Karachi

A joint meeting of Sindh Education Department and the National Curriculum Council on Thursday discussed the adoption of standards for seven religious minorities and their textbooks, namely Christianity, Hinduism, Sikhism, Zoroastrianism, Baha’i, Buddhism, and Kalasha.

The meeting was held at Karachi under the chairmanship of Minister for Education Sindh Syed Sardar Ali Shah. Director National Curriculum Council Dr. Mariam Chughtai and Chief Advisor (Curriculum) Dr. Fouzia Khan attended the meeting.

Provincial Education Minister said that it was pleasing that Sindh’s stand on curriculum has been recognized by the Federation, which the previous government tried to influence in the name of the Single Nation Curriculum.

Sardar Ali Shah said that efforts are being made to ensure that any behavior promoting violence or intolerance and extremism in the society is not made part of the textbooks.

The meeting approved three initiatives. Firstly, the National Curriculum core standards for four subjects — English, Math, Science, Computer Science – were finalized. Secondly, a partnership between Sindh Education Ministry and NCC Secretariat on Teacher Professional Development was approved for public school teachers. Lastly, the meeting also saw the adoption of standards for seven religious minorities and their textbooks — namely Christianity, Hinduism, Sikhism, Zoroastrianism, Baha’i, Buddhism, and Kalasha.

Experts from the Directorate of Curriculum and Research (DCAR) Government of Sindh remained an active part of the development of standards and later review of the textbooks. Their valuable input helped develop standards and textbooks as per the required standards and finalized standards for Grades ECE-8 for English, General Science, Mathematics, and Computer Science will be reviewed for adoption in Sindh.

Sindh Education Ministry and NCC Secretariat will partner to implement Teacher Professional Development Project in select districts of Sindh. This will help NCC model similar training for other provinces. For the first time, a separate curriculum for seven religious minorities: Christianity, Hinduism, Sikhism, Baha’i, Kalasha, Zoroastrianism and Buddhism has been developed with consensus of concerned religious groups. The Government of Sindh will adopt the standards and facilitate the review of textbooks on this curriculum. These decisions will be formally announced in a joint press briefing in Karachi in the next few days. Minister for Federal Education and Professional Training Rana Tanvir Hussain and Minister for Education Sindh Syed Sardar Shah will address the press conference. (PR)

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Islamabad

Educationists and other stakeholders at a consultative meeting, while raising reservations over the recently devised single national curriculum (SNC) in the country, have urged the government to review this curriculum by duly incorporating all inputs from stakeholders so that it cater to all diverse communities across the country for better education results.

The consultation meeting was organized by Awaz Foundation Pakistan: Centre for Development Services with the purpose to discuss the government’s recently devised SNC and provide an opportunity to stakeholders to share their concerns as well as recommendations to ensure that this curriculum is made a representative document across the country.

The SNC is believed to be focused on modern education, skills development and technology adopting global trends of education with gender equality and women empowerment.

Officials from Pakistan Coalition for Education, Pakistan Private Schools and College Association, Pakistan Parents Association, Pakistan Teachers Forum, educationists and members of civil society organizations including SAHIL, CRM, GDP, VSO, PAMS, Gain Health, PMHA, PYCA participated in the consultative meeting. Senator and Member Standing Committee on Education, Federal College of Education & Professional Training, Fawzia Arshad also attended the meeting.

In his opening remarks, Chief Executive Awaz Foundation Pakistan: Centre for Development Services, Zia-ur-Rehman, explained about the targets and suggested to find the best solutions in real-life adaptation of SNC. He further shared that feedback/ suggestions on SNC are shared with MoFEPT on their feedback portal.

He said that, the meeting is aimed to discuss the solutions and submit the recommendations to the government to ensure uniformity in text books and syllabus for the students from rural and urban areas, private and government schools as well as madaris across the country as Education for all is a fundamental and constitutional right.

Discussing the government’s adopted SNC, the meeting noted that the illustrations in the textbooks should ensure gender based equal representation and contributions of women in leadership roles should be highlighted at par with their male counterparts.

The discussants also suggested that illustrations in textbooks should give reasonable understanding and representation to religious minorities, people living with disability and transgender and without any discriminatory standards of dress code concerning gender.

The recommendations also came out to review text books through psychologists, as it would ensure fulfilment of academic as well as psychological needs of students. The meeting also recommended equal representation of girls, proper translation of curriculum, creating linkages between curriculum and textbooks for better understanding and quality education.

As a solution to all these concerns, they suggested a joint action platform for improvements to move forward with an open-mind approach to formulate a complete and representative curriculum.

Dr. Shafqat Munir from SDPI drew attention towards defining Nationalism through Single National Curriculum on basis of diversity of culture and not from the Religion as currently being reflected.

Zehra Arshad, National Coordinator Pakistan Coalition for Education empathised the need of quality education so our generation could determine respect between agreements and disagreements. We have split in our educational curriculum, text books that needs to be undone through SNC; she further added.

In her remarks, Senator Fawzia Arshad appreciated arranging the consultative meeting on this national issue. She assured that the government will extend all support in identifying quick and practical solutions presented by the stakeholders during the consultative meeting.

The lawmaker mentioned that the government has engaged private schools and developed the SNC.

Senator Fawzia urged Awaz Foundation Pakistan: Centre for Development Services and all stakeholders to formulate their recommendations on the SNC for betterment of children, parents, teachers and society to ensure quality education.

She assured to take up these recommendations with the Federal Ministry of Education and Professional Training as well as Prime Minister of Pakistan to adopt a comprehensive SNC.

Marium Amjad, Program Manager AwazCDS-Pakistan appreciated government’s initiative of imparting trainings to teachers to ensure modern and advance education to the children but also stressed to give teachers training on body protection and life skills based education to teach our generation. While AwazCDS-Pakistan demanded Government to expedite the process of teachers training not through zoom but in physical presence as our most of the public and low income school teachers either do not have internet and technology access or tech friendly.

At the end, participants demanded Government to familiarize “Single National Curriculum for compassion with Gender and Inclusive lens”. (PR)

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By Gulsher Panhwer

PM Imran khan on the occasion of launching single national curriculum termed it freeing the country from slavery. Meaning ‘we never tasted the freedom as if we were under the indirect rule of British Empire’. Besides showing his abhorrence for English language he also lamented the fact that for learning English language, English culture was also adopted resulting country’s economic and “moral” decline.

First, is English or any language bad, answer is big no. language is just medium of communication. It depends on the user of the medium to use it in positive or negative manner. For example, if a person insults and chooses abusive words it does not render the language bad.

The question arises why our elite prohibit English language for masses while they profusely and proudly speak it and write in it and get education through English medium schools from nursery to highest degree.

Majority of the language experts continue to lament in leading English newspapers that English medium schools are great injustice to non-English speaking children. They strongly demand (and rightly) that children should be taught in mother tongue at least for primary classes. But when scratching the mater little bit deeper one finds that children of almost all such campaigners of mother tongue education study in English medium schools.

A long time ago, elite literary personalities from Sindh gathered to demand education in mother tongue and introduction of Sindhi language subject in English and Urdu medium schools. On little bit research it transpired that children of majority of these the English haters   studied in English medium schools.

