Formal Education systems over the centuries were shaped into structural and functional classrooms and institutions. The sequential and gradual promotion of a child from one level to another formalized so much so that we got stuck into K-12 formation in terms of primary, middle and high schools. Then we reengineered it to establish new structures of early childhood education, elementary education and secondary education as well as further and higher education. Technical, vocational and professional education remained another sphere which rooted out of the formal education and remained as a parallel stream but was not really integrated. By the end of twelve years schooling our children get into the age of 16-18 years but have no skill developed to begin economic activity. Then came the technological interventions which disrupted the configurations of rigidly designed educational systems and broke the grids. Multidisciplinary approaches breaking through the specified timelines and clustering of subjects made us realize that education is now evolving and the next generation education has to be different from older models. We need to enable our students for meeting personal, local and global needs in an era of science and technology.
Curriculum can be perceived in the meanings of a framework, roadmap or a document that guides the whole educational activity in a country, state or province. It is not possible that within the process of educational development, curriculum and approaches to curriculum planning may remain the same. As a policy framework or a document, it needs to be revised and it cannot be separated from the changes happening around us. Civilization, industrialization, globalization and digitization or any other revolution comes through and influences the process of education in one way or the other. Today while looking at the educational scenario with the lens of digital transformation I see how teachers, learners, educational managers and stakeholders are ready to take a leap; but unfortunately the educational planners and policy makers in Pakistan are not ready to take off the older hats and colored glasses.
I have witnessed a huge effort to revise the primary school curriculum in past 4 years. I have been somebody working in the periphery of this planning phase. The most worrying part is that other than a few progressive minds, most of the teams working in the planning phase were stuck to the idea of singular indoctrination. After many inputs and revisions came out the document with title phrase of “single national curriculum” and then I heard people calling it “uniform national curriculum”. I am unable to understand why do we need “singularity” or “uniformity”; while the world is moving on with multiplicity and diversity. We use the words like critical thinking and creativity within our curriculum documents but then we move back to the tradition of textbook culture which leaves least space for critical and creative thinking to develop in classrooms. We use the jargon of diversity and inclusion in our curriculum documents but then we define and state the reality in our own terms which is never inclusive. When we say culture we mean the dominant culture, when we say religion we mean dominant religion, when we say values we mean dominant values and when we say narrative we mean dominant narrative. We have not yet given space to multiple cultures, religions, values and narratives to be included and let learners think independently…
TO BE CONTINUED!