English teaching institutions

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English-Teaching Institutionsin PakistanTariq RahmanPublished online: 29 Mar 2010.

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English-Teaching Institutions in Pakistan

Tariq RahmanNational Institute of Pakistan Studies, Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad,Pakistan

English is taught in several institutions in Pakistan. It is a medium of instruction inelitist, highly expensive, private schools as well as cadet colleges indirectly controlledand partly subsidised by the state. It is taught as a subject in the vernacular-medium,state-controlled schools where ordinary Pakistanis study. It is also taught, though tovery few children, in the Islamic seminaries (madrassas). As it is the language of lucra-tive and powerful jobs, it is much in demand. Thus, a large number of private schools,charging high fees, have come up in all parts of Pakistani cities and towns. At themoment English is an elitist preserve and a stumbling block for all other Pakistanis.However, it is also the means of bringing a person into contact with the outside worldand hence with liberal-humanist, democratic values. Thus, exposure to English mightcounteract the growing religious and cultural intolerance in Pakistan. It is suggestedthat English should no longer be a medium of instruction for the elite but it should betaught to all children so that it is spread out widely and evenly all over Pakistan.English will then function as an empowering device and a liberalisinginfluence in thecountry.

IntroductionEnglish is taught as a subject and is the medium of instruction in elitist schools

in Pakistan. It is commonly called a second language but it is almost a firstlanguage for a very few, highly Anglicised Pakistanis; a second language for asomewhat larger number of affluent, highly educated people and a foreignlanguage for all educated others. Under the rubric of English a number of coursesare offered: literary courses, pedagogical grammar taught through traditionalmethods of memorising rules, and newer methods popularised by the newemphasis on English language teaching (ELT). English is in demand by students,their parents and aspiring members of the professional middle class because it isthe language of the elitist domains of power not only in Pakistan but also interna-tionally. Indeed, according to the information presented by David Crystal,English is used in the world bureaucracy, media, commercial organisations,aviation, and research so much that it can no longer be denied that it is an interna-tional language (Crystal, 1997).

The 1986 report by US Aid said that out of the people surveyed only 7%opposed the teaching of English for classes 6 to 8; 30% wanted it to be taught allday in high school while the rest wanted one period a day. Even the Afghan refu-gees wanted to learn English (Jones et al. 1986:Table 13: 39–41). The Society of thePakistani English Language Teachers (SPELT) also carried out a survey on asample of teachers of English in 1985 in which, to the question why Englishshould be taught, approximately 90% replied that it should be taught because it isan international language. The only difference among the teachers was as towhen it should begin: 73% suggested from class 1, whereas 32% preferred class 3(SPELT, 1986: 23). The survey carried out by the present author in 1999–2000 of

0143-4632/01/03 0242-20 $20.00/0 © 2001 T. RahmanJOURNAL OF MULTILINGUAL AND MULTICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT Vol. 22, No. 3, 2001

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the opinions of 15-year-old students of matriculation (10th class) also indicatesthat most students, except those of religious seminaries (madrassas), want to betaught English at least as a subject, if not as the only language taught at school, oras a medium of instruction1.

The demand for English is not incompatible with the fact that many peopleresent it. They resent it for various reasons: anti-colonial sentiment; feeling thatthe quest for English is servile and hence against national prestige; or becausethey do not know it, cannot afford to buy it and feel cheated. At the same timemost people actually want to learn it because they feel sure that the system willnot change and if they, or their children, do not know English they will alwaysstay, as it were, in the ghetto. Languages other than English are, in variousdegrees, ghettoising; hence the demand for it. This demand leads to a largesupply of institutions for teaching the language. One way of approaching theteaching of English, then, is to focus on the institutions which use it as a mediumof instruction or teach it otherwise. These are: (a) English-medium schools; (b)vernacular-medium schools; (c) madrassas; (d) English-language teaching insti-tutions; (e) institutions of higher education.

English-Medium SchoolsThroughout the cities of Pakistan one can see boards advertising institutions

which claim to be English-medium schools or tuition ‘centres’ claiming to teachspoken English and English for passing all kinds of examinations and interviews.They are in areas ranging from the most affluent to slums and even in the ruralareas. Indeed, going by numbers alone, more of them are located in middle class,lower middle class and even in working class areas than in the most expensivelocalities of the cities. Except for the claim made by the boards, they share littleelse in common. It is a far cry from the rolling green grounds of Aitchison Collegein Lahore to a two-room house in a slum which advertises itself as the ‘Oxfordand Cambridge Islamic English-medium school’. Indeed, if there is anythingwhich links such diverse establishments together it is that they cater to the persis-tent public demand for English education. English is still the key for a goodfuture – a future with human dignity if not public deference; a future with mate-rial comfort if not prosperity; a future with that modicum of security, humanrights and recognition which all human beings desire. So, irrespective of whatthe state provides, parents are willing to part with scarce cash to buy their chil-dren such a future.