When asked that why don’t they practice themselves what they preach for others. They will retort that they have no alternative schools with Sindhi medium imparting quality education thus they are compelled to send their children to these   English medium schools. Same is true for Urdu speaking critics of English medium education.  Then another important question props up, who is responsible for rising standard of public schools. It is that its prime and constitutional responsibility of ruling elite   to ensure access to quality education for all children. Thus it is lame excuse of the elite that due to poor quality in public school they send their children in English medium and at the same time cry hoarse that the English language is bad. They love to shift their wealth in western countries, love to reside there and fully adopt western culture and then lecture to the poor that copying western culture is symbol of slavery.  They let the schools and colleges in rural periphery and slum area of big city to rot and their building crumble without teachers, working as animal shed and warehouses of landlords.

Why this dichotomy of elite opposing learning of English language and abhorring western culture whereas they themselves adopt and benefit from these. The answer is that it is in their vested personal and class interest. They amass wealth through illegal means. With this wealth they create elite English medium schools imparting high quality modern instruction. And after educating their children from these educational institutions they monopoly the high paid jobs and occupy the position of high power. They keep the children of masses uneducated or poorly educated. They bad name the English medium modern education in attempt for discouraging poor from attempting to enroll their children in low quality private schools offering English medium education. Because they fear that if masses are motivated for quality education, one day these low quality affordable English medium schools might improve their quality through evolutionary process. And they might catch up with high quality expensive modern education institution. This, they fear will endanger the future of their (elite) children.

If English language was such a bad thing, why Sir Sayed Ahmed Khan enjoined Muslim to learn it? If our illustrious leader Quid-e-Azam hadn’t armed himself with modern education and English language imagine how it would have been difficult to counter the conspiracies from British imperialism and cunning congress leaderships.

Predominance of any language lies in its speakers holding   economic and literary strength.  When Greek nation states thrived and have tremendous contribution in almost all branches of knowledge, Greek Language dominated large part of the world and elite of that time around the world were eager to learn, speak and write in Greek. During Roman Empire’s dominance, the Roman language flourished. During golden Muslim era, Arabic language was widely venerated. When British conquered vast swaths of earth, the English language was adopted as badge of proud and passport to economic power and elevated positions.

At present most of knowledge and information is in English. The English is vital for getting scholarships in reputed foreign universities. With population explosion and shrinking of livelihood opportunities multitudes of our youth is in depression. The thriving foreign job market as well as online marketing is one of the windows of opportunities for our youth to get education and earn foreign exchange. With deluge of extremism and intolerance dogging over society, English language is a medium for our youth to interact with world and promote soft image of our widely peace loving country.

Here the demeaning of English language and English culture and comparing it with slavery by our PM is deplorable. He himself has background of getting education from the institution which extensively use English as medium of instruction.

He has wide range experience and exposure to western culture. Ergo its strange he is calling aping of that culture as symbol of slavery.

This writer has got change to visit different countries and worked with English speaking professionals form different countries. They are extremely polite, abhor telling lies, accept their faults and mistake with grace, never break traffic singles, always stand in queue for their turn. Never pride themselves on breaking the law, never making fun of persons with disabilities and less unfortunate ones among them.

However, every society is not perfect and western society and culture might have some drawbacks   and their own problems. Their ruling elite and big corporations have   vested interest too. But generally speaking western societies including English speaking nations have evolved to high degree of civilized societies, practicing equality, fraternity and other adorable traits

It is clear that learning English or any language is no indication of neglecting one’s own language or matter of any inferiority. Neither appreciating good traits of any culture is symbol of slavery. However, amassing wealth through illegal means, wallowing in wealth and wasting it, taking no step to modernizing education and economy and go with begging bags to every western and eastern countries for aid and loans and in return doing their biding certainly falls in type of modern slavery.

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Gulsher Panhwer is a freelance writer mostly touching the environmental, cultural and such other issues. He can be reached at gulsherp@yahoo.com

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SNC Model Textbooks: Pre-I English Primer — III

A foreign language has to begin with a lot of listening to familiarize children with its sounds, followed by having them articulate simple words and sentences.

By Dr. Anjum Altaf             

On page 13, the primer arrives at its primary task of teaching the alphabet. I am not an expert in this aspect of pedagogy and will confine myself to general observations that might hopefully elicit further commentary from domain specialists.

My first observation is that the section begins much too abruptly with the immediate introduction to the letter A. I would like to distinguish between two types of children in Pre-I: those who do not know the full alphabet from A to Z but know what an alphabet is, perhaps from having books read to them at home; and those who don’t know what it is. The introduction is alright for a child in the former set but not so for one in the latter.

The proportion of students in the two groups would certainly vary from place to place. Therefore, having just one textbook for both, as is the case in the Single National Curriculum, could be detrimental to the learning of many children.

I believe it would be a much more interesting alternative for all to begin by discussing why one needs an alphabet in the first place. This would be kind of a short history of writing and why it needed to be “invented” and how it is a key part of every language system. Once children understand the logic of the alphabet system, they would approach the letters with a lot more interest much as children relate to games whose objectives they are aware of.

My second observation is that the primer also gets much too quickly into writing. There is one page introducing each letter followed by two for tracing and writing it. From what I know, there are four stages to learning a language — Listening, Speaking, Reading, Writing — and they follow each other in that sequence. All children have completed the Listening and Speaking stages in their home languages before they enter Pre-I and some may have also been introduced to a bit of reading. But very few have done any systematic writing.

Given the above sequence, it may be alright to go straight away to writing if the language being taught was the home language. But the case of English is entirely different. Except for the very few households where some English is spoken in the home, the vast majority of children have not gone through the Listening, Speaking, and Reading stages. To plunge them directly into writing would result in a very mechanical introduction to the language. They would most likely “know” by the end of the year how to write the alphabet from A to Z but it would mean very little and they would probably end up bored and hating the language instead of being excited by it and loving it.

In my thinking, a foreign language has to begin with a lot of listening to familiarize children with its sounds, followed by having them articulate simple words and sentences — me, you, this, that, etc. It is only then that one progresses to having texts like stories and poems read out before one finally arrives at writing. One must remember that children in countries where English is the home language enter school knowing a lot of fairy tales and nursery rhymes. Teaching the alphabet to them is completely different from teaching it to children with no prior exposure of a similar nature. I find this critical distinction missing in the design of a Pre-I English primer which is to be used for every single child irrespective of the preparation with which he/she enters the school.

Be that as it may, let us now look at how the primer proceeds, beginning with the letter A. At the top of the page is written “A a” with a verse on the side. This is followed by a short anecdote about an ant: “Once upon a time, there was a hardworking ant. She kept on collecting food in the summers for winters. She advised her friends to collect food too. Her friends do not listen to her. Her friends were upset when they did not have any food to eat in winters.”

Given the majority of students unfamiliar with English and the vocabulary in the text, there is little doubt that the story would have to be translated to be understood. I can only presume that it is serving the purpose of familiarizing the students with the sounds of the language. But, in that case, isn’t the vocabulary too advanced?

I am also perplexed with the nature of introduction to the letter as “A a” at the top of the page. This is reiterated in the first instruction to the teacher: “Introduce letter “Aa” with phonic sound.” There is no such letter as “Aa.” There is no explanation that each letter in the English alphabet has two symbolic notations and the reason for that. If this is considered too complex, perhaps the upper case and lower case letters could be introduced separately. I am sure there is some best practice for teaching the two but surely introducing the letter as “Aa” and copying it 31 times as such is not recommended.

I had expected the first teacher instruction to elaborate a bit on this aspect but it moves away in a completely different direction with “Discuss facts about ants and apples.”

The second instruction is not very helpful either in figuring out the letter Aa: “Take children outside, let them observe the environment and spot an ant and make (sic) apple in the classroom with paper plate / paper / newspaper / recycled material.”

