Unanswered questions

We are once again talking about madressahs and what to do with the 2.5 million children across the country who, we have been told in an address given by the chief of army staff, study at these institutions.

General Qamar Javed Bajwa has suggested that the scope of madressah education should be widened and brought into the mainstream. In the past, there have been other varied suggestions that focus on madressahs. Attempts at reform – for example, those outlined in policies drawn up by former president Pervez Musharraf – have often been met with angry resistance from clerics and religious organisations.

There have also been curious attempts, funded by foreign donors that include the US and other Western countries, to ‘modernise’ madressahs. This essentially entails installing computers and other equipment at these institutions while also encouraging a wider range of subjects to be taught. Such efforts have made madressahs more powerful. Teaching mathematics, for example, does not mean that we will not be producing extremists. Computer-literate extremists are possibly even more dangerous than those who are not familiar with the use of keyboards, the internet and cyberspace. Many wonder precisely how computers within madressah classrooms are used.

It is quite obvious, given the current climate in the country, that no effort can be made to close down madressahs – even those that are associated with more hardline schools of thought. The success of Khadim Rizvi and his Tehreek-e-Labbaik Ya Rasul Allah (TLY) protesters in Islamabad has ensured this. The seminaries running across the country will continue to operate because they not only offer poor parents a place where children can be educated free of charge but also provide students shelter and meals. In a country where 50 percent of children are malnourished and a third of families live below the poverty line, these perks are of immense value.

They are even more valuable in a situation where public sector schools simply do not function as they should. The vast majority of these schools lack adequate teaching and teacher absenteeism is formidably high. The statistics published each year show us how thousands of government schools lack basic facilities, such as toilets, furniture, fans, boundary walls or drinking water.

This has contributed to a major disaster. Children have been removed, for obvious reasons, from public-sector schools in droves and enrolled in madressahs owing to the benefits that the latter provide. Other parents have, of course, opted for private schools, hoping that they will offer a ‘real education’ to their children. Unfortunately, the failure to properly regulate schools means that the private sector often provides mediocre or meaningless education even though it charges higher fees.

A way has to be found around the rapid growth of madressahs – the fastest-multiplying segment within the education sector. Improving government schools is crucial for any strategy that focuses on this objective. Donors must be persuaded to support schools that cater to the majority instead of those which are generally uncontrolled and have proved impossible to regulate in the past, with clerics heading madressahs and refusing to allow inspection teams to do their jobs. The stories of abuse emerging from madressahs makes it even more imperative that some form of action be taken to address these problems.

But we should also remember that the schools that we currently consider to be within the mainstream are not always too different from seminaries. The Punjab Textbook Board has improved the content of its books by printing the text on high-quality paper, inserting images of happy girls in schools, encouraging scientific experiments and removing page after page of badly-written text that sprouted hatred against neighbouring countries and groups within our own. But there is now a likelihood that even these small changes are under threat from the TLY. The outfit has demanded permission to assess textbooks in Punjab.

In other provinces, there has been a failure to make alterations in textbooks. In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the reforms initiated under the previous ANP government have been rolled back by the PTI, with texts hailing extremists being inserted once again into books that reach millions of children across the province.

Apart from the books, the teachers who take up jobs in schools, both in the public and private sectors, are essentially products of an education system that has for decades remained flawed and grossly inadequate. Many people who teach or head schools today grew up under the dark Ziaul Haq era – a time when massive changes made in books suggested that non-Muslims were enemies, as was anyone with connections to India or other nations in the region. Concepts of jihad and martyrdom were emphasised. Such teachers won’t struggle to bring about any real difference as they themselves are brainwashed. In addition, they hold limited knowledge, even about their own subjects, because of the highly flawed education that they have received.

Mainstreaming madressahs is, therefore, not a solution. Instead, we need to look at the education system as a whole, focus on raising standards within government schools and use them to impart an education to children that can help them move away from the highly militarised, intolerant image of Pakistan that exists in people’s minds today. This image has seeped into almost all segments of our society in one form or the other. It has been exacerbated when those who seek to challenge it through blogs or discussions at gatherings simply vanish, leaving behind a terrifying void that naturally scares away others and discourages those who are willing to think, act, and speak out with reason. Introducing reason and rationality back into society must then be a primary aim.

Altering education at madressahs will not achieve this. The process of poisoning minds has continued for decades. Change, too, will then take time. But it must be initiated now. We have a society that is becoming increasingly ‘closed’. The cheques handed out to the extremist protesters at the dharna in Islamabad have added to this image. There has to be a serious rethink and revision of books that are handed out to children.

Many of these children and college pupils will read next to nothing outside their textbooks. The lack of libraries and the prevalent culture contributes to this. Social media is dominated by extremist websites, even as warnings pour in through text messages and other means from the PTA, advising internet users to immediately report any blasphemous or objectionable content that they come across.

The reality is that it is almost impossible to patrol the internet. Efforts to punish people for what they post online add to the darkness within society. The few positive changes made in textbooks have consistently come under threat. In the past, alterations and even minor details have been protested by various groups and, of course, we repeatedly fail to teach our children about many major portions of our history. The version that they receive is either a warped or distorted one. This is as true of schools in the regular domain as it is of madressahs. Yes, the madressahs focus on purely theological learning. But in terms of improving mindsets, what they impart is not radically different from the messages received by children at other institutions. As a result, change has to be holistic and planned with a definite purpose. The question today is whether we have a sense of purpose and the commitment to set about this task with a genuine will.

The writer is a freelance columnist and former newspaper editor.

Email: kamilahyat@hotmail.com