The English-medium schools are of three major types: (a) state-influencedelitist public schools; (b) private elitist schools; (c) non-elitist schools. Withineach category are sub-categories. Indeed, the non-elitist English-mediumschools are so varied that they defy classification. Let us, however, focus only onthe major categories in order to understand what type of language-teaching iscarried out in them. The state-influenced institutions are the great public schools,the federal government model schools and the armed forces schools. While mostof the cadet colleges and public schools are elitist institutions, some of the federalgovernment and other schools of state institutions are not elitist. In the schoolsrun by state institutions – the armed forces, customs, Pakistan InternationalAirlines (PIA), telephone and telegraph, universities – the tuition fees are less for

English-Teaching Institutions in Pakistan 243

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children of the employees or beneficiaries and more for other people’s children.The great public schools, like the famous Aitchison College in Lahore, werebased upon the aristocratic model of the English public schools. Their functionwas to produce a loyal, Anglicised, elitist Indian who would understand, sympa-thise with and support the British raj in India (for details see Rahman 1996:48–53). When Pakistan was established the elitist Mohajir children coming fromEnglish-medium schools in India were enrolled in similar institutions in Paki-stan. For instance,a government report tells us that 73 students from such institu-tions (which of 13 were in their ‘O’level classes) were admitted in ‘the EuropeanSchools in Karachi’ (Zaidi, 1999: 56). In short, the parallel system of elitistschooling did not change because of the establishment of Pakistan. Indeed, as themilitary and the higher bureaucracy both came from this elite these schoolsmultiplied in Pakistan as the professional middle class started expanding in the1960s. The state now invested in creating cadet colleges and public schools. Thearmed forces were generally involved in the cadet colleges, either as members ofthe Board of Governors or as administrators and instructors, so that the educa-tion, and hence the world view, of the officer corps of the future as well as otherupper middle class functionaries would be under the influence of the state and,more specifically, of the military. Thus the Military College at Jhelum; the CadetColleges at Pitaro, Kohat, Razmak, Hasanabdal; the Army Burn Hall Colleges(Abbottabad); Public School Sargodha and Lower Topa, and the LawrenceCollege at Ghora Gali are all influenced, in varying degrees, by the armed forces.In addition to that the PAF has its model schools, the navy has its Bahria collegesand the army has a variety of institutions ranging from schools run by brigades tocolleges run by the Fauji Foundation. In the case of the Military College (Jhelum)and Army Burn Hall, the principals are serving army officers. The navy controlsPitaro while the air force runs Sargodha. In the other institutions either theChairman of the Board of Governors is a senior serving officer or adjutants fromthe army are posted in the school. In some cases retired military officers are prin-cipals or administrators. In short, elitist public schools of Pakistan are as muchinfluenced by the military as their counterparts in England were by the AnglicanChurch up to the 19th century. The federal government has its own modelschools, some controlled or influenced by the army at the highest level, and thereare elitist public schools under boards of governors such as the Boys’ PublicSchool and College in Abbottabad and the Sadiq Public School in Bahawalpur.Other state-controlled bodies such as the Water and Power DevelopmentAuthority (WAPDA), the Customs Department, the Pakistan Railways, the Tele-phone Foundation and the police also run English-medium schools. Asmentioned earlier, they provide schooling in English, though of varying quality,for affordable fees to children of their own employees while charging muchhigher fees to the ordinary public. The armed forces, besides controlling manyEnglish-medium schools, also get subsidised education for their dependantsfrom some elitist English-medium schools located in garrisons and cantonments.This means that English medium schooling can be obtained either by the elite ofwealth or that of power. And this has not happened through market forces buthas been brought about by the functionaries or institutions of the state itself.Indeed, the state has invested heavily in creating a parallel system of educationfor the elite, especially the elite which would presumably run elitist state institu-

244 Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

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tions in future. This leads to the conclusion that the state does not trust its ownsystem of education and spends public funds to create and maintain the parallel,elitist system of schooling.

This strategy of private subversion of publicly stated policies is not peculiar toPakistan. David D. Laitin, for instance, tells us that in Kazkhistan laws for thelearning and use of the Kazakh language were enacted in 1989 but there are‘ardent nationalists who vote to promote ‘their’ language, yet send their childrento more cosmopolitan schools, where the national language is given at bestsymbolic support’ (Laitin, 1998: 137). This kind of strategy is observable in allsituations where a more empowering language is in conflict with a less empow-ering one. The less empowering one is ‘generally allowed to become thelanguage of the masses while the more empowering one is the preserve of theelite. Such an unjust policy can be reversed but it is generally not. In Pakistan, forinstance, it is still in place after more than half a century of the country’s exis-tence. The non-elitist system of education, fully dependent upon the state, func-tions for the most part in Urdu (or in Sindhi and Pashto at places) and getsstep-motherly treatment in the allocation of funds, maintenance of buildings,quality of teachers, provision of resource material and so on. Most significantly,the non-elitist stream of public education functions in the vernacular rather thanin English which means, prima facie, that its products would have greater diffi-culty in the competition for lucrative and powerful jobs and participation in theelitist domains of power than their English-educated counterparts.

Because of this obvious injustice, the English schools have always been criti-cised. Ayub Khan, as General Officer Commanding in East Pakistan, was soinsensitive to public criticism that he makes the following observationconcerning Khwaja Nazimuddin and Nurul Amin’s reluctance to establish them.

I never understood what they were afraid of. Perhaps they thought thatgeneral reaction to the establishment of public schools would not befavourable. (Khan, 1967: 25)

That it was not a question of ‘perhaps’ was brought home to Ayub Khan whenhe did establish a number of such schools and resentment was clearly articulatedagainst them.