The third instruction is to “Teach vocabulary as sight words: apple, ant, axe, ape, aunt, acorn, ambulance, astronaut.” I looked up ‘sight words’ on the Internet and found the following: “Sight words are the words that appear most frequently in our reading and writing.” I doubt if axe, ape, and acorn are among them. In fact, the Internet also has a list of sight words for kindergarten and none of the words listed in the primer for letter “Aa” are included in that list.

The take-away balloon at the bottom of the page has this message: “Ask children what other things they see in classroom that start with the letter “a”.” Given that children are just beginning to learn the language, it is not clear how they are expected to know the names in English of things beginning with a particular letter. Once again, there seems to be some confusion about the kind of student for whom the primer is designed. I wonder if it has been pilot-tested in various types of classrooms and if there is a report on it that can be shared to reassure parents and teachers that the method really works.

On the second page of ‘Trace and Write’ (p. 15), there are two additional items. The first is a circle with a set of letters (a, e, B, C, A, g, A, a) with the instruction: “Encircle “Aa”.” Since there is no “Aa” in the set, I am not sure how a child would proceed. Second, there is pairing illustration with pictures of a butterfly, rabbit, and dog on the left joined with dotted lines to those of a rose, a carrot, and a bone, respectively, on the right. There is no instruction to the teacher pertaining to this exercise so it is hard to figure out the connection to “Aa.”

This leaves just the verse used to introduce “Aa” which reads as follows (p. 13):

“a” letter, “a” letter, ant, ant, ant

“a” letter, “a” letter, let’s all chant

This is the generic verse style for all letters from Aa to Zz and I will have more to say about it in the next part of this review. However, it just so happens that I have a two-minute video clip of “a for ant” being taught to a child and I would urge readers to view it before we proceed on the remainder of the journey from Bb to Zz.

[author title=”Dr. Anjum Altaf ” image=”https://sindhcourier.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Anjum-Altaf.jpg”]Dr. Anjum Altaf is the former Dean of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at LUMS. He is the author of Plain Truths About Early Childhood Education: Letters to Parents (available as an e-book from Little Books) and of Critical Reflections on the Single National Curriculum and the Medium of Instruction (forthcoming). [/author]

Click here for Part-I , Part-II, Part-III, Part-IV, Part-V, Part-VI

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SNC Model Textbooks: Pre-I English Primer — I

The primer is an adaptation, without any contextual reflection, of a primer from an English speaking country — vilayati makhi par desi makhi marna.

By Dr. Anjum Altaf

The first year of school should lay the foundation on which the edifice of a sound education can be raised. I had therefore intended to move on to a page-by-page review of the Pre-I English Primer but it could be concluded on page 1 itself. There is a devastating fundamental flaw in its conception that seems to have escaped the attention of all those who have looked at it to date.

The point I am making is the following: English is a foreign language in Pakistan. Barring a very thin slice of households where English is spoken in the home, the vast majority of children are unfamiliar with the language. There is little doubt that there are many for whom the first exposure to English would be in Pre-I. In order to appreciate this point, imagine the extreme case of a child, call her Y, who has not encountered any English prior to entering Pre-1. It cannot be argued that there are no such children in the country.

On page 1 of the primer are the ‘Greetings’ with which the child would be welcomed: “Good morning, good morning, / good morning dear / welcome to the class, have no fear / be friends and have fun / learn, play and run / good morning, good morning, / good morning dear, / welcome to the class have no fear.

What is Y going to make of this greeting and would she even figure out it is one? Therein lies the conceptual flaw in the primer — it is made for children who are already quite familiar with the language like children in England, for example. This flaw has occurred because the primer is an adaptation, without any contextual reflection, of a primer from an English speaking country — vilayati makhi par desi makhi marna. And this has escaped notice, because most of the people writing about the SNC belong to that tiny minority who speak some English at home which makes the Greetings on page 1 seem quite normal.

There cannot be any disagreement with the fact that at the Pre-I stage in Pakistan, English needs to be taught, if it is taught at all, as a foreign language which calls for a very different approach. Even in England there are certifications in the Teaching of English as a Foreign Language because those, like refugees, who start learning the language not knowing it have to be taught quite differently from those that do.

I had hoped that the teacher’s instructions would point a way out of this conundrum but, as usual, the desire for random moralizing overwhelms the authors at the expense of either clarity or infusing any sense of joy in the teaching. Here are the three instructions:

“Greet children warmly. Encourage them to greet their parents, siblings, friends, other family members, elders and each other. Discuss with children how people differently greet each other around the world.”

“Do role play in class by bringing two children in the front to greet each other.”

“Help children to learn greetings at home. Exhibit good manners and attitude.”

Asides from the fact that these lessons have little to do with English, especially on the first day of the course, why do the writers presume that parents have not already taught their children how to greet elders and family members? And, are the children going to be taught to abandon what they know and learn the proper greetings in English? The picture on the page gives a mixed message with the teacher saying “Assalam o Alaikum How are you?” and the children, holding placards with the names of the days of the week in English, answering “Wa Alaikum Assalam I am fine. Thank you.”

The bottom line is that the primer is completely inappropriate for the teaching of English as a foreign language and there is no need to proceed further. However, for the sake of completeness, from this point on I will evaluate its merit for the students in Pre-I who are already familiar with the language.

Page 2 is devoted to drawing things about My Self. The teacher’s instructions are as follows: “Discuss with children to keep themselves tidy and clean. Brush their teeth twice a day, take bath every day and dress neatly. Use appropriate posture while walking, sitting and writing.” And, “Make children look into the mirror and identify self attributes e.g. (sic) hair, eye color, etc.”

Page 3 is titled My Home and shows rooms of an upscale residence. The teacher’s instructions are the following: “Talk about the pictures and discuss with children about different areas of the home and how to keep them clean. Encourage children to help parents at home. Tell a story Goldilocks and Three Bears or any local story.” And, “Let children do role play, e.g. (mother, father, brother, sister, driver and cook.”

Several questions arise at this point: Does the upscale home and the roles of driver and cook suggest some problems with having a single national curriculum? And why this obsession with cleaning everything? Is this habit not taught in the homes? Why not enlist the collaboration of parents to do what they are assumed not to be doing and let school time be devoted to what can really not be taught by parents?

Page 4 is titled My Family and has the following poem: “I am blessed, I am blessed / I have so many people to trust / some families are big and some are small / we have fathers and we have mothers / we love them all / I am blessed, I am blessed / Few have sisters and few have brothers / Few have uncles and few have aunts / I am blessed, I am blessed / I have so many people to trust.”

Is this a good poem? What does “Few have sisters and few have brothers” mean? Is this a literal translation of the Urdu word kuchh? Bad enough as it is, shouldn’t it be “Some have sisters and some have brothers”?

Here are the teacher’s instructions:

“Read the rhyme aloud in class and explain the concept of family. Ask children how many brothers and sisters they have. Explain the relationships (grandmother, uncle, aunts, etc.).” What is the basis for the premise that five-year-olds do not know the concept of family and don’t know that they have been conversing all these years with their grandmother? Would they understand all this better in English?

“Introduce family relationship to children through role play. Celebrate family day/parents day/grandparents day in school.”

“Ask children to prepare their family tree with the help of their parents at home and display it in the classroom.”

Page 5 is titled My School. The images show an immaculate two-story school with a big playground, a library, and a spacious classroom with children sitting around separate tables. The text on the page reads: “Today I am very excited to tell you about my school. My school is big. I have many friends here. We learn to read and write here. My classroom is very colorful. My favorite place is library, where my teacher tells us stories. There are swings in the playground. I enjoy them all.”

