Learning is an incremental process that can have a positive impact on people’s life and conduct. Education has been employed historically to uphold the values, norms and culture of civilizations. Education bolsters our ideological, ethnic and behavioural foundations. Education is a way to achieve success at both the personal and national levels, aside from its established roles. Education is the key to bringing a nation together and creating a peaceful society. Remove equality in education and all will be equally disadvantaged in society. Without comprehending the advantages of educational equality, societies are destined for desolation and destruction. Inequality in education is like an invasive pest eating away at the stability of peaceful co-existence. A uniform curriculum is of utmost significance in this context. A uniform curriculum is essential to offer equal prospects to all parts of society.
A single national curriculum can bring much-needed stability to our society but there is a plethora of challenges that impede the way of its successful implementation. Elite capture is the initial impediment that is obstructing the execution of a single national curriculum. Unanticipated results arise from a culture of elitism. Elite schools and universities undermine the idea of a fair and equitable society. Acknowledging that elite capture is a cause of disharmony and inequality is a necessary step to diminish educational inequality and eventually reach the vision of a single national curriculum. Second, the colonial mentality still stands, with a few being granted favours and the powerless subjugated by the powerful. A single national curriculum will form the basis of a society with no power concentration.
A single national curriculum can transform the mindsets of a generation making them wise enough to oppose the rule by a few and favour the formation of an inclusive society. Feudalistic tendencies in our social structure are the biggest hindrance to the acceptance of a single national curriculum. Third, how will the new syllabus enable the unprivileged students of less developed regions, who attend Urdu-medium schools, to keep up? A substantial proportion of students who have been taught in Urdu since the start of their education may have difficulty adhering to the new curriculum. The result of this will be their poor performance at the crucial stage of their profession, which will affect them for the rest of their life. It is unfair to those with weak English to have to learn a new curriculum due to the varying quality of education in schools.
Fourth, infrastructure investment is a must for the government to enforce a uniform curriculum, however, this is a huge challenge. A single national curriculum isn’t just about the same syllabus, but also about the same type of uniforms, books, facilities and teaching staff. Meeting this challenge requires significant financial backing to ensure equality in all of the mentioned areas. We live in a society that is divided into different sections based on ideological, sectarian and linguistic differences. This diversity in our community has become a challenge for us to overcome all such differences for the implementation of a uniform curriculum.
Sixth, political rivalries present a major challenge to the success of this plan. Political point-scoring has become more important than any other national goal. Political differences between parties have made it challenging to implement a single national curriculum that would unify the nation. This curse has hindered the implementation of a single national curriculum. Seventh, devising a uniform syllabus is one challenge and teaching the new syllabus is another, as the caliber of instruction varies from school to school, depending on the capability of the teachers. Although we might be able to tackle all the difficulties in implementing this curriculum, the capacity issues of teachers remain the biggest hurdle to success.
To sum up, we must all forget our egos and acknowledge that a single national curriculum is the only way to handle the critical nature of the challenges we experience nowadays. We should strive for a harmonious society. We need a society that grants fairness to all. The initial step is to get our priorities straight. All children need to be given the same education to ensure that they have equal intellectual growth.
It’s difficult for many children to attend quality schools due to social constraints and the plan to bring in a single curriculum should help to make opportunities more accessible to all social classes. It’s time to move beyond the feudalistic mentality that our society has been plagued with. The idea of elitism should be abandoned and the notion of equality for all must become the driving force of social and political development with the implementation of a single national curriculum. Our ulema and scholars must do their part in getting past ideological, sectarian and linguistic differences for the effective implementation of this curriculum.
All the political parties must step up to make sure it is carried out. This will create a more stable political atmosphere in the country and reduce the risk of political disputes. In the end, this will be advantageous for all the political parties. Education needs to be treated as an emergency in the country. Allocating as much money as possible to tackle issues with infrastructure and teaching staff should be prioritized. Private schools should provide scholarships to financially disadvantaged students to help the government realize this ambition. The government’s plan to bring a revolution in the system of education is under threat from a variety of challenges that must be addressed immediately.
A single national curriculum can help us address the current issues and challenges in terms of developing consensus between political and social groups. A unified national curriculum can help close the divide between social classes and promote national unity. To avert the coming storm of social contention and disorder that could endanger the future of our generations as no one, wealthy or destitute, can live in a society where harmony is hard to come by, implementation of a single national curriculum is the pressing necessity of the hour.
—The writer is CSS Officer, based in Sargodha.
Email: waqarhassancsp@gmail.com