Despite the fact that the state used the vocabulary of social justice about theschools, nobody was taken in. For instance, the Report of the Commission onNational Education (1959) says:

The former Punjab Government, at the initiative of the army, established apre-cadet college at Hasan Abdal. This provides education of five yearsfrom classes VIII to XII with a particular bias towardsa career in the defenceservices. Nearly 33% of the seats are reserved for free students and 33% athalf fees, based on a means test. The school is thus able to draw on the besttalent from the poorer classes and it has been extremely successful. (Edn.Com, 1959: 142)

The Commission was much impressed with Hasanabdal and recommendedthe establishment of more institutions of its kind. However, the students whorose in revolt against Ayub Khan’s education policies, did not think that theseschools were meant to serve the poor. Thus, the students of East Pakistanwent on


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a massive strike on 17 September 1962 and in Peshawar there were student-leddisturbances on 10 and 11 December 1964 (CSPW, 1966: 6). Among other thingsthe students demanded that Pakistani languages should be used as media ofinstruction; that missionary schools be banned; and that all schools should bebrought at par (CSPW, 1966: Appendix C). In short, what the students reallywanted was to protest against the injustice of making some people proficient in alanguage giving access to the best jobs while neglecting most other people. Themore radical ones wanted such an iniquitous system to be abolished.

The Commission on Students Problems and Welfare, appointed to investigateinto these demands, flatly refused to make any changes. However, the Commis-sion said about the Cadet Colleges:

They have not been in existence long enough to enable us to judge thequality of their end products, but we cannot help observing that we areunable to appreciate the principle upon which such a discrimination issought to be made by the government, particularly in view of the constitu-tional assurance given in paragraph 15 under Right No. VI to the effect that‘all citizens are equal before law’. (CSPW, 1966: 18)

But such pieties had no effect on the state which kept on investing in suchelitist institutions in the name of defence, modernisation and efficiency. EvenGeneral Zia ul Haq, dictator though he might be, had to reverse his policy whichwould have abolished the elitist English schools – his government’s educationalpolicy of 1979 proposing to abolish the English-medium schools had to be aban-doned in 1987. Even now, the cost of building and running an English school (acadet college, armed forces school or federal model school), is far more than avernacular-medium state school. The present costs of the establishment of cadetcolleges are between 8 to 11 million rupees, whereas the cost of setting up fournew primary schools in a developed sector of Islamabad is reported to be merelyRs. 2,656,000 in the same year (Expenditure, 1999, Vol. 2: 1676). Islamabad ismore expensive than other cities and even the Urdu-medium schools of thefederal government are much better than the same type of schools in the ruralareas. In short, the state spends much more of taxpayers’ money on the schoolingof the elite through English than on the masses through the vernaculars.

Private Elitist SchoolsIn the 1960s when the students protested against Ayub Khan’s policies the

private elitist schools were generally run by the missionaries. They were thefamous convents of the Pakistanicities – Saint Mary’s (Rawalpindi); PresentationConvent (Murree); Burn Hall (Abbottabad) – which created an atmospherewhere students not only studied English in the classroom but spoke it informallyto each other. These students were perceived by vernacular-educated people asbeing glib-tongued, ultra modern, snobbish, European-attired boys and forwardyoung misses. They were at once the envy and despair of their vernaculareducated counterparts. No wonder the vernacular-educated students, in theirprotest against the superior airs of their English school counterparts, called them‘snobs’. The Commission on Students Welfare tried to refute the angry studentsobserving that:


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We have no evidence that these schools have really produced any suchsnobs as suggested by the students, nor have we any evidence that theirstudents usually secure better positions in public examinations.We are not,therefore, in a position to say that the continuance of these schools isharmful to the community and that as such, they should be stopped.(CSPW, 1966: 18)

In fact, there is a lot of evidence that the products of such schools came fromricher and more powerful families than their vernacular-educated counterpartsand did consider themselves superior to them even without reference to theirprivileged schooling.Schooling, however, gave them an obvious marker of elitistidentity: the spontaneous and naturaluse of Pakistani English in an accent nearerto the British pronunciation than that of other Pakistanis. Moreover, whatincreased their self-esteem was the fact that they did, indeed, fare better in theInter Services Selection Board (ISSB); the armed forces academies; the superiorcivil services examinations and other elitist jobs in the 1960s. Moreover, they feltthat no drawing room, however posh; no club, however exclusive; no organisa-tion, however elitist – both in Pakistan and abroad – was closed to them. Englishwas much more than a language; it was a badge of status; a marker of elitistupbringing. It gave confidence and even without wishing to sound snobbish, thefluent speakers of English from the English-medium schools (especially from theelitist missionary schools who spoke even better English than their counterpartsfrom the cadet colleges) appeared snobbish to others.

The novelist Nasir Ahmad Farooqi describes the English-school types of the1950s very well. In his novels they study English literature, or at least theRomantic poets; abbreviate their names to sound like English names; drink inclubs; read The Times and the English press. ‘Young men go to Oxford, and returnto work for the Government or British companies’ (Farooqi, 1968: 9). Their tastesare English and they think it no disgrace not to be able to write their mothertongue better than English. Indeed, if that mother tongue is Punjabi, it is oftenconsidered not respectable enough to be used on any formal occasion and, insome cases, even at home. This being so, Vittachi’s perception that such peopleare Brown Sahibs is not very far from the truth (Vittachi, 1987). And, of course,Brown Sahibs did appear as stuck-up and snobbish to the common people. Thusthe students did have a point, which the representatives of the state did notaccept, when they complained that elite schools created snobs. This point was,however, accepted by a later government report – the one which was presidedover by Air Marshal Nur Khan – when it conceded that there was ‘almost acaste-like distinction between those who feel at ease in expressing themselves inEnglish and those who do not’ (Edn. Pro, 1969: 14). This ‘ease’ was a matter ofstyle, mannerism and world view. As mentioned above, the English schoolstudents talked in English, very often in slang borrowed from comic books, infor-mally with each other. Their body-language was different from that of otherstudents.

