DENIZENS OF ALIEN WORLDS

27
increasing gap between the rich and the poor, had all contributed towards making this
polarization potentially militant---something which did happen but which is in great
danger of growing.
Zia ul Haq‘s government was followed by a so-called democratic interlude---socalled
because the elected prime ministers were not very democratic and , in any case, the
strongest power in the land remained that of the army---in which Benazir Bhutto‘s PPP
and Nawaz Sharif‘s government was dismissed by General Pervez Musharraf who
allowed elections to be held in October 2002 when Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali became
the prime minister.
The education policy of these civilian governments did not change some of the
fundamental features of the educational policy---such as Islamization, emphasis on the
two-nation theory with its concomitant of hatred for India, glorification of war and the
military, subservience of teachers to administrators, increased control of the military and
the private sector over elitist education---but they paid lip service to democracy
throughout.
The ambitious policy document of Nawaz Sharif days, National Education Policy
1998-2010 (GOP 1998) repeats the cliches every policy has been repeating, with
differing emphases however, since 1947. Primary education is to be universalized by
2010 and more educational institutions would be created. A new feature was the
emphasis on replacing the lecture method with computers, T.V, video tapes etc. Apart
from that, there is a whole chapter on ‗Islamic Education‘ and it is declared that all
aspects of education, including the sciences, are to be governed by religion (GOP 1998:
15). There is also a whole chapter (chapter 10) on information technology. The trend
towards privatization, started by Zia ul Haq and promoted by all subsequent
governments, was to be encouraged even further. It was estimated that about 3 million
students were studying in about 10,000 English medium schools. Moreover, there were
also five chartered new private universities.
The writers of the report realized that the private sector could not really be seen in
the light of a sharer of the burden of the government. The participation rates being
already higher in urban settlements, it is in the rural areas that more schools are needed.
The type of clientele going to these schools would any way participate in education.