DENIZENS OF ALIEN WORLDS

5
Preface
The idea of this brief study came to my mind when Professor Craig Baxter asked
me to contribute a chapter on education for his forthcoming book on Pakistan. I had
already been working on aspects of education in my previews three books published by
the Oxford University Press: Language and Policies in Pakistan (1996); Language,
Education and Culture (1999); and Language, Ideology and Power: Language-Learning
Among the Muslims of Pakistan and North India (2002). As such, I thought it would be
easy to write such an introductory chapter. Much to my chagrin I discovered that this was
not to be. What I had written was outdated or purely historical or from the point of view
of language policy. I simply could not confine myself to a cut and paste job!
I then made my usual forays in the field and the libraries and concocted a chapter
of sorts which, as was the requirement, quite brief. Then an unusual thing happened. Dr.
Kaiser Bengali, Acting Managing Director of the Social Policy and development Centre
(SPDC) in Karachi, met me and asked me to contribute a report on the schooling system
of Pakistan. He said he would pay me for this research---something which has happened
only once before in my research experience. The sum he offered as consultancy fees
seemed somewhat extravagant for me but he smiled and reassured me that I had never
been rewarded adequately for my labour before. I told him that, if truth be told, I had not
known how to get the ‗rewards‘ and so I had never got into the consultancy business.
However, I also told him that sums of money made me apprehensive about my freedom
whereupon he assured me that I could also publish my work---warts and all---whenever
and wherever I wanted provided I made it clear that the survey and money for research
for the schools came from the SPDC. So we agreed and the research started.
I hired two research assistants, Shahid Gondal and Imran, who had three months,
December 2002 and January-February 2003, to take questionnaires (for survey 2003) to
schools and madrassas. I went myself to the elitist English-medium schools and other
institutions of Rawalpindi, Lahore, Karachi and Peshawar.
Shahid Gondal went to Mandi Bahauddin (his hometown) and Imran went to
Multan, Faisalabad and Lahore. I thank both Shahid and Imran without whose efforts this
survey would not have been completed. I thank the SPDC for having paid both of them
and making life comfortable for me. I have written in all my previous books without