Before ending this section it must be pointed out that the convents are nolonger seen as the most elitist of the English-medium private schools. Their placehas now been taken over by private Pakistani schools. Among the most wellknown school chains of this kind are the Beaconhouse and the City School


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systems. Other such schools in Islamabad are Roots, Froebels, Arts and ScienceAcademy, Khaldunia School and so on. These schools first came up in the 1970sand 1980s and are multiplying even now. Their tuition fees range from betweenRs 1500 to over Rs 7000 per month. They also charge a high admission feesranging between Rs 15,000 to 50,000. Moreover there are incidental expenses,examination fees and high expenses for textbooks, stationery and uniform. Theseexpenses exclude not only the poor but even the middle class from these schools.In short, English, always an elite preserve in South Asia, is still available to theelite of money and power. The common people find difficulty in having access toit.

Products of English schools either go abroad to join multinational corpora-tions and the international bureaucracy or drift back home in fashionable NGOsand foreign banks. Not as many join either the civil bureaucracy or the officercorps of the armed forces as before (in the 1950s and 1960s).Those who do appearin the armed forces and civil service competitive examinations do better thantheir vernacular-educated counterparts (several reports of the Federal PublicService Commission, Islamabad, Pakistan).

Private Non-elitist SchoolsBy far the largest number of the so-called English-medium schools are

English-medium only in name. According to a 1987 survey ofRawalpindi-Islamabad there were 60 English-medium schools in Islamabad and250 in Rawalpindi. Of these 250 only 39 were recognised schools (Awan, 1987). Inthe matriculation examinations of 1999, a total of 119,673 candidates appearedfrom the Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education, Lahore. Of these,according to the records in the Board’s office, 6923 (5.8%) were fromEnglish-medium schools. Most of these candidates (6448) were from the cityitself. And, indeed, one can see such schools concentrated in the cities thoughthey are fast appearing even in small towns now all over the country. Their feesrange between Rs. 50 and Rs. 1500 per month, which is far higher than theaverage state vernacular school but lower than that of the elitist private Englishschool. In these schools a pretence is made of teaching most subjects in Englishbut the teachers themselves are neither from English schools nor otherwise quali-fied to teach anything but English of a rudimentary kind through rote-learningand spoon-feeding methods. In general teachers write answers of all subjects onthe board which students faithfully copy, memorise and reproduce in the exami-nation. The Principal of the Federal Government Girls’ High Secondary ModelSchool in Islamabad said that her school was only a ‘so-called’ English school.Only mathematics and science subjects were taught in English while all the othersubjects were taught in Urdu. And yet, so high is the demand for English, thatthere are about 3000 students half of whom attend the evening classes (Naqvi,1999). The Federal Government Model schools, cadet colleges, elitist publicschools and armed forces schools do, however, teach English at a higher stan-dard than the vernacular-medium schools. The public schools especially,mindful of their elitist reputation, try to supplement the textbook board’sprescribed books with other books. From ninth class onwards, however, they


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adhere to the prescribed syllabi which are meant to promote Pakistani nation-alism as has been mentioned earlier and will be touched upon again.

Recently, chains of non-elitist English-medium schools run by organisedbodies have sprung up in Pakistan. One such organisation is Language Enhance-ment and Achievement Programme (LEAP) run by the Aga Khan EducationService in the Northern Areas and Chitral. LEAP courses ‘attempt to impartteacher-specific language and to improve teachers’ command of classroomlanguage’. The teachers are taught English for three months in courses. Theprogramme started in May 1996 and focused on D.H. Howe’s Active Englishwhich is taught in English-medium schools in Pakistan. In 1997 the programmewas also extended to Chitral. It was expected to train 88 teachers in Chitral and132 in the Northern Areas by the end of 1997. By the end of 1997 there were over20 English-medium schools in the Gilgit and Ghizer districts which sent theirteachers to the LEAP courses. In short, LEAP is increasing competence in Englishat the school level in a hitherto neglected area of Pakistan. (This information isfrom LEAP, 1997 and field research).

Another chain of schools goes by the name of Hira English-medium schools. Ithas been created by the Hira Educational Project which is based in Lahore. Theaim of this project is to educate students along both Islamic and modern lines.Thus, Arabic and Islamic moral lessons are taught from class 1 but the books ofscience and mathematics are in English. Social studies are in Urdu and Urdu iscompulsory. Since the children are from modest backgrounds, as are theteachers, interaction is generally in Urdu or the local language. The author foundclass 1 children mostly speaking in Kalam Kohistani in Hira School Matiltan,nine kilometres from Kalam (Swat), though the teachers spoke to them in Urdu(Nabi, 1998). Yet another chain of the Islamic schools, both Urdu and Englishmedium, is the Siqara school system. A girls’ school in a lower middle classlocality makes both students and teachers wear the hijab (scarf covering the headand breasts) while books are checked for their anti-Islamic content. Indeed, theprincipal of one of the boys’ schools of the Siqara system told the author that hehad changed the pictures of women by drawing full sleeves and head scarves byhis own pen in English books for use in their schools.