Teacher’s instructions: “Discuss the pictures with children and talk about the different areas of the school. Tell children how to keep their school and surroundings clean and how to take care of school belongings.” “Read the text for children.” “Take children for a school visit. Give a paper and encourage them to draw whatever they like about their school.”

We have only reached page 5. There is more in store.

Note: In the village school I visited last week, barely 20 kilometers outside Lahore, only 50 percent of the sanctioned number of teachers were present; there were 90 students in one class; another was being minded by the chowkidar’s daughter with a stick in her hand; two classes were relocated to a mosque because a section of the school roof was in danger of falling; there was knee-deep rain water in the grounds through which children had to wade to go to the bathroom; there was a closed room marked ‘Library’ in which old science equipment was stored. The authors of the primer are cordially invited for a visit before embarking on a revision. 

[author title=”Dr. Anjum Altaf ” image=”https://sindhcourier.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Anjum-Altaf.jpg”]Dr. Anjum Altaf is the former Dean of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at LUMS. He is the author of Plain Truths About Early Childhood Education: Letters to Parents (available as an e-book from Little Books) and of Critical Reflections on the Single National Curriculum and the Medium of Instruction (forthcoming).[/author]

Click here for Part-I , Part-II, Part-III, Part-IV

The post Single National Curriculum: Review of Model Textbooks – Part-V first appeared on Sindh Courier.

SNC Model Textbooks: Pre-I Mathematics Primer

By Dr. Anjum Altaf

I have concluded the page-by-page review of the Pre-I Mathematics Primer introduced as part of the Single National Curriculum and implemented from the current school year. It is woefully inadequate and someone would have to try really hard to make anything worse. It is an unforgivable cruelty to have children subjected to it although some would surely survive it.

In order to clear my head, I revisited a village school yesterday to talk to the teachers and double-check my conclusions. The principal had compared textbooks for the same classes, produced, respectively, by Oxford University Press and the SNC and was categorical in stating the former were much better — they were conceptually clear while the SNC’s were all muddled up (gad-mad was the word she used).

The class teachers brought up another issue that is central to communication — that of language. They said the students were ‘bewildered’ when teachers tried to read out lessons in English. Almost immediately, the communication would switch to Punjabi or Urdu. (Recall the references to coriander and mint and olives in explaining the color green in the math primer.) This reconfirmed what I had observed in earlier visits where I had also seen locally produced Urdu translations of the textbooks being used by students.

I would really like the Textbook Board to present a coherent justification for having in English a Pre-I Mathematics primer that is to be taught in very varied locations including remote villages. This justification would need to be validated against the views of all the instructors who have to teach it. Is it intended to leap-frog the students of remote villages on to the mythical level playing field where they would compete on an equal basis with children attending the leading private schools in metropolitan cities? And, even if this delusion can be accepted as plausible, can this leapfrogging be accomplished by the terrible murder of the English language that occurs in the primer and having it taught by teachers who have an imperfect command over it?

In her latest book (Reforming School Education in Pakistan and the Language Dilemma, 2021), Zubeida Mustafa has a quote from Rabindranath Tagore that provides a very vivid analogy cutting through the theoretical obfuscations and making the matter very easy to understand:

“Learning should, as far as possible, follow the process of eating. When the taste begins from the first bite, the stomach is awakened to its function before it is loaded, so that its digestive juices get full play. Nothing like this happens when the Bengali boy is taught in English, however. The first bite bids fair to wrench loose both rows of teeth — like an earthquake in the mouth! And by the time he discovers that the morsel is not the genus stone, but a digestible bonbon, half its allotted span is over. While one is choking and spluttering over the spelling and grammar, the inside remains starved, and when at length the taste comes through, the appetite has vanished. If the whole mind is not functioning from the beginning its full powers remain undeveloped to the end.”

This undeveloped mind is not just the fate of marginalized children but that of all those taught in languages they don’t understand. Zubeida Mustafa’s book includes a first-person story (‘Qurratul Ayn’s Educational Journey’) that should be compulsory reading for everyone having anything to do with early childhood education. After saying that English was a major obstacle to both her success and her self-image, Qurratul Ayn mentions her peer group that had the “advantage” of an English-medium education and was proud of its linguistic skills. Looking back, she notes perceptively that “Little did I know that their English was not really all that great” because it was short on understanding.

Every community has its own unique way of teaching languages (and numbers, which are just the alphabet of another language) that resonates with its culture. I recall one from Urdu that has stayed embedded in my mind ever since I first came across it:

paanch choohey ghar se nikle, karney chaley shikaar

aik chooha reh gaya peechey, baqi reh gaye chaar

chaar choohey josh me aa kar, lage bajaane been

aik choohey ko aa gayee khaansi, baqi reh gaye teen

teen choohey dar kar boley, ghar ko bhaag chalo

aik chohhey ne baat na maani, baqi reh gaye do

do choohey phir mil kar baithe, dono hii they nek

aik choohey ko khaa gayee billii, baqi reh gaya aik

aik chooha jo baqi reh gaya, kar lii usne shaadi

beevi us ko milii laraka, yun hoee barbaadi 

Note the following about this introduction to numbers: First, when children enter school, they already know numbers and the basics of counting. So, they need not begin mechanically from one and move mindlessly to 50 on the backs of disconnected poems. One can really start anywhere if there is an interesting story attached to it. This particular introduction begins with five, which is a number familiar to all children.

Second, there is no unfamiliar word in the verse — go through it line by line. Even the final two lines do not contain concepts that children are unfamiliar with — they have all been to a ‘shaadi’, they have often come across ‘laraka’ individuals and ‘barbaadi’ is a commonly employed term for disaster.

Third, without ever making it the explicit focus of a separate unexciting lesson (pp. 137-139), the verse slips in the concept of subtraction — taking one away at every step and indicating the remainder. This verse was composed by Sufi Ghulam Mustafa Tabassum, a great poet sensitive to the psyche and needs of children. It is no wonder it has remained evergreen over the decades. Culturally rooted introductions like these are extremely compelling resources that we have perversely thrown away in a foolish attempt to level the global playing field that only ends up crippling our children. Compare it with the ridiculous verse in the SNC primer accompanying the number 4 (“Day and night they worked hard / Success of Pakistan is their yard”). Who will remember this after even a few days except those who want to hold up Pakistan’s primer as an example of how not to educate children?

There is an even bigger loss to the use of English to teach maths in Pre-I that goes unremarked but has very significant social impacts — the severance of intergenerational continuity and the wastage of another huge resource, that of parental knowledge. Even illiterate parents know how to count and do various numerical computations. They can easily help their children at least through the primary grades. But if language comes in the way, this resource is negated. One parent mentioned that her child asked her for help to figure out the LCM of a set of numbers. She found she knew it well enough but didn’t know the terms in English and so had to engage a tutor. It came back to me that the foundational concept of ‘ikaai, dihaii, sainkra’ (related to the zero that means “nothing at all”) had been taught to me by my mother and my thinking is still oriented around it because it sank its roots deep into the cognitive soil.

I wish the intergenerational loss stopped there but its damage is even more pernicious. Children begin to think of their parents as ignorant (jaahil) because the latter don’t know English and very soon this perception spreads to all of society that is non-English speaking. It is as if Lord Macualay, who said that “A single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia” had never left. I can only presume that the thinking underlying the SNC is that in a few generations everyone will know English well enough to heal this social divide and that Pakistan, in the spirit of Rupert Brooke, will be transformed into a “corner of a foreign field that is forever England.” (Readers would also enjoy the story ‘Dr. Walter’ in Bilal Minto’s entertaining collection Model Town in which the 11-year old narrator is dazzled by his neighbor, Mrs. Walter, because she would wave her hand in the manner of a foreign lady in an old English film and say, “Hello, boys.”)

