Exploring links between national education and students’ militaristic national identity constructions – a case study of Pakistani state schools in Islamabad

ABSTRACT

This qualitative study problematizes the interplay between Pakistan’s national curriculum textbooks and students’ militaristic national identity constructions in six state-schools. Drawing on field-data collected employing interviews with twelve teachers and focus-groups and participatory tools with four-hundred and twenty-four students, it also analyses study-participants’ interaction with these discourses and students’ reactions vis-à-vis their teacher-mediated textbook positioning. Taking insights from Synder’s and Johnston’s concept of ‘strategic culture’ and Foucault’s ‘technologies of power and self’, the findings suggest Pakistani students’ militaristic national identity constructions in schools, portraying India as an existentialist threat to Pakistan. The textbooks glorify the India/Pakistan wars, heighten the feeling of insecurity amongst schoolchildren, and through that, build a heroic image of the Pakistan Army. The teachers reinforce these images in classrooms. Constituted under the influence of these technologies of power, students exude strong hostility towards India and adoration for the Pakistan Army, hence functioning as vehicles to further the militaristic approach of Pakistan’s ‘regime of truth’. The study illustrates how Pakistan’s increasingly strengthening strategic culture has subverted Pakistan’s civil institutions and served the vested interests of the military’s high command. Similarly, it highlights the dangers/implications involved in using national education for shaping vulnerable schoolchildren’s militaristic national identities in schools.

KEYWORDS:

• Students’ militaristic national identity construction
• national education and strategic culture
• national insecurity
• the Pakistan Army
• school curriculum

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. SEATO: regional-defence organization from 1955 to 1977, created by the Southeast Asia Collective Defence Treaty, signed at Manila by the representatives of Australia, France, New Zealand, Pakistan, the Philippines, Thailand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. (Encyclopaedia Britannica).

2. CENTO: formerly Middle East Treaty Organization, or Baghdad Pact Organization, mutual security organization dating from 1955 to 1979 and composed of Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, and the United Kingdom. (Encyclopaedia Britannica).

3. Pakistan’s highest military gallantry award.

4. The Nation: Pakistan military launched a full-scale military offence Zarb-e-Azb on 15 June 2014 to wipe out hotbeds of militants in North Waziristan Agency (NWA). The operation is named as Zarb-e Azab. http://nation.com.pk/national/06-Sep-2016/operation-zarb-e-azb-two-years-of-succes.

5. There are nearly 50 projects, units and housing colonies functioning in the country under the administrative control of Fauji Foundation, Shaheen Foundation, Bahria Foundation, Army Welfare Trust (AWT) and Defence Housing Authorities (DHAs). https://www.dawn.com/news/1272211.

6. These include Gen. Hamid Gul, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, Gen. Abdul Qadir Baluch, Colonel Imam etc. (watch https://www.facebook.com/raghib.cobra/videos/425800434537641/).

7. Pakistan has won 4 hockey World Cup (in 1971, 1978, 1982 and 1994) and 1 Cricket world cup (in 1992). In World Squash Championship Pakistan’s Jahangir Khan remained unbeaten for consecutive seven years from 1981–1988, and 10 consecutive years in British Open Championship. Pakistan has two Nobel Laureates—Dr. Abdul Salam won Nobel Prize in Physics in 1979 and Malala Yousafzai in 1914. Pakistan’s Abdul Sattar Edhi founded the world’s largest volunteer ambulance network in Pakistan, the Edhi Foundation. https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2017/02/abdul-sattar-edhi-google-honours-angel-mercy-170227140720826.html.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

M. Habib Qazi

M. Habib Qazi (Corresponding Author) is currently doing a PhD in Education at the School of Education, University of Leicester, UK. Previously, he worked in schools and Higher Education sectors in the Middle East and Pakistan. His main research interests include discourse analysis, critical discourse analysis and public education with a focus on national curriculum, national identity construction, power discourses, faith, culture and gender. He has published in several prestigious peer-reviewed journals.