Indeed, it seems that the Islamic revivalist thinkers have realised how empow-ering English is and want to attract lower income groups through it. Thus, theeminent journalist Khalid Ahmed has a point when he says that ‘90 per cent’ ofthe English-medium institutions – not only schools, of course – are middle class‘Islamist institutions’ (Ahmed, 1999: 5). While this percentage may be contested,there is no doubt that Islamists, especially those who are politically oriented,teach English because it enables students to enter the mainstream for positions ofpower in the professional middle class. This policy has also been endorsed by theJamat-i-Islami which, while being against English-medium elitist schools, doesnot deny either secular education or English to the students who study in its insti-tutions. The products of these schools are, in any case, less Westernised thanthose of the elitist English schools – especially schools with students fromWesternised families. They are also not as fluent in English as the students ofmissionary schools used to be and the private elitist schools are even now.2 InSenior Army Burn Hall, where the author was a student between 1960 and 1965,students used to speak English with each other and with the teachers. Now they


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do not. The principal, Brigadier Irshad Arshad, however, said that he still usedEnglish with the students (Arshad, 1999). This is more or less the situation inother similar schools.

The products of these schools, especially those that are run or influenced bythe armed forces, are more nationalistic and militaristic than their counterpartsfrom the private elitist English schools. This is not, however, only the conse-quence of the texts they read but also because their teachers, families and peerscome from professional, middle-class backgrounds whose world view has beenshaped by urban, state-created intellectual forces rather than foreign ones.

Even up to class 9 the students of state-influenced English schools are exposedto the Pakistani world view through texts, interaction with teachers, family andpeers. From class 9 onwards all the books they study are prescribed by textbookboards. They do study subjects in English – in some schools, however, PakistanStudies is in Urdu – but their books are saturated with the state-sponsoredideology. The main Urdu textbook is Muraqqa-e-Urdu which has a number ofessays on Islamic personalities, historical personages from the Pakistan move-ment and war heroes. There is a slim section on poetry but amorous verse –which constitutes the best ghazals – is conspicuous by its absence. The Englishtexts are of a similar kind. Apart from the usual essays on the historical personali-ties there are essays on the low intensity conflict going on between India andPakistan in Kashmir and on the Siachin glacier, the highest battlefield in theworld. This war is represented as a triumph of heroism. In short, the ideologicalcontent of English texts is not much different from Urdu ones. There may,however, be some difference in the way different teachers indoctrinate theirstudents. The common perception of a large number of students and teachers isthat the teachers of Urdu are more orthodox, supportive of middle-class, Islamicand nationalist values than teachers of English. The teachers’ values and atti-tudes, however, generally reflect his or her class background, socialisation,education and personality. Since puritanical Islam, chauvinism and militarismare supported by the middle classes, especially the educated lower middle class,teachers from this background tend to incorporate their class world view intotheir teaching.

The Curricula of Elitist English-medium SchoolsThe curricula of the elitist English-medium schools and the other

English-medium schools are different. Let us first take the curricula of elitistschools like Beaconhouse, City School, Froebels, Grammar School (Karachi) andso on. The books on English and Urdu – the only languages taught in theseschools – are generally not of the Pakistani Textbook Boards till class 9 and thenonly if the student wants to appear in the Pakistani matriculation (10th class)examination. Some schools do not even permit their students to appear in thematriculation examination. All students take the British ordinary and advancedlevel school certificate examinations. Thus, most students study books originallywritten for Western school children. Some books have been especially reprintedfor Pakistan but the changes made in them are minor – the clothes of women arePakistani and characters sometimes have Pakistani Muslim names – while otherbooks are still meant for a Western readership. These texts socialise a child into


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English-speaking Western culture. Children read about such classics as LornaDoone, Little Women, Wuthering Heights and Tom Brown’s Schooldays and famousfigures like Florence Nightingale and so on. The world portrayed here isWestern, middle class and successful. It is a secular world of nuclear familieswhere the household chores are generally performed by women though they aresometimes seen as doing other work too. The overwhelming message of the textsis liberal and secular. Concepts like the segregation or veiling of women, ubiqui-tous religiosity, sectarianism or ethnicity get no support. Even the Urdu text-books are published by private publishers and are less supportive of stateideology than those of the textbook boards. However, all Pakistani children haveto study Urdu, Pakistan Studies and Islamic Studies which expose them to offi-cial state ideology in varying degrees. In the 1950s and the early 1960s elitistEnglish-medium school children did not study such subjects at all and may havebeen more Westernised than even elitist children are today.

As for the schools in the third, as it were lumpen category, they are more or lessclose to the vernacular-medium schools than the English schools which theyclaim to be. This is because their fees structure and lack of facilities attractstudents from social backgrounds where English is hardly used. Similarly, theirsalary structure only attracts teachers who are not fluent – indeed not even toler-ably competent – in English at all. Curricula and examinations are in English.However, they represent only one aspect of teaching English. The other aspect isthe quality of the teaching, and the third, and most important, is the frequency ofinformal interaction with English-using people. Formal training of teachersappears to me to be far less important than their command of the language. Thesalaries of teachers, even of teachers of elitist schools, are not attractive enoughfor men from elitist English-using backgrounds. Women, – even women fromaffluent families – are, however, attracted by these salaries because they do nothave to support the whole family only on their income. If these women are fromEnglish-using backgrounds, they speak to their students both within the class-room and outside it in a natural manner in English. This provides the studentswith the key component of interaction with English-using people – somethingwhich less Anglicised schools lack.

But even more important than the teachers are students’ playmates andmembers of the family as far as informal interaction is concerned. If they are fromEnglish-using backgrounds they get exposure to English not only in the class-room but also outside it. Indeed, it is this exposure which makes the crucialdifference between a child from a good English-medium school and a mediocreone. The former learns to interact in English in an informal way, a pointmentioned earlier in the context of the alleged snobbery of English schoolstudents. It bears repetition that the English of elitist school products is sponta-neous and is pronounced differently from the English of other Pakistanis (it isdescribed in Rahman, 1990a: 22–27).