I had ended the last installment of this review with a mention of the dearth of internationally acclaimed Pakistan mathematicians and promised a story. I will just reference it here and leave it for the interested reader to pursue. It is the story of how one nurtures talent in mathematics or in any field for that matter. It is the story of two globally recognized Indian mathematicians, M.S. Narasimhan and C.S. Sheshadri, both born in small villages in Tamil Nad, whose ‘Narasimhan-Seshadri theorem’ is still the subject of international conferences 60 years after it was enunciated. (The legendary. S.R. Ramanujam, one of their role models, was also born in Tamil Nad.)

The story of C.S. Sheshadri should be read for its underlying pedagogical and institutional message and the vision and implementation required to achieve excellence; the details of mathematical theory can be ignored since very few, asides from mathematicians, are likely have the domain knowledge to grasp them.

By contrast, read about what might be called a similar attempt in Pakistan and its fate. It is well documented by Dr. Pervez Hoodbhoy (here and here) and narrates how one of the few reputed mathematicians in Pakistan was driven away. The rot starts from the top and it is no surprise to see it filtering down to the SNC pre-I Mathematics Primer. Dare one ask, who made it, who edited it, who vetted it, who signed off on it, and who touted it as being amongst the best in the world?

This concludes the page-by-page review of the SNC Pre-I Mathematics Primer. Readers will note that I have a problem with it but one that cannot be resolved by the advice on Problem Solving on page 6 of the primer: “If you have a problem: Take a nap, pray, count till ten, play with toys, talk about happy things, take exercise, or read a book.” The only advice that might be relevant would be “Tell an elder about the problem you are facing.” But, I have done so already to an elder (in terms of authority) and been told that I belong to a tiny elite (ashraafiya) that is enslaved by the West and opposed to Islam and that I need to read the primer page-by-page to appreciate its greatness.

Instead of allowing the evaluation to be distracted in this fashion (‘Mirror, Mirror on the Wall, Who is the Most Islamic of Us All’ — as if being Islamic absolves sub-standard work), I propose a fairer test: Send this Pre-I Primer to the last ten winners of the Fields Medal and ask them if they would have liked to start their journey in mathematics with this introduction to the subject. And, let us agree beforehand to abide by the verdict.

Personal Note: I was fortunate to be with Dr. Narasimhan for two hours in his apartment in Bangalore. He was consumed by the illness that took him away this past May but even then his presence was larger than life. One had the feeling of being in a powerful magnetic field, strong and simultaneously very calm. It was the presence of one who had attained mastery in a field and yet conveyed the sense that there was still much to learn.

[author title=”Dr. Anjum Altaf ” image=”https://sindhcourier.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Anjum-Altaf.jpg”]Dr. Anjum Altaf is the former Dean of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at LUMS. He is the author of Plain Truths About Early Childhood Education: Letters to Parents (available as an e-book from Little Books) and of Critical Reflections on the Single National Curriculum and the Medium of Instruction (forthcoming).[/author]

Click here for Part-I , Part-II, Part-III

The post Single National Curriculum: Review of Model Textbooks – Part-IV first appeared on Sindh Courier.

SNC Model Textbooks: Pre-I Mathematics Primer

By Dr. Anjum Altaf

I am devoting an entire article to the treatment of “nothing” (zero) for a reason. The introduction to maths in Pre-I should lay the foundation for learning the subject and, as mentioned before, one of the explicitly stated objectives of the SNC is “to lay a strong foundational basis for further learning in the time ahead.”

The introduction to zero in the Pre-I primer offers a test case for whether this objective is being met or not. Zero is without any doubt the most important number on the number line. Its centrality is easy to establish: Enter ‘History of Zero’ into Google search and count the hundreds of book titles that come up including over a dozen for children between the ages of 5 to 7. By contrast, it would be hard to find too many books about the numbers 1 to 9. Clearly, there is something special about zero. In fact, its “invention” is celebrated as one of the major achievements of the human mind.

Let’s see how zero is dealt with in the Pre-I primer where it makes its first appearance on page 81 sandwiched between the numbers 9 and 10. The poem for zero is shorter than for all the other numbers: “Zero means nothing at all, / That’s why, zero it’s called.” The take-away balloon asks “What does the digit “0” mean?” The teacher’s instructions are as follows: First, “Discuss the given picture [an empty plate with an half-eaten apple lying beside it] and ask question (sic) about it. Tell them that zero “0” means nothing.” And Second, “Place 4 baskets and 3 pencils on the table. Then put a pencil in each basket [Note: How would that be possible if there are only 3 pencils?]. Ask the students how many baskets have balls [Note: The pencils turn mysteriously into balls here] and how many baskets are empty. Let them know that 3 baskets have pencils and 1 is empty. The empty basket shows that there is no ball in it, it means that there are zero “0” balls.”

This is the only discussion of zero — the next two pages (pp. 82-83) are devoted to tracing and writing the number 37 times. Can this be called a stimulating or intelligent introduction to zero? First, the number is not called zero because it means “nothing at all” and this is an important point although an impatient person might consider it pedantic. “Zero” is just an assigned name which could have been anything else. In fact, there are a whole lot of substitute names — śūnya in Sanskrit, pūjyam in Tamil, sifr in Arabic, null in German, etc., etc. It has peculiar names in slang like zilch and nada; in sports, “nothing” is conveyed by duck (cricket) and knot (tennis). In Pakistani student slang the term knotta is often used to convey getting no marks in a test. When children make secret codes, they can invent entirely new names for numbers to confuse elders. So, clearly it is grossly misleading to befuddle students with the tautology that “Zero means nothing at all, That’s why zero it’s called.” There is a concept of “nothingness” which can be given any name. It is the concept and not the name that is important.

Let me identify a problem that occurs immediately and would perplex an intelligent child while his/her intelligence lasts. The very next number after “0” is boldly written as 10 (p 84). If “0” is nothing at all, how does appending it to a lowly 1, turn it into a mighty ten — exemplified by the ten-Rupee note on the page that every child knows is much more than one Rupee? What this reveals is that the number 10 is being taught mechanically as a unique number to be memorized instead of being interrogated and understood. And this, in turn, makes every number in the primer up to 50 a unique number to be similarly memorized by repeated tracing because the beautiful logic of the number system is completely ignored.

Some might claim that this logic is too complex for 5-year-olds and would be taught later. I have no doubt that it would be taught, but I am not convinced by the argument of complexity. It is better to stretch a child’s imagination by challenging it than to dull it with misleading tautologies. Nor am I convinced it is a good idea to lay a poor foundation and hope to build a sound edifice on it later. It might be better not to broach a topic at all if it is going to be taught wrong.

Let me suggest an alternative. Every 5-year-old is familiar with currency coins and bills and most can count to twenty Rupees before they get to Pre-1 (that’s less than what a packet of chips or a bottle of soda costs these days). What if a teacher placed a 10 Rupee bill and a 1 Rupee bill on the table and asked how many Rupees lay on it. Someone is bound to answer 11. The next question would be how come just 2 bills make 11 Rupees? That would trigger a discussion that moves towards a conceptual understanding of the number system. It would not matter if a child does not get it entirely — a puzzled mind encouraged to think is better than one lulled into a false certainty. The child would be prepped for the next year when the topic comes up again with more rigour.

