver­sal Dec­la­ra­tion of Human Rights, 1948

(1) Every­one has the right to edu­ca­tion. Edu­ca­tion shall be free, at least in the ele­men­tary and fun­da­men­tal stages.

(2) Edu­ca­tion shall be direct­ed to the full devel­op­ment of the human per­son­al­i­ty and to the strength­en­ing of respect for human rights and fun­da­men­tal free­doms. It shall pro­mote under­stand­ing, tol­er­ance and friend­ship among all nations, racial or reli­gious groups, and shall fur­ther the activ­i­ties of the Unit­ed Nations for the main­te­nance of peace.

If you are inter­est­ed in read­ing the whole report men­tioned above please con­tact Aila Gill, NCJP.