Thus, fluency and spontaneity in the use of English is not so much a product ofcourses of study, techniques of teaching, and examinations, as it is a product ofexposure to English in the informal domain. But this exposure cannot beprovided in the school alone no matter how hard the teachers work and which-ever books are prescribed. It is, in the last analysis, a byproduct of power – ofAnglicisation which is the preserve of powerful and affluent people. They use


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English at home and their children are exposed to it even before joining school.Women from these families, educated in elitist English schools themselves,become English-using teachers and provide role models for their pupils. Thewhole atmosphere of school, playground and home is English-using. Even theleisure hours of the children expose them to English. They watch Englishcartoons; read English comic books; English children’s fiction; English popularfiction and are constantly exposed to the CNN, BBC and TV programmes inEnglish. Thus, children in rich and expensive English schools, but not in Englishschools in less affluent or less Anglicised areas, become fluent and spontaneousin English. In short, command over English is related to power and its corollaries– Anglicisation of culture, possession of wealth and so on. Thus, command overEnglish is highest in the elitist schools followed by the state-influenced Englishschools, the non-elitist English schools and is least in the vernacular-mediumschools.

Characteristics of the Products of English SchoolsIn short, the children of English schools can be roughly divided into two

kinds. The products of the elitist private schools, especially those which have alarge majority of children from Westernised elitist homes; and those of thestate-influenced schools. There are, of course, shades between these rough cate-gories and no category is definable in a precise way. Very roughly, then, theformer are more Westernised than other Pakistani children. The negative conse-quence of this is that they are alienated from Pakistan, especially from its indige-nous languages and cultures. This makes some of them look down upon mostthings indigenous. While such people are neither aware nor in sympathy withthe values, feelings and aspirations of their countrymen, they are generallybelievers in liberal-humanist and democratic values. Thus, they are less suscep-tible to sectarian prejudices or the persecution of non-Muslim minorities in Paki-stan. Being less exposed to nationalisticand militaristic propaganda they are alsoless prone than others to India-bashing and undue glorification of war and themilitary.

The products of the state-influenced English schools have more in commonwith middle class urban Pakistanis than the ones we have just described.However, like them, they too are alienated from villagers and have little under-standing of the indigenous cultures of the country. They are not susceptible tosectarian prejudices but, being nationalistic and militaristic, they are quiteanti-India and supportive of the military. (For detail see the results of the presentauthor’s survey of 1500 students, Note 1.)

All the products of English schools, even those which are English-mediumonly in name, agree in regarding themselves as an elite – not of money andpower, which they are, but that of talent and knowledge. They hold the productsof the government vernacular-medium schools in open contempt. Indeed, to be‘Urdu medium’ or ‘Paendoo‘ [rustic], is a term of derision among them. TheEnglish schools, then, produce snobs with only one redeeming feature – some ofthese snobs, because of their liberal-humanist values, support human rights,democracy and freedom.


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English in the Vernacular-medium SchoolsIn most of the vernacular-medium schools – Urdu and Sindhi ones – English is

not a second language (that is generally Urdu) but a foreign language. It is alienand intimidating both for teachers, who are not competent in it, and students.The way English is taught leaves much to be desired. According to a report of1982, which evaluated the teaching of English in 20 Urdu-medium high schoolsin Lahore district, it was found that the students could not speak or understandEnglish nor could they read it for pleasure or write anything creative in it. Theycould, however, read their lessons and simple sentences in it. Even at this girlswere better than boys and schools in cities were better than those in villages andsmall towns (Curriculum, 1982). As mentioned before, this state of affairs can beexplained by the fact that one learns languages both by formal teaching andinformal exposure to them. English is hardly ever used outside the class and evenwithin it, it is explained for the most part through the vernaculars. In the nurseryclasses, which the author visited in some areas of Pakistan, the English book isread out by the teacher and explained word by word and line by line in thevernacular. After that a pupil stands before the class and reads out the lesson in asing song voice. After every line he or she stops and the whole class repeats theline in chorus. Exercises are written out on the blackboard as are letters and para-graphs in senior classes and the pupils simply copy the specimens. The pupils,coming from humble backgrounds, do not encounter English outside the class-room. Thus, apart from the textbooks and classrooms, they are not exposed toEnglish till they pass high school. No wonder the students of vernacular schoolsdo not learn English very well and generally fail in the subject – a problem onwhich a number of dissertations have been written (Sarwat & Khursheed, 1994:130–32).

One anomaly in the vernacular-medium government schools is that there aretwo systems of teaching English in them. According to the older system Englishbegan to be taught from class 6. According to the new system English begins inclass 1. It was in 1989 that the first Benazir Bhutto’s PPP government decided tointroduce English as an additional subject from class 1. The decision was imple-mented in selected schools in Sindh and NWFP in 1990. The other provinces tooaccepted the proposal in principle. In NWFP the hurriedly prepared textbookswere used for one year only and then had to be withdrawn. Later on the NationalEnglish Language Institute (NELI), established in 1987, submitted a new curric-ulum for English Language Teaching (ELT) for classes 1 to 12. However, as theNELI report had predicted, the experiment was not successful. Indeed, NELIitself was abolished and even now all schools do not teach English from class 1.However, in 2001, the government of General Pervez Musharraf has declaredthat all schools will teach English from class 1 onwards. But, up to now Englishstill begins from class 6 in most schools. Thus, not all children are taught Englishfor the same number of years in the government vernacular-medium schools. Itshould be noted that English textbooks contain fewer ‘ideological’ items than thetextbooks of other languages. The ideological items in the textbooks are prosepieces, poems, questions and conversations about Islam, important Islamicpersonalities, leaders of the Pakistan movement, Pakistani nationalism, war andthe military of Pakistan. The overall aim of these lessons is to sacralise the nation


