By Zubeida Mustafa
Source: Dawn
OF late, the education sector in Pakistan has come under intense scrutiny abroad. Aid-givers and the so-called partners in the war on terror have belatedly reached the conclusion that at the root of Pakistan’s ills lies the country’s failure to educate its citizens.
Hence the sudden flood of foreign-funded reports and studies on education. It is a different matter that many of their assumptions are Continue reading Consensus at Harvard
An article by Max de Lotbiniere in the Guardian Weekly of 5 July 2011 (www.guardian.co.uk) cites a British Council Report released last month to show that English speakers in Third World countries had a higher earning power — by 25 per cent — than others. The research was conducted in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Cameroon and Rwanda. It also found that the US and UK invested a greater amount of their FDI in countries where English was more prevalent. Continue reading Something more on English
By Zohra Yusuf
The Language Divide
When the Bengali language movement started, leading to the killing of students on February 21, 1952, no one – and certainly not the establishment in West Pakistan – thought that in the second decade of the 21st century, this date would begin to be commemorated by the UN as International Mother’s Language Day. Bengalis have been known to be passionate about their mother tongue. But apart from the passion, perhaps they realised early on that language is an instrument of power and control. Consequently, they rejected vociferously, Governor-General Jinnah’s decision to make ‘only Urdu’ the national language of Pakistan. It’s also worth noting that Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the founding father of Bangladesh, experienced his first arrest at the hands of Pakistani authorities when, as a student, he led a protest following Jinnah’s ill-conceived public speech in Dhaka.
Well-known journalist and a former senior editor of Dawn, Zubeida Mustafa, studies the linkage between economic and political power and language in considerable depth in her recently published book, Tyranny of Language in Education. Urdu in Pakistan was promoted as a unifying force by the early policy makers, at the expense of the rich diversity the country possesses. As the author notes:
“Man’s speech and language ability have not per se proved to be a challenge for the unity and solidarity of a nation. It is the social and political dimensions of language and its implications for the acquisition of political power that have given rise to phenomena such as linguistic nationalism, linguistic imperialism and linguistic chauvinism. Since ethnic groups also tend to be divided along linguistic lines, ethnic conflicts also have linguistic dimensions.”
Those living in Sindh would certainly agree with the author’s assessment. The province has seen many conflicts related to language, which a deeper analysis would show to have had roots in various ethnic groups’ quest for political power.
Continue reading Book Review: Tyranny of Language in Education
By Zubeida Mustafa
Source: Dawn
MORE than six decades after Partition, India and Pakistan continue to be locked in disputes which even take them to the brink of war.
It is difficult to believe that people who had lived side by side for centuries now refuse to recognise the commonalities in their culture and languages. Against this backdrop comes a breath of fresh air in the form of a new book that focuses on social harmony rather than cultural discord.
Continue reading Language can unite
By Zubeida Mustafa
The following video is doing the rounds on the Internet. It is a talk by Patricia Ryan titled ‘Don’t insist on English’. It is one of the TED productions that definitely lives up to its claim of disseminating “ideas worth spreading”.
Ryan is a teacher of English who has worked in the Gulf states for over a decade which has given her a profound understanding of foreign language teaching. The talk is worth listening to, and can easily be located on the Internet.
Continue reading English as a barrier