The poor treatment of zero stems from a pedagogic failure — a failure at the very beginning to explain the association of quantities with symbols and the assigning of arbitrary names to them ((aik, ik, hik, yek, yau, and one are all equivalent). Just as children are given individual names to distinguish one from the other, so are quantities. And this naming is needed for the purpose of communication. When I have to convey to someone in another location how much of something I have and I can’t do so by raising and showing my fingers, I have to devise some other way.

This, in fact, is the genesis of writing and there can be a fascinating discussion around naming numbers which will overlap with the naming of the alphabets in English and Urdu. In the maths class, one can start with how the Romans indicated quantities, how cumbersome the system was (as cumbersome as it is in the SNC Pre-I primer) and how the brilliant discovery of the zero meant that we can write the biggest number that can be conceived by a child with just ten symbols. The children don’t have to write every number from 1 to 50 eighteen times each. All they need to know is how to get to any number with just the symbols from 0 to 9 and they would be off and running.

If done right, the children would be excited by this discovery. They would also be amazed to learn that despite the fact that they are being made to learn maths in English, not all wisdom has come from England. In fact, the brilliant invention of the zero as we know it today occurred right here where we are now — 1,600 long years ago by Aryabhata who represented it not by a circle but by a dot and named it śūnya. And that’s not the end of the fascinating history of the zero. It was taken west from India by the Arabs who called it sifr which is actually where the name zero is derived from and which also gives us the word cypher. It’s equally interesting that the Romans couldn’t grasp the concept of nothingness, couldn’t assimilate the zero, and continued to struggle with their archaic systems for another few centuries. What would it do to a child’s confidence to know that our modern numerals belong to the Indo-Arabic number system?

Nothing provides an opportunity like the zero, so summarily dismissed, to make mathematics alive and interesting and, at the same time, to fire the imaginations of children turning them into eager, curious, and active learners. I would much rather children just explored the numbers 1 to 20 in Pre-I and spent a lot more time engaged in the kinds of exciting discussions I have outlined above. I wouldn’t want to be introduced to maths in the dull manner it has been done in the SNC with its meaningless poems and pointless exercises devoted to eating things and washing hands. I wonder how parents allow their children to be miseducated in this way that would make them lose interest in a subject for life.

Does anyone wonder at the dearth of Pakistani mathematicians of international repute? The Fields Medal is considered the equivalent of a Nobel Prize in Mathematics — it has been awarded to individuals of Iranian, Indian, Chinese, and Vietnamese origins. No Pakistani has ever come close to being considered. Why? On that, I have a story to narrate that I will pick up in the next part of this review.

[author title=”Dr. Anjum Altaf ” image=”https://sindhcourier.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Anjum-Altaf.jpg”]Dr. Anjum Altaf is the former Dean of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at LUMS. He is the author of Plain Truths About Early Childhood Education: Letters to Parents (available as an e-book from Little Books) and of Critical Reflections on the Single National Curriculum and the Medium of Instruction (forthcoming).[/author]

Click here for Part-I , Part-II

The post Single National Curriculum: Review of Model Textbooks – Part-III first appeared on Sindh Courier.

SNC Model Textbooks: Pre-I Mathematics Primer

By Dr. Anjum Altaf

The introduction to numbers is fairly standard, i.e., starting from 1 and progressing in order to 50. However, the introduction to each number is unusual. The pedagogical choice is to introduce each number with a poem which, it is important to recall, is in English.

Take the page for the number 1 (p. 36), as an example. It has a big picture of a cat in the middle. At the top right is printed the number 1 with a sentence below it — “Cat is a pet animal.” On the left is the introductory poem: “Once there was a furry cat / Had blue eyes and was a bit fat / Drank milk and sat on the mat / Oh! How she loved chasing a rat.” On the bottom right is the take-away message of the lesson in a balloon — “Tell the name of your favorite toy.” This take-away message has nothing to do with the number 1.

The teacher’s instructions direct him/her to ask the children “What is the color of the cat” and “What pet animal do you have.” It is quite an interdisciplinary introduction but without any conceptual discussion of the number and why it has the name it has. The two following pages (pp. 37-38) are devoted to tracing and coloring the number.

This pattern is repeated for the numbers 2 to 10 (pp. 39-86). The only items of interest in these are the messages in the introductory poems and the instructions for teachers. The poem for the number 3 goes as follows: “Horse, horse, horse, what do you say? / Three people riding to go away / Fast, fast, fast they all ran / Leaving behind all the clan.” It was hard for me to picture how people riding horses could run — they could trot or canter or gallop but running while on the back of a horse would be quite a feat. But, more importantly, the text violates a cardinal rule of good pedagogy — not to include unfamiliar words. I can imagine children grappling with ‘clan’ and the teacher explaining how it differs from family or tribe.

The poem for the number 4 takes this problem to a much higher level: “Four friends who are very tall / Together they achieve it all / Day and night they worked hard / Success of Pakistan is their yard.” I tried very hard to figure out the conclusion but success was not my yard. The teacher’s instructions only compound the disconnect: “Show the children a video about provinces of the (sic) Pakistan and provide information related to that” and “Encourage patriotism in children. Ask them to sing Pakistan’s national anthem.” I could not figure out what in the number 4 triggered these otherwise random associations.

And so it continues all the way to 10. The poem for 5 begins as follows “Five friends had a plan / Playing together as a clan” — ‘clan’ seems to be a clear favorite. The number 6 is introduced with the following ditty: “Six kids decided to study hard / They played games in their backyard / When they needed a book / Library was the place to look.” This would make the children in all the schools without backyards and libraries feel quite deprived. The teacher’s instruction follows: “Take the children for a library visit and read them a story book.”

The primer gets to the number 8 with the following: “Eight yummy mangoes, eight yummy mangoes / Oh my Dad! Help us gather / Eight yummy mangoes, eight yummy mangoes / wash before eating together.” Teacher’s instruction: “Arrange mango party in the classroom. Encourage the children to eat fruit and tell them the health benefits of fruit. Ask the children to wash fruit before eating. Tell them about hot and cold weather. Let the children conduct an experiment in the classroom to experience hot, cold and normal temperature…” All these are great ideas for the recreation period but the connection to the number 8 in a Math primer is tenuous at best.

Number 9: “Nine people are on the boat / The boatman will make it float / They will row it far away / Everyone will say, hurray!” Teacher’s instructions: “Let the children practice digit “9” by using an abacus.” Has every school been issued an abacus? If so, that is to be commended.

Number 10. “Nadia and Sana saved a lot / Ten rupees pocket money in the pot / Helping others they don’t mind / Everyone knew they were kind.” The takeaway question: “Why is saving money important?”

In order to break the monotony in the journey from 1 to 10, there is on page 57 an exercise to “Match the animals with their correct body halves.” Teacher’s instructions: “Show any cartoon/animal video to the children or take them to the zoo. Ask the children to critically analyze the given pictures to match the animals with their correct body halves” and “Help the children to make different animal sounds.”

The end of the progression from 1 to 10 is marked by another poem (p. 90):

“One, two, one two / Birds are in a queue / Three four, three, four / They are many more / Five, six, five six / They know lot of tricks / Seven, eight, seven, eight / They are flying straight / Nine, ten, nine, ten / Let’s count them.” Instruction: “Sing the poem aloud with the children.”

