One Curriculum and Publisher’s Reservations

Written By: Naveed Aslam Malik

Education plays an important role in the development of any nation and the mental development of race, according to the laws of nature living in the same place, independent and different thinking are adopted. Every independent human being is different from others in terms of his personality. The matter I am talking about today is a very important and attention issue. I divide my point into two parts. First, federal minister for education Shafqat Mahmood has spoken on many occasions, that he should teach the same curriculum throughout Pakistan. It is not yet clear what this conversation is, what are the objectives of this effort and what Pakistani children will achieve with uniformity. Here I want to focus on a clear discussion about uniformity and what it means more importantly, what it doesn't. And then there is some discussion on what 'curriculum' means.

What I have been able to collect, it is believed that a uniform education/curriculum/books/exam will facilitate us to reduce or eliminate differences in children across the country. Children of different provinces, cities as well as different rural areas, gender and socioeconomic status will read the same thing more or less at the same time and so Many people believe that this will remove the existing discrimination in children and create an "egalitarian" environment.

But the problem is that a uniform curriculum, however, is implemented on it, will not reduce the disagreement. Children come from different social and economic backgrounds, from different households where different levels of parental education. Their languages are different, they come from different cultural and religious backgrounds, and they also live in very different environments geographically. The same syllabus, the same books and even the same examinations will not reduce the difference. In fact, they can also increase inequality. Actually the government is looking at the issue of uniformity as a means to solve the issues of equality.

If examinations are very difficult, they will create a distinction between those who pass and those who cannot. This discrepancy between matric pass and matric fail, when institutionalized in the sense that who can or cannot access jobs, will escalate discrepancies, not reduce.

If uniformity in language requirements ignores some children's home or mother tongue unlike others, we put some children at a disadvantage in terms of learning. If curriculum and books are the same, children in sindh get the same books which are in punjab, and their regional cultures, traditions, history and literature can be neglected.

The prime minister had said that a uniform curriculum is required to make 'one nation' in Pakistan. While it is unclear what the prime minister means, I understand that the aspect of the nation's unity is not only with the elimination of inequality, but also with some ideas of ideological uniformity.

Once again, there is no evidence that a curriculum, set of books and/or examination has led a large and diverse group of people to being theoretically more homogeneous or cohesive group Has the compulsory study of islamic studies and Pakistan studies helped in this? Is there any proof of this? What makes us think that a curriculum, whether we can implement it, will allow us to achieve as much difficult task as "a nation"? Such an experience also costs. We can't just say that maybe some of this kind of effort is worth making because there is no shortage of it. We will spend a lot of money and political capital trying to attract all schools to the same curriculum, a fixed set of books and a testing system we approve Resources have alternative USES. We can also use political capital on other things. There are many reforms in the education sector that are calling for attention. Shouldn't we prefer those who are on their efforts to go into a narrative 'a curriculum'?

Twenty-two million or older children are out of school at the age of five to sixteen in Pakistan. Most children in schools, whether they are public or in the private sector with low fees, are getting poor quality education. Instead of focusing on these issues, we want to spend resources, time, money and political capital on issues of uniformity.

We should be clear that a curriculum, collection of textbooks and even examinations, even if we can implement it, are not going to solve access and quality problems here. How will a curriculum allow 22 million more children to register? Higher enrollment requires more schools, teachers, transport facilities and incentives for enrolment. None of these will affect the uniformity of the curriculum. The quality of education has a lot to do with the quality of books, teacher teaching, teacher motivation, and the quality of assessment tools, but what can uniformity do to improve these areas?

The government is looking at the problem of uniformity as a means of resolving issues of equality. But here I think the issues of equality cannot be resolved through uniformity. Issues of equality should be addressed while living within the scope of diversity of children's circumstances, needs, abilities and ambitions. Uniform curriculum will not do anything here. In fact, on the contrary, it increases some of these equation cases. Many reforms in the education sector, and very deep reforms are needed to solve equality and quality problems. There is no doubt about it. But having uniform curriculum, books and/or system examination is not the correction we need. It will not resolve any issues that are of interest to us. Will make extensive efforts to implement such reforms even if possible, and this will hurt work in other sectors.

This is an approach to the curriculum, the other aspect with which is that there is a matter of immediate implementation of the new curriculum. In this regard, I have seen some of the reservations of the textbook publishers association and I understand that these reservations should be removed before the immediate implementation of the new curriculum. The textbook publishers association holds that the single national curriculum is not a new concept, it was probably brought to the single national curriculum in 2006/2007, under which books of all private and public schools were prepared, since then it has been implemented and thousands of books are available in the market. At the moment, the situation of the epidemic, as we are facing corona, the whole country, the whole world is closed, due to which our first stock is ready. It is not only with us There are books, but booksellers have also got books, even books have been found inside the schools because the children did not start reading. During this time, the education minister Mr. Shafqat Mahmood is saying, but also is going to be implemented in 2021. If all this happens, our billion stock, books will be lost. The book publishers association, Fawaz Niyaz, said that it will not only affect the publishers, but also our writers, researchers and all other staff will be badly affected. We want it to be given time It should be increased and delayed for at least three years in the implementation of same curriculum.