“War seems to me to be a mean, contemptible thing: I would rather be hacked in pieces than take part in such an abominable business. And yet so high, in spite of everything, is my opinion of the human race that I believe this bogey would have disappeared long ago, had the sound sense of the nations not been systematically corrupted by commercial and political interests acting through the schools and the press.”
Albert Einstein

When you look at the two words ‘schools’ and ‘media’ and their implied meanings, there seems to be little in common. However, Albert Einstein, the scientist of our era seems to find a similarity in the functional role they perform for the mass of populations of countries and nations. The link seems to be that the young are shaped through schools and the mass of the population through the media or the press in, perhaps, what could be detrimental to humanity at large.

Schools have in general been purveyors of what is perceived to be the best way of educating children and youth in the national interest of countries. The press or ‘media’ as it is now called is also carrying forward the agenda of nations and countries usually in a positive way but often in negative ways, too. Both schools and the media have a profound effect on populations of nations and help create a society and citizenry which can be useful or harmful to its interests. Thus, in the educational spectrum a great deal depends on the curriculum goals and the way it is delivered in the classroom.

Sometime back, Noam Chomsky, another notable thinker and linguist of our times, analysed the purpose of education and in the following question put forward the two perceived roles in education: “Do you want a society of free, creative, independent individuals able to appreciate and gain from the cultural achievements of their past and add to them or a society which is indoctrinated to perform certain roles and does not challenge the systems of power and authority”.

He points out the differences in the way educational systems in the past visualised the purpose of education. The first is the traditional one, an interpretation of the Enlightenment period which thought its highest goal in life was to inquire and to search the riches of the past, and internalise whatever they thought was exceptional for them. This educational goal helped people how to learn and master what they liked on their own and eventually produce or innovate something exciting for themselves and others.

The second educational goal has been of centralised indoctrination where people from childhood are placed in a framework and follow orders and are trained not to question it. He cites the example of activism of the 1960s which sparked great concern among educationists that young people were getting too free and independent and that the country was becoming too democratic. This came to be called the ‘Crisis of democracy’ in a study done at that time in the USA.

It explicitly revealed that the problem had arisen because (using its phraseology), “certain institutions responsible for the indoctrination of the young were not doing their job properly such as schools, colleges and churches”. Changes to the system was advised and schools and colleges had to make sure that there was more control, more indoctrination, and more vocational training with young people being trapped into conformity with the system. Consequently, schools and further education traditionally became places where perceptions of knowledge have been imparted in a fixed curriculum formulated for a particular time or era.

What is imparted through schools creates the society that all of us live in. Nations, particularly, use schools and the media to ingrain forms of ideology from a very early age. Many countries such as the UK, India and Germany under Hitler discriminated other races by using their school textbooks.

In Pakistan’s 66 years of independence, too, this has been all too obvious and explicit. In a negative way, textbooks made for schools have indoctrinated children into a train of thought process harmful to society and the country’s interest. This was done particularly during the Zia regime when madressahs were used to impart a form of fixed ideology and schools were given textbooks that only gave one point of view. This may have been done in the best interest of ‘national security or ideology’ but defeated the purpose of education which is to create critical, innovative and creative thinkers.

Pakistan’s school systems have to be thoroughly examined and scrutinised in how the curriculum is being handled and interpreted and then delivered in the classroom. With untrained teachers who, generally, are already the product of uninspired and linear schooling, investigation into how schools handle the learning of students is crucial.

Before any reforms are undertaken, a detailed review of all kinds of school systems working in Pakistan must be done by experts who are well-versed in educational know how. Textbooks must go through an independent board for review but competent people must be hired to do this. The value and influence of schools is phenomenal and Pakistan, as a fairly new country, must gain from rectifying a lot with what has gone wrong in its schooling and bring in open, transparent measures to keep our schools in good order for a positive and beneficial society to emerge.

The writer is an educational consultant based in Lahore.

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