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and especially the army. Islam is used to support the state, its policy of militarisa-tion and aggressive nationalism. However, English textbooks from class 1 toclass 10 had only 8% ideological items, whereas Urdu textbooks, which allstudents have to study, had about 50% of such items (as counted by this author in1999). Hence English is the least ideologically burdened language. Moreover, theability to read it gives access to the liberal humanist and democratic world view.Thus, from the point of view of influences on one’s world view, the students ofthe vernacular schools are less exposed to liberal values than those of elitistEnglish ones.

English in the MadrassasAs mentioned earlier, the madrassas were meant to conserve the traditional,

Islamic world view. Thus English, which was associated with modernity, wasresisted by them. The state, however, wanted to integrate the madrassas or, asJamal Malik (1996) argues, ‘colonialize’ them. For this purpose it tried to teachthe ulema English, Urdu and social studies. Ayub Khan’s Commission onNational Education emphasised Urdu and English. At the secondary level,indeed, English was recommended as the alternative medium of instruction (theother being Arabic).

If the madrassa students read the textbooks written by the textbook boardsthey would be exposed, like the other students, to nationalism as the major ideo-logical motive of these books is to create a modern citizen and a Pakistani nation-alist. Moreover, if the ulema learnt to read English, arguably some of them wouldencounter alien ideologies such as socialism, human rights, feminism and liberaldemocracy on their own rather than through the polemical refutations of theseideas taught to them in their final year. In short, as the ulema realised, changes inlanguage-teaching threatened their world view. Moreover, at least some of theulema seem to regard English as a symbol of the West i.e the most powerfulnon-Muslim powers upon earth. Thus a senior teacher of a madrassa saidrecently that ‘today Muslims are using language of non-Muslims (English) forcommunication’ (Amin, 1998: 61). In other words, English was symbolic of analien, non (and anti-) Muslim identity and therefore to be suspected. Not surpris-ingly, then, they opposed the reforms strongly and they ‘were translated intoaction in a limited way’ (Malik, 1996: 128) – so ‘limited’ indeed that the averagemadrassa student has a medieval perception of the world: that it is divided intobelievers and non-believers and that the latter are enemies. Even recently, in thesummer of 2000, the government of General Pervez Musharraf tried toencourage the madrassas to include modern subjects in their curricula while theulema resisted such attempts.

During the 1980s and 1990s the madrassas gained more confidence andbecame inclined to revivalism in place of conservatism.The Islamic revolution ofIran and the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan increased the confidence of thereligious lobby and they felt that they could appropriate some power-givingaspects of the modern age without compromising the essence of their commit-ment to an Islamic form of government and society One of the results of thisappears to be the teaching of some English to students. All the avowedly reviv-alist parties like the Jamat-i-Islami and the Dawat-i-Islami (who wear green


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turbans) teach English. The International Islamic University in Islamabad, whichhas a revivalist agenda, not only teaches it to all students but even allows an MAcourse to be run in it though an attempt is made to ‘Islamise’ this MA by teachingArabic and Islamic ideology in it (Khwaja, 1999 and Prospectus of MA English,International Islamic University). Even the traditional madrassas have startedteaching English although the percentage of students who study it does notexceed 3.5% of the total.

Some sub-sects emphasise more upon English than others. The Deobandimadrassas, in which a number of the Afghan Taliban studied and which senttheir students to help the Taliban, do not teach much English, whereas theAll-i-Hadith ones do teach the books prescribed by the textbook boards of thestate. The Jamat-e-Islami schools teach English up to the BA level. They mostlyuse the textbooks of the government schools but these are supplemented by theirown English textbooks at places (Amiruddin, 1999). In some madrassas text-books written by the Wafaq ul Madaris (a central controlling organisation for allmadrassasin Pakistan) are used. The present author saw the Wafaq-ul-Madaris’s8th class textbook. It had 17 lessons, of which 10 were on Islamic personalitiesand themes while the remaining 7 were on the continents of the world. In somemadrassas arrangements are made to teach English by hiring a teacher. Theteacher uses his own material and often examines the students himself (Saeedi,1999). The Dawat-e-Islami (green turbans) also claim to teach English using thetextbooks of the textbook boards. Some institutions which claim to teach Englishmerely make their students memorise a few lessons. A small boy was producedbefore the present author at Madrassa Faizan-e-Madina (Hyderabad) as one whoknew English. The boy began with the customary verses of the Quran and at onepoint, exactly in the same tone he had used for Arabic, he startedreciting a speechin English. After the speech when the present author questioned him in Englishhe stood quiet. It was then that the head of the madrassa said that the boy hadonly memorised the English speech but knew no English (Raza, 1999). In othermadrassas the students could read out of English books though none of themcould sustain a conversation in English.

Since the time of Zia ul Haq, madrassa degrees have been placed at par withthe degrees given by universities provided a candidate passes in English as asubject. This may be an incentive to more ambitious madrassa students.However, whether it has made even the ulema who have studied English moreliberal than before is open to dispute.

