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Abstract
This article contextualises Education in Pakistan, a White Paper (2007), an influential education policy paper in Pakistan. The focus is on the ways the White Paper constructs its own contexts as a complement to the policy solutions proffered. Here we recognise Seddon’s point about the discursive work of policy in constructing context. We focus on the way the White Paper constructs its political/ideological context and its global/national context. The White Paper works with the trope of a binary construction of Islam – fundamentalist or moderate – which rearticulates Orientalist Western constructions. The analysis of the construction of the global/national contexts demonstrates the framing of the policy by the Millennium Development Goals, and the Washington and post‐Washington consensus.
Acknowledgement
We thank Kalervo Gulson, Greg Dimitriadis, Ian Hardy and Nomanul Haque Siddiqui for comments on earlier drafts of this paper.
Notes
1. The White Paper can be read online at http://www.moe.gov.pk/nepr/WhitePaper.pdf.
2. It is interesting in terms of the White Paper genre that this White Paper notes on the front cover that it was ‘Prepared by Javad Hasan Aly National Education Policy Review Team’. We note that the names of the team members are not mentioned and that it is unusual that an author is listed for a White Paper rather than the mentioning of a ministry or government.
3. We recognise that this usage of ‘Global North’ and ‘Global South’ tends to essentialise, failing to recognise the profound differences amongst the nations constituting the Global North and those constituting the Global South. However, the analytical distinction is useful for the point we are making here.
4. Given the budget deficit, the social development sector, including education, depends heavily on aid (external borrowings and grants). Donors’ assistance (loans and grants) for Pakistan is estimated to be US$2191.155 million for the period 2000–2012 (Pakistan, Ministry of Education, Policy and Planning Wing Citation2007). Military expenditure and debt servicing account for most of the annual budget of Pakistan.
5. The two authors of this paper are positioned differently in relation to the White Paper and Pakistan and at times see the implied readerships of different sections in different ways. The authors have tried to take account of Appadurai’s (Citation2001) ‘deparochialisation’ argument. We also recognise that the policy theory that is used has been developed in a Western context outside of the empirical specificities of Pakistan. We would also note that the idea of a unified West is a fiction, as is also the idea of a unified Islam. Edward Said, the postcolonial theorist, has observed that ‘The idea of the west… comes largely from opposition to the Islamic and Arab world’ (2001, 388).
6. Article 251 of the Constitution of Pakistan (1973) declares Urdu as the National Language. The Constitution allowed use of English for official purposes, which was to be replaced by Urdu within 15 years. It has not happened yet and given the global significance of English seems a distant possibility.
7. The Department for International Development’s (DfID) funding for Pakistan, for example, is now framed and constructed in terms of the UN’s Millenium Development Goals. (See DfiD’s Country Assistance Plan Citation2005–2007 for Pakistan.) Likewise, the US’s assistance for education reform in Pakistan is linked to and framed within a post‐September 11 discourse of curtailing extremism (see Kronstadt Citation2004).
8. It is interesting to speculate on the likely impact of the global financial crisis on neo‐liberal globalisation and the post‐Washington consensus. Certainly it would seem to demand a new imaginary for framing education policy.
9. East Pakistan separated from Pakistan in 1971 to form the new nation of Bangladesh. This separation was largely based on ethnic grounds. Occasionally, there have also been ethnically based disharmonies between the provinces which together constitute Pakistan. This separation of Bangladesh seemingly challenged the Muslim identity of Pakistan. However, following the separation subsequent governments have clung strongly to the idea of Pakistan being a Muslim nation.
10. There have always been discrepancies between official and independent education statistics in Pakistan. For example the White Paper reports the current official literacy rate to be 53%. The discrepancy between statistics also emanates from the various ways different terms are defined and conceptualised. The White Paper defines a literate person as one ‘who can read a newspaper, write a simple letter in any language and do simple addition and subtraction’ (44).
11. While there are significant issues of fundamentalism in contemporary Pakistan, we are not concerned with these issues per se in this paper. Rather, we are more interested in the discursive politics of current educational policy, which rearticulates a binary fundamentalist/moderate construction of Islam, which has dominated media coverage and much Western thinking post‐September 11, and which continues more so under President Zardari.
12. Following the coup in October 1999, on 20 June 2001 Musharraf assumed the presidency and issued the Local Government Ordinance. The district governments were established in 2001 through general elections. A referendum took place in April 2002 which gave President Muhsharraf popular support for his presidency. The general parliamentary elections were subsequently held in October 2002 for the national and provincial assemblies under the newly introduced Constitutional amendments referred to as Legal Framework Order (LFO). It could also be argued that the democracy in fact returned to the country through the formation of district governments in 2001.
13. In 2002 Parliamentary elections the coalition of religious parties Muttahida Majlise Amal (MMA) won significant seats and appeared as the main opposition party to the Musharraf backed Pakistan Muslim League (Quaid‐e‐Azam group). This coalition is now seriously damaged and during the recent elections MMA was severely defeated. The coalition itself has largely disintegrated.
14. We reject Huntington’s clash of civilization account and instead prefer Appadurai’s (Citation2006) talk of a contemporary civilization of clashes.
15. In a newspaper article, Jason Burke (Citation2007, 34) has argued that the language used in discussions of post‐September 11 world politics is an important component of the politics of the situation. We agree with him. He also suggests that some phrases such as ‘the war on terror’ and others often have their origins ‘in the specialist jargon of counter‐terrorism’ and become part of the everyday lexicon through their introduction by journalists and politicians. This is Fairclough’s (Citation2000) point that politics is often about language work and the work of language.
16. Such accounts also fail to acknowledge the significance of Christian fundamentalism inside the West, especially in the US during the Bush era.
17. Bourdieu’s theoretical work is useful for understanding ‘failures’ of policy implementation in terms of the competing ‘logics of practice’ of policy text production and school and classroom practices (see Rawolle and Lingard Citation2008.)
18. See the special issue of Globalisation, Societies and Education, Volume 4, Number 2, 2006, on this topic, including Lingard (Citation2006).