This report is the result of a study conducted by SDPI with the help of a number of educationists and concerned citizens of the country in the year 2002. The study looked into the then inforce curriculum documents and school textbooks as well as those curriculum documents that were most recently formulated but had not been implemented yet. The objective of the study was to identify complex content in textbooks and to ascertain the curriculum that was the source of such content. The subjects chosen were those which offer a greater space for political and ideological manipulation.

States quite often use formal education as a tool to disseminate and perpetuate their political messages. In the Pakistani context, the use of education as a political tool intensified after 1971 mainly due to the demands of redefining Pakistan after the political crisis of East Pakistan and emergence of Pakistan as a truncated country. During the late 70s, education was the first victim at the hands of the military regime. Religious political parties became enthusiastic partners in this quest. In the educational sphere, this amounted to a distorted narration of history, factual inaccuracies, inclusion of hate material, a disproportionate inclusion of Islamic studies in other disciplines, glorification of war and the military and gender bias. Subsequent governments either failed to check these harmful deviations, or willingly perpetuated them.

This study is by no means the first to point to these issues. The civil society of Pakistan reacted almost immediately to the Zia government's policies of Islamization of education. A number of educationists wrote articles, research papers and books highlighting the way the educational space was being usurped by blatant indoctrination. The first question they addressed was regarding distortions in history, and the contributions of Rubina Saigol, Pervez Hoodbhoy, K. K. Aziz, I. A. Rahman, Mubarak Ali, and A. H. Nayyar were noteworthy.

Why was a new study on the curricula and textbooks needed? There were several reasons. First, new textbooks are published almost every year, and it was essential to check whether the most recent ones also contained the same objectionable material both in terms of inaccuracies as well as pedagogical slant and style. Second, the Curriculum Wing of the Ministry of Education was revising all the curricula in the spring of 2002, and it was essential to analyse that too.

Third, none of the earlier studies appeared to have had any impact on the government policies or the public discourse on education. Generation after generation was being lost to bad education and provision of quality education was never on the political agenda of the country. The problems needed to be highlighted in their true severity to bring the issues into the domain of public debate. Lastly, it was also deemed essential to make a collective study in order to bring together the various perspectives from which individual analysts had looked into the educational material.

The initiative at SDPI was taken by A.H Nayyar and Ahmed Salim and joined in by Mohsin Babbar, Ayesha Inayat and Aamna Mattu. A research project was developed and such educationists who had expressed their opinion on the issue were invited to be a part of it. They were university professors, school and college teachers, and members of civil society organisations in the private sector. Two 2-day workshops were held. In the first workshop, ideas were formulated, areas of focus were defined and tasks assigned to the program participants to take home and bring back their studies in the second workshop three weeks later. It was also decided to focus only on the subjects of Social Studies, Pakistan Studies, Urdu, English and Civics. Most of the participants brought their in-depth studies of the learning material in the second workshop. Their contributions, which were scrutinised and discussed in detail have become the source of the content in this report.

Indeed not all the material pointed out by the participants was new. Since much of the material in textbooks is repeated in newer editions, there was to be an inevitable overlap with earlier works on the subject, particularly because many of the participants had themselves written extensively on the issue. Similarly, although the group looked into the most recent curriculum documents, there was to be an inevitable overlap between the problematic material pointed out in earlier studies and the one in this report.

After completion, the first draft report was shared with some friends for review and improvements and the draft report was released on 16 June 2003. The report has been widely commented on in the Press in Pakistan, India and elsewhere. The extraordinary attention this report has received as compared to more scholarly works earlier may have been a result of the special circumstances Pakistan is facing since September 2001. Hopefully, our findings and suggesti ons will help improve the educational material in Pakistan.