Other English Language Teaching InstitutionsVernacular-medium schools used the grammar translation method in

teaching English while the English-medium schools emphasised less ongrammar exercises and had no translation at all. At the higher level the courseswere literary with no emphasis on the use of language, no awareness of linguis-tics and its relevance to English and no reference to post-colonial or contempo-rary literature in English. It is somewhat surprising to note that a report of1902–1907 tells us that there was a feeling that ‘English literature need not bulk solargely as a subject of study’ (Edn. I, 1907:27), but the change came so slowly thateven now the courses are predominantly literary and old-fashioned. However, a


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change towards emphasising language did take place. The British Council tookthe initiative in bringing about the change. Ronald Muckin was EducationOfficer of the Council from 1958 to 1962. He prepared new books emphasisingwhat was called the ‘structuraldirect’ method. This was introduced in class 9 and10 in 1976 (Curriculum, 1982). After that the emphasis on language led to thebirth of the discipline which came to be called English Language Teaching (ELT)or the Teaching of English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) or English as a SecondLanguage (ESL). The Allama Iqbal Open University and the University GrantsCommission took a lead in giving in-service training to teachers of Englishleading to a diploma in TEFL. The UGC held two international conferences in1983 and 1984 which gave much boost to English language studies. TEFL wastaught to the batch of 1985. Since then a number of teachers of English have beentrained, mostly in Pakistan but some abroad. The British Council and OverseasDevelopment Association have been giving scholarships to train teachers andELT has entered the vocabulary, if not the classroompractice, of many teachers ofEnglish.

A private body called the Society of Pakistan English Language Teachers(SPELT) was established by some teachers from Karachi with the special initia-tive of Zakia Sarwar, a professor of English at a Government College in Karachi,in May 1984 at Islamabad. The objectives of the society were to provide a forumfor discussion, analysis and evaluation of courses, and offering alternativesuggestions after a realistic appraisal of the teaching and learning situation indifferent areas of Pakistan (SPELT Brochure 1985). SPELT organised workshopsand courses for the teachers of English and its annual conferences are knownevents in the field of English teaching. Among other things SPELT reviewed theEnglish courses from class 6 till the BA level in 1985. The conclusions of thissurvey were that the school textbooks were subject-centred rather thanpupil-centred and tested memory not understanding. The textbooks at thehigher secondary level (class 11 and 12) had not been revised for nearly 20 yearsand students merely memorised the usual questions set upon them. The BA text-books too encouraged rote learning with no development of the skills ofspeaking and analysis (SPELT, 1987).

The SPELT also carried out another text of English in some schools andcolleges. It was found that the students of 12th class (intermediate) did betterthan those of BA and MA in the university. All students were from the humani-ties group but the university students were not those who were studying Englishat the MA level. Even so, it is surprising that in BA the percentage of scoringshould go down. The explanation offered in the report is that ‘at BA level thestudents lack the motivation to learn English as the marks of the compulsoryEnglish are not added to the division’ (SPELT, 1986: 24).

Since the 1990s both the American Centre and the British Council have startedwithdrawing from the ELT field in Pakistan. The last English Language Officer ofthe American Centre was Lisa Washburn and when she left in 1995 nobody wasposted in her place. The Pakistan American Cultural Centre (PACC) does,however, teach English to students in Karachi. Apart from helping in theteaching of English in Pakistan, the United States as well as Britain finance thetraining of Pakistanis in English studies in their countries. In Pakistan the USEducational Foundation administers the Fulbright grants. Their two reports


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Thirty Years of Fulbright (1982)and Fulbright in Pakistan (1994) give us an idea as tohow many Pakistanis have benefited from Fulbright grants. According to thefirst 1180 Pakistanis and 400 Americans had ‘participated in one or another of thehalf-dozen programs which it has been the Foundation’s pleasure to supervise’(Introduction). The second lists 213 Pakistani alumni out of whom 120 heldFulbrights between 1982 and 1994; 116 Americans are also listed. The first booktells us that the number of grantees associated with language or literary studiesare as follows: 38 (English and American literature); 27 (English); 8 (Englishlanguage) and 7 (linguistics). Out of these 53 are Pakistanis and 36 Americans.The grantees involved in pursuing languages other than English (Arabic andUrdu mostly) are 9. This brings up the total to 73 for English in some way or theother.

The British Council has been promoting English for the last 50 years in Paki-stan. Since the 1970s, according to Chris Nelson, English language officer of theBritish Council in Islamabad in 1997, the emphasis started shifting from litera-ture to language. Students used to be sent to England to get higher degrees butthis is not being done any more. Students are, however, being taught at Karachi,Lahore, Islamabad and Peshawar(Nelson, 1997).More than 17,000students havebenefited from the British Council’s courses. As the tuition fee is Rs 4000 for acourse of 30 hours of 7–5 weeks of part-time study, one can conclude that thedesire to learn English is really high among Pakistani students.

The United States and Britain both promote English but, according to a BritishCouncil officer, the teaching of the British Council is of a higher standard thanthat of the US centres (Nelson, 1997). Be that as it may, the fact is that althoughBritain still dominates the universities (through British literature and facultyqualified in Britain) and the ELT industry (again because of faculty qualified inBritain) Pakistanis are now more exposed to American English through the CNNthan ever before.

English in the Institutions of Higher EducationMost traditional universities offer English at the masters level. Universities of

Sindh also have BA (Honours) courses in English but other Pakistani universitiesmerely examine students for the BA degree while the actual teaching is