There are no poems for the numbers 11 to 20 (pp 93-105) — perhaps the rhyming became too onerous. Each number has a page to itself with no explanation, just tracing and writing exercises. From 21 to 50 (pp 109-129), there are three numbers to a page except for 30, 40, and 50 which have a page to themselves. Each of these numbers is explained by nothing more than a box containing the numerical equivalent of images — 27 clocks or 31 butterflies or 45 fishes, etc. They all have to be traced and written 18 times each.

The primer ends with an introduction to shapes (p. 124), a few pages each for introducing addition (pp. 134-136) and subtraction (pp. 137-139), a couple of pages on money (pp. 140-141), a page on ordinal numbers (p. 146), a page on word problems (p. 151), and a page showing the January calendar on which the year is not mentioned (p. 153).

This gets the primer to its end. The inside back cover has the number of the Child Protection Bureau Helpline (1121) and the following messages: “Cleanliness of our locality is our collective responsibility” and “Early to bed and early to rise is a good habit.” The back cover has the national anthem in Urdu.

This is a content-heavy and concept-light, tedious and joyless Mathematics primer with an extraordinarily mechanical introduction to numbers with no attempt at explaining any underlying logic to the number scheme. But the most inexcusable treatment is reserved for the zero, the most important and pivotal number in the number scheme. This deserves an article by itself and I will address it in the next part of this review.

[author title=”Dr. Anjum Altaf” image=”https://sindhcourier.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Anjum-Altaf.jpg”]Dr. Anjum Altaf is the former Dean of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at LUMS. He is the author of Plain Truths About Early Childhood Education: Letters to Parents (available as an e-book from Little Books) and of Critical Reflections on the Single National Curriculum and the Medium of Instruction (forthcoming).[/author]

Click here for Part-I 

The post Single National Curriculum: Review of Model Textbooks – Part-II first appeared on Sindh Courier.

SNC Model Textbooks: Pre-I Mathematics Primer

By Dr. Anjum Altaf

 Arguments over the model textbooks accompanying the Single National Curriculum (SNC) have generated more heat than light. I have therefore decided to read them page by page to highlight specific issues related to teaching. There are other important aspects of the SNC and the textbooks but I will restrict this review to assessing their merit as tools for teaching.

I begin with the Pre-I Mathematics primer which is to be taught in English to children between the ages of 4 and 5. The specific learning outcomes are not mentioned but I can deduce that the primary objective is to familiarize children with numbers from 1 to 50. Other objectives are to introduce the processes of addition and subtraction and some notions of relationships, e.g., big/small, tall/short, etc. These learning outcomes are quite standard and appropriate.

I will assess the primer against three criteria: First, on the appropriateness of the content and its focus on the subject; Second, as sated in the Guidelines for Teachers, that it should “lay a strong foundational basis for further learning in the time ahead;” and third, against the quote from the Quaid-e-Azam printed inside the front cover — “Education is a matter of life and death for Pakistan. The world is progressing so rapidly that without requisite advance in education, not only shall we be left behind others but may be wiped out altogether.” Since this is a single national curriculum with uniform textbooks, the reader should imagine the teacher-student interaction in different sorts of schools and settings including extreme ones like village schools in Khuzdar or Bajaur districts.

The beginning of the primer is devoted to general introductory material: First Day at School (p. 1); My Belongings (p. 2); How Can We Be Kind to Others? (p. 3); I Take Initiatives (p. 4); My Protection (under which a note tells the teacher to “Reinforce the key message given on the page throughout the year”) (p. 5); and, Equality and Inclusion (p. 7). There is nothing wrong with this material except possibly its place in the Mathematics primer. Nothing about the nature of mathematics connects especially to it. For that reason, it is generally considered more effective to keep such material separate in a form that allows for regular repetition. In some schools, it is part of the morning assembly; in others, of the first class period of the school day. There are only three primers (Maths, English and Urdu) in Pre-I so there should be enough time for other activities some of which could be devoted to these important aspects of social behavior.

Page 6 (Problem Solving) comes across as odd. At the top of the page, below the title, is the statement: “If you have a problem.” Underneath are 9 pictures with suggested responses: Take a nap,” “Pray,” “Talk about happy things,” Take exercise,” “Count till ten,” “Tell an elder about the problem you are facing,” “Read a book,” and “Play with toys.”

The appropriate response to a problem depends upon its nature and we should be teaching children that the first thing to do when faced with a problem is to assess it and then match the appropriate response to it. Suppose, a child is bitten by a snake — the appropriate response cannot be to take a nap or pray or count till ten or play with toys.

The notes for teachers at the bottom of the page are not helpful. The first tells the teacher to give “different examples on how to solve problems like, what we use if it rains, we use an umbrella, wear raincoat, and rubber shoes.” In general, rain is not thought of as a problem — it is an act of nature and often people pray for it because it can be a blessing and vital for agriculture. When rain is actually a problem, there is very little that children can do about it. Finally, how many children in Pakistan use umbrellas, or wear raincoats and rubber shoes? Most children love to splash around in the rain especially in the summers.

The second note for teachers is off-topic and simplistically wishful: “Tell children that we can resolve conflicts by discussing/talking about them and saying sorry to each other.” A child, exposed at home to TV and the bitter arguments of elders, would want but would be afraid to ask why Nawaz Sharif and Imran Khan do not resolve their conflicts by discussing/talking about them and saying sorry to each other. This is the kind of moral teaching disconnected from reality that makes teachers lose credibility and turns children into cynics by losing faith in what they are told. It is also out of place in a Mathematics primer for Pre-I.

Pages 8 to 17 take a turn to colors and coloring — Red, Blue, Yellow, Green, Purple, Orange, Black, and Pink. On page 8, children are required to color a fish; the note for the teacher says: “Discuss the benefits of eating fish with the children.” This is very useful information but does it belong in a Math primer? And, would the teacher be aware of the nutritional benefits of eating fish? What would happen if the teacher hates fish? On the page for Yellow (p. 11), the teacher’s note says “Make lemonade with the help of children in the classroom and tell them about the health benefits of lemon.” Do math teachers know about nutrition and what vitamins are contained in a lemon and what they do in the body?

On the page for Green (p. 14), the teacher is asked to “tell the children about different green objects like spinach, trees, plants, coriander, mint, cucumber, olives, etc.” How many have seen an olive in Pakistan? And will the teacher talk about it and coriander and mint in English, Urdu, or the home language? The teacher is then asked to “Let the children explore how to make green color by mixing blue and yellow colors together.” This is a wonderful activity but shouldn’t this be in the recreation class rather than the math one? The second part of this instruction is the following: “Ask the children to wash their hands with soap after this activity for at least 20 seconds.” This is quite appropriate after mixing colors but how much of the math period would be taken up by dozens of children going out to wash their hands? And what will happen in schools without bathrooms or water connections?

Under Orange (p. 16), the teacher’s instruction is to ask the children “to eat oranges and tell them about the health benefits of eating oranges.” Under Black (p. 17) the teacher is instructed to guide the children “to clean their shoes in the classroom. Ask them to keep their shoes and uniform clean.” Again he has to “Ask the children to wash their hands with soap after the activity for 20 seconds.”

Just before the section on colors, there is a page (p. 13) with no title, just a long poem as follows:

“Rainbow, rainbow, on my way, / The red apple is on the tray, / Rainbow, rainbow, is it true? / The sky we see is really blue, / Rainbow, rainbow, is there ink? / The flower in the vase is pink. / Rainbow, rainbow, see the turtle, / The dress I am wearing is purple. / Rainbow, rainbow, the duck is yellow, / I want to play with my classfellow. / Rainbow, rainbow, the ground is clean, / I like the grass that is green. / Rainbow, rainbow, I like to eat, / Oranges that are very sweet. / Rainbow, rainbow, see the bird, / It is black, so I have heard.

