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The Shaping of Secondary Education in Pakistan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Alan Peshkin
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Extract

The purpose of this paper is to trace some of the educational developments in British India which later shaped the thinking of educators in Pakistan and to discuss the educational aspirations of Pakistan within the broader context of Pakistan society. The first section contains a description of some educational reform plans prepared in pre-independence India. The second section deals with the circumstances of the partition of the Indo-Pakistan sub-continent from the standpoint of Pakistan and with the political and economic conditions which appeared to influence educational reforms in Pakistan. In the final section, some salient recommendations for educational advancement in Pakistan are examined and it is noted that the government of Pakistan has conceived of its schools as instruments for the reconstruction of Pakistani society.

Type
Research Article
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 3 , Issue 1 , March 1963 , pp. 4 - 18
Copyright
Copyright © 1963, University of Pittsburgh Press 

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References

Notes

1. In this context, “realistic” is used to describe the efforts to make education more broadly vocational in nature. All of the different proposals of this kind will not be examined. However, the general characteristic of all such proposals was that they assumed the traditional literary curriculum to be too narrow and overly oriented to preparing students for white-collar jobs. They recommended that along with the literary curriculum there should be some alternative courses suitable to other types of employment and to terminal students. The view of the writer is that from the standpoint of the student and his parents literary education was eminently realistic and, moreover, eminently vocational.Google Scholar

2. Nurullah, S. and Naik, J. P., A History of Education in India (Bombay 1949), 307.Google Scholar

3. Ibid. Google Scholar

4. Ibid., 307–08.Google Scholar

5. Ibid., 308.Google Scholar

6. Ibid. Google Scholar

7. Ibid., 311.Google Scholar

8. Ibid., 310.Google Scholar

9. Ibid., 483.Google Scholar

10. Ibid., 657.Google Scholar

11. Ibid., 785–87.Google Scholar

12. Ibid., 833.Google Scholar

13. Ibid. Google Scholar

14. Central Advisory Board of Education, Post-War Educational Development in India (Delhi, 1941), 17.Google Scholar

15. Foster, Philip. “The Transfer of Educational Institutions: The Ghanaian Case Study,” (Unpublished Ph. D. disseration, University of Chicago, 1962), 274.Google Scholar

16. See also Leslie Banks, Arthur (ed.), The Development of Tropical and Sub-Tropical Countries (London, 1954).Google Scholar

17. Government of East Pakistan, First Quinquennial Report on the Progress of Education in East Bengal, During 1947–52 (Dacca, 1957), 43.Google Scholar

18. Government of Pakistan, The First Five-Year Plan 1955–60 (Karachi, 1958), 7.Google Scholar

19. Government of East Bengal, Report of the East Bengal Educational System Reconstruction Committee (Dacca, 1952), 264.Google Scholar

20. Government of East Bengal, Report on Public Instruction in East Bengal (Dacca, 1951), 1.Google Scholar

21. Habibur, Rahman, “Education and Economic Development,” Life and Light (Spring, 1960), 6.Google Scholar

22. Callard, Keith, Pakistan: A Political Study (London, 1957), 289.Google Scholar

23. Symonds, 91.Google Scholar

24. Choudbury, G. W., Constitutional Development in Pakistan (London, 1951), 2.Google Scholar

25. Iqbal, Javid, The Ideology of Pakistan and Its Implementation (Lahore, 1959), IX.Google Scholar

26. Hakim, Abdul, The Reconstruction of School Education (Dacca, 1948), 1.Google Scholar

27. Government of Pakistan, Proceedings of the Pakistan Educational Conference (Karachi, 1952), 5.Google Scholar

28. Ibid., 7, 9, and 11.Google Scholar

29. Government of Pakistan, Proceedings of the First Meeting of the Advisory Board of Education for Pakistan (Lahore, 1949), 7.Google Scholar

30. Ibid., 8.Google Scholar

31. Ibid. Google Scholar

32. Government of Pakistan, Proceedings of the Second Meeting of the Advisory Board of Education for Pakistan (Karachi, n.d.),Google Scholar

33. Ibid., 70.Google Scholar

34. Ibid., 68.Google Scholar

35. Ibid., 69.Google Scholar

36. Government of Pakistan, The First Five Year Plan 1955–60, 543.Google Scholar

37. Ibid., 544.Google Scholar

38. It is interesting to note that the present traditional academic-type school which evolved from the English-medium, Western-oriented school of the nineteenth century is, in a sense, in its second phase, due to pass, perhaps, to a third phase. In the first phase, lasting, roughly, from 1840 to some time early in the twentieth century, the “new” schools were status-reversal in nature, that is, the schools gave their students a set of attributes—knowledge of English, Western values—which, in the context of nineteenth century colonial Indian society, formed the basis of a new elite. Since the early years of the twentieth century, the “new” elite was no longer new; now, it was “the” elite. The same type of education which led to the development of anew elite now served in its second phase to maintain the elite. The schools had become status-maintenance in nature. In the event that the current far-reaching reforms are implemented, it is likely that the schools will enter a third phase—in part, status-reversal, in part, status-maintenance.Google Scholar

39. Government of Pakistan, Report of the Commission on National Education (Karachiy, 1960), 114–15.Google Scholar

40. Mead, Margaret, New Lives for Old (New York, 1961).Google Scholar