There’s a special kind of legacy that the written word leaves, and it shines brighter in a world that is increasingly reliant on quick information – only for it to become old in this digital era. Anjum Altaf’s body of work in the form of books are in a league of their own, in terms of their value and the service he has done to the Pakistani nation. However, the fate of his contribution is the same as that of the Greats: the appreciation that his work deserves will come in too late.
This belief is not so much rooted in cynicism as it is in reality. Let’s take a look at the obvious first: the SNC was first introduced by the PML-N as a means of setting a base curriculum to ensure all children had equal footing in basic literacy. Note, basic literacy, not necessarily knowledge which is where a real curriculum and proper rooting of a functioning education system could take place.
The PTI, who had its own stance of creating a homogenous society based on Riyasat-e-Madinah, used education as a political tool for its own ideology, which was infused with a heavy dose of religion. Thus began the battle over the minds of children. It is very apt, then, that Altaf’s book What We Get Wrong About Education In Pakistan opens with Bertrand Russell’s quote: “What is considered in education is hardly ever the boy or girl, the young man or young woman, but almost always, in some form, the maintenance of the existing order.
” Hence while examining why, after 75 years (in 2022), the.