Asides from the quality of the poem, of which you can be the judge, doesn’t it belong in the English and not the Math primer? There are no instructions for the teacher to indicate why it is there and what is to be done with it. Are the children supposed to memorize it?

On page 15, there is an exercise titled “Make a Tree” with a tree trunk on which students are expected to add branches and leaves. The instructions for the teacher are as follows: “Tell the children the advantages of planting trees. Help them to do hand painting with green color. Ask the children to wash their hands with soap after this activity.” And, “Conduct tree plantation activity in the school.” All this is commendable but should it be in the Mathematics primer?

Pages 18 to 35 are devoted to concepts of relativeness — big/small, tall/short, thick/thin, etc. as well as to shapes, all of which is fine. Page 27, however, is titled “Find the Way” in which a bird has to be guided along a path into its birdhouse. The teacher’s instructions include the following: “Help the children find their way from the classroom to the school library/computer room or playground.” I presume all the children would leave the class at this point to go to the various destinations but what will happen in schools without any of these facilities?

After these preliminary lessons, on page 36 the primer finally arrives at the introduction to numbers which one presumes is the main learning outcome of the course. I will assess this section in the second part of this review.

[author title=”Anjum Altaf ” image=”https://sindhcourier.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Anjum-Altaf.jpg”]Dr. Anjum Altaf is the former Dean of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at LUMS. He is the author of ‘Plain Truths About Early Childhood Education: Letters to Parents’ (available as an e-book from Little Books) and of Critical Reflections on the Single National Curriculum and the Medium of Instruction (forthcoming).[/author]

The post Single National Curriculum: Review of Model Textbooks – Part-I first appeared on Sindh Courier.

A series of articles on education in the form of a multi-installment letter to the parents

By Anjum Altaf

Dear Parent,

In this letter I am going to explore what parents can do themselves and what can be done by others to help them make better choices when selecting a school for their children.

Before doing that, however, I want to expand a little on the subject of memorization and rote learning, which is the norm in most schools in Pakistan. Recall that in the previous letter I had recommended that there should be no content included in the first year of school which children are required to memorize because this encourages the habit of rote-learning, more so when that content is tested in examinations.

There is one tricky aspect of memorization that is deceptive and which most parents do not realize sufficiently — it works in the short run giving the false impression that children are actually learning something when they are not.

Here it how it happens: Every child has a certain mental capacity to memorize things. In the early years of school, and almost till Grade 10, the material taught is so limited that almost all of it can be memorized. With unintelligently designed exams and mechanical grading, both of which test recall rather than understanding, children can appear to be doing very well at school without really comprehending all that much.

This method of education breaks down once children enter college because the amount of material quickly exceeds what can be memorized easily. Hence, children who had done quite well in school find themselves doing quite poorly in college especially in subjects like physics, chemistry, and maths where memorization cannot encompass all the material. Many students take recourse to selective study based on past papers, a practice that leaves big holes in knowledge that can never be filled adequately.

When such students come up against evaluation systems that test concepts and application rather than recall the reality of their education comes into full focus. That is the reason that Pakistani students, even from the best schools, do very poorly in international evaluations of the quality of school education — Pakistan is invariably at the bottom of all lists.

What this means is that when your child comes home and recites the alphabet from A to Z without an error, you need to probe whether he or she can also spell some simple words. Or, when your child tells you that the logarithm of 100 is 2, you should ask if he or she knows what a logarithm is. The bottom line is that you should not fall into the trap of thinking your child has learnt much when he or she has just memorized a lot. Otherwise, you will receive a major shock when your child enters college or takes a test to qualify for a good educational institution abroad.

Now, let me return to the subject of how parents can better understand the quality of education being received by their children and being provided by various schools in their neighborhoods.

At the level of the individual child, the simplest test I employ is to ask a Grade 5 student to write one page, in any language, on a simple topic — a description of the four seasons, what happens at a local festival, what is good or bad at school, a review of a story seen on TV, etc. I ask a Grade 8 student to write a page on any abstract topic — what is justice, what is honesty, what is fortune, etc. If the child cannot attempt to put down something that begins to make sense, it is a sure sign that the education he or she is receiving is severely deficient. The ability to organize thoughts, form opinions, and express them coherently is the essence of education. A child who cannot execute these tasks would be unlikely to do well in other subjects that require comprehension and analysis.

This assessment of an individual is useful but not sufficient to pass judgement on a particular school. It is possible that the school is providing a decent education but the child is not doing well for some particular reason which could have to do with the home environment.

One way to assess schools is to look at how their students are doing in board examinations either at the middle or high school levels. A neighborhood group of parents can easily obtain this information and post it in a public place. Thus, if 100 students from a particular school appeared for the most recently conducted matriculation examination, the assessment could list the percentages of those obtaining first, second, third, and failing grades. It would be suicidal for a parent to enroll a child in a school where the majority of the students are obtaining a third division or failing.

This is just one of the ways to assess the quality of education being provided by different schools. What such an exercise is likely reveal is that, for the most part, the quality of education is related to the fee charged. A researcher can undertake a simple study because there are some school systems that offer differently branded education for different income levels charging them different fees. One could check if the results of the various brands in board examinations differ significantly from each other even though the curricula and the management are the same.

If they do differ, it would indicate that the new Single National Curriculum (SNC) by itself would not yield equal opportunities for all students. The variation in quality of education is not a function of the curriculum — after all how different can the math curriculum be across the world — but of the quality of teachers. And better teachers can only be retained at higher salaries which can only be paid by schools charging higher fees.

This is a very big question to consider. All children are equal citizens who should be entitled to an equal education irrespective of the income level of their parents but as long as school education is a commodity sold in the market, this would be impossible. Those with more money would be able to buy better education; those with less money would only be able to afford poor education, if any. Thus the grossly unequal society would be continuously reproduced. Check out this salient fact: high fee schools have science labs; low fee schools do not have science labs. How students in the latter are expected to learn science? No Single National Curriculum can change this reality — read this Dawn editorial which concludes that the SNC may even make things worse.

The only way out of this unfair situation is to make school education a non-market commodity which cannot be bought and sold. It should be provided as a service to which every child has an equal entitlement — good mass education should be free and available to all citizens. It can be done as it was in a number of countries. Here is a quote from an article on the transformation of education after the 1917 revolution in the Soviet Union:

“A century ago, the Soviet experiment—for all its manifest and tragic failings—demonstrated how broadening the path to education could help propel a backward, agrarian country into an industrialized superpower in less than two decades.”

Fifty years later, the very same process was repeated in China which confirms that it was not a random outcome. Parents in Pakistan should demand a move in a similar direction. No one is going to gift it to them out of the goodness of their heart. Ask yourself this question: China is Pakistan’s best friend. Do the Chinese provide education as it is done in Pakistan? Could a Chinese educationist be invited on TV to explain to Pakistani parents how education is provided in China? If not, why not?

Sincerely,

Dr. Anjum Altaf

[author title=”Anjum Altaf ” image=”https://sindhcourier.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Anjum-Altaf.jpg”]Former Dean, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS)[/author]

For previous letters, click on:  Letter 1; Letter 2; Letter 3; Letter 4; Letter 5; Letter 6; Letter 7; Letter 8, Letter 9 , Letter 10 , Letter 11, Letter 12, Letter 13, Letter 14, Letter 15, Letter 16, Letter 17, , Letter 18

The post Your Child Deserves Better – A Letter to Parents – IXX first appeared on Sindh Courier.