Promotion of Single Values-System through SNC-A Disturbing Experiment
Federal Minister for Education and Professional Training Shafqat Mahmood has recently started stressing more on the need to bring uniformity of?"values-system"--while slowly transitioning away from his initial hard stance of bringing uniformity in educational learning standards for all strata of society--about which he rightly says are suffering from "apartheid in educational system". This has become more noticeable since the day of SNC official launching ceremony last month and its rejection by the Sindh government stating it would consider SLOs for subjects as Math and Science, but not other subjects--understandably because their SLOs need to be as per the social trends, religious diversity and history & culture of the province.
Education autonomy for the provinces is granted as per the 18th amendment. We also tend to forget that the right to identity preservation is also enshrined under article 28 under the Fundamental Rights chapter of the Constitution. The proponents of Single National Curriculum must bear in mind that any value system is deeply embedded in culture and religion, and there are many cultural, religious and ethnic identities that people of Pakistan subscribe to. This diversity should never be crushed under the garb of a "single values-system". What Shafqat Mahmood should have been promoting is education, and the universal values of empathy that can instill good citizenship behaviors in our children. The common good citizenship values can never be effectively instilled through religious or political indoctrination. For example, honesty is a commonly accepted and commonly promoted behavior by all cultures and religions. It's not supposed to be an "imposed" idea, because it is already a universally accepted value in every empathic human sense. So why is our Minister hell-bent on insulting other cultures and religions by giving out an idea of "single value system"?