English as a barrier

Development and Poverty, Education, Language

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.
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Who sets the agenda?

Defence and Disarmament, Foreign Policy of Pakistan, War and Peace

By Zubeida Mustafa

SO much has happened between the United States and Pakistan in recent months that it is time for a review of their relationship. It would require the two countries to step back and make a dispassionate and objective assessment of their equations.

Analysts believe that the bond between the two countries “is driven by Pakistan’s utility [for the US] in fighting terrorism”. It is about the bare minimum — terrorism and insurgency-led violence in Afghanistan and Pakistan — that is needed to keep bilateral ties going. Ironically, according to this line of reasoning this predicates “the longevity of the interest on terrorism” on failure to improve relationships. This also implies that the two sides find it in their interest to keep the pot boiling, that is keep the region destabilised.

Click here to read the full article on Dawn.

Ringing the alarm bells

Education

By Zubeida Mustafa

AT long last some in the government have belatedly woken up to, what they term, the education emergency in Pakistan. The emergency is not new. What is new is the realisation(?) in official quarters that we face a crisis. The co-chairperson of the Pakistan Education Task Force (PETF) Shahnaz Wazir Ali has therefore launched a campaign exhorting people to march for education and sign a petition “to force Pakistan’s leaders to finally get serious about providing every child with a decent school and a committed teacher”.

In a dramatic presentation we are informed that 25 million children are out of school in Pakistan. One may add that few of those who are enrolled receive quality education. The physical infrastructure is appalling and the state of pedagogy is dismally shocking.

Click here to read the full article on Dawn.com.

The war of elephants

Health, Social Issues

By Zubeida Mustafa

THE Raymond Davis episode has proved, if nothing else, how impossible it is to fit people into neat categories. Although we love to brand people as leftist and rightist, liberal and conservative, Islamist and secular, radical and traditional, we now know how off the mark we are when we do that. Those who used Davis as a flogging horse to vent their anti-American sentiments were a disparate lot. There were people from both ends of the spectrum and only Davis was their meeting point.

Dr Farhat Moazzam, head of the Centre for Biomedical Ethics and Culture at SIUT, was absolutely right when she made a plea to the audience at the seminar on “Muslim women” to stop labeling people. Of course she was speaking in another context but whatever the occasion this practice polarises society.

As a result of this war of ideas the middle ground is shrinking and we are talking “at” each other and not “with” each other. At the CBEC seminar, Asma Jahangir, the president of the Supreme Court Bar Association, emphasised the importance of people being given the right to speak. What should also be emphasised is that the right to speak implies the corresponding duty to listen.

Click here to read the article on Dawn.