Curriculum, knowledge and universities

When you make changes in curriculum, essentially you are making decisions about what kind of knowledge students are going to acquire or build. Of course, the level of knowledge should differ at each level of education from elementary and primary to secondary and tertiary.

But before we discuss who can make such decisions and how, we must be clear about some basic concepts that appear to be lost on those who take it upon themselves to tinker with curriculum. In one of our previous discussions we talked about the difference between development and progress. That difference can also be applied to the concepts of curriculum and syllabus. Though there is no universal agreement about standard definitions of both, one of the ways to distinguish between them can be to look at curriculum as overall development goals for students, and syllabus as a collection of educational tasks.

That means any changes in curriculum are likely to affect the development of students as both human beings and professionals. Curriculum in a broader sense influences the totality of student experiences in the educational process. Since our instructional goals should be different from schools to colleges and universities, the content and process need to be chosen with care by those who know a thing or two about them. Ideally, curriculum should incorporate the planned interaction of students with instructional content, like material and resources. The process of this interaction should become more constructive as we move from lower to higher levels of education.

The selection of content and process cannot and should not be left to those who can ex officio summon vice-chancellors and instruct them to make changes into curriculum. It is a policy decision that needs broad-based consultation with curriculum experts, educationists, employers, parents, and most all students and teachers. Educationists have identified the features of explicit and implicit curricula. Explicit curriculum is knowledge or skills-based that covers subjects to be taught, topics to be covered, or skills to be learned. Whereas implicit curriculum is what makes some fundamental changes in students’ personalities.

Experience has demonstrated over centuries and across countries that implicit or hidden curriculum can bring about attitudinal alteration that ultimately determine what kind of society you are going to have in a generation or two. Whatever we did to education in the 1950s and 1960s with the likes of Maj-Gen Iskandar Mirza, General Ayub Khan, Dr Ishtiaq Hussain Qureshi, and the Nawab of Kalabagh, we reaped in the1970s; and whatever General Ziaul Haq and his so-called Islamization did to education in the 1980s, we have been witnessing for the past four decades. In between Z A Bhutto’s attempts to provide almost free and universal public education were thwarted.

The question is what kind of educational objectives we want to achieve. The more denominational, faith-based, prescriptive, and self-righteous we make it, the more these attitudes we will inculcate among students and in our future generations. The more tightly compartmentalized curriculum we give to our students, the more likely they are to degenerate into tight-lipped followers who are unable to think beyond the compartments of their own creed and faith. That’s how we deprive them of high-level thinking skills. True learning requires acceptance of ideas after analyzing them critically, and that requires autonomy of thinking and speaking.

Scriptures are holy and unquestionable, whereas good university education is all about analysis and applying benchmarks to what is being taught. It is about criticism and discussion, enquiring and fact-checking, generating hypotheses and intellectual judgements; and all this leads to knowledge construction. Quality education at the university level is about challenging both the written and the unwritten; it is about attempting to acquire social behaviours and thinking skills that go much beyond rumination or obsessive repetition of something that you cannot question. Scriptures demand excessive respect whereas university education should be more about research than reverence.

Chewing over and over again is, and should be, an anathema to construction of knowledge. True knowledge is something that can be challenged, and not be accepted as it is. At the university level you add to the existing body of knowledge – or completely discard it if there is evidence to contradict it. But to accept this fundamental of university education you need to know something about the philosophies of education and science, especially epistemology. It defines parameters of knowledge and encourages you to think about what you can count as knowledge and what you do not consider as a convincing framework of thinking.

Knowledge never claims to be perfect and recognizes alternative frames of reference if they are empirically proved or logically sustainable; it depends on experiences by way of developing abilities to do things well. At the university level, students have to go through a variety of non-technical and technical courses that are required not only to make them experts in their own fields of specialization but also develop as concerned, responsible, and tolerant persons who do not discriminate on the basis of caste, colour or creed. This is the main challenge of educational systems not only in Pakistan but across the world from America and Australia to Venezuela and Zimbabwe.

In the past 73 years we have not been able to establish a single world-class university, apart from one or two occasionally appearing in the top 500. We cannot claim to have won a single Nobel Prize based on research in a Pakistani university. From seven decades we cannot present just seven intellectuals of international calibre who are owned nationally and respected internationally. To be able to do this we do not need regurgitation, we need learning experiences based on knowledge construction by the exercise of reasonable care and observation.

In the 21st century we need knowledge and skills to adjust and contribute to this world, and that we cannot do unless we prepare our students to acquire and create knowledge that is compatible with the 21st century. We can either reform ourselves to become constructive members of the world community or we can immerse ourselves in revivalism that tries to lead us backwards. I can read Aristotle and Plato in my leisure time but if I need to fit in the modern world, my university should not force me to read them as compulsory subjects at all levels of education.

Time is short, courses are many, required skills are multifarious, and everyday knowledge is increasing exponentially; with all this, an essential foundation is imparting academic knowledge and equipping students with practical life skills. There is an infinite range of knowledge that our students have to gain throughout their academic life. We need to carefully craft our curriculum and design it to enlarge their capacity to think and accelerate its process, rather than encumbering them at university with something they can read at home. In this global village we need consistent and compatible education with universally acceptable attitudes, behaviours and experiences.

Pakistan needs to integrate with the rest of the world. At the present, we integrate at the level of beggars and borrowers, and doing that we don’t have any problems with the world. Be it America, Britain, China or Denmark, their aid and loans are kosher; but we refuse to learn their separation of church from state. We as a nation lack personal and social development, while having an overdose of caste and creed. The world is not going to determine the quality of our education on the basis of our faith and scriptures.

Our humanist values, and prowess in applied and social sciences will be a major determinant of how we fare both nationally and internationally. Finally, we should not nurture attitudes that look at other creeds and faiths with sanctimonious disdain.

The writer holds a PhD from the University of Birmingham, UK and works in Islamabad.

Email: mnazir1964@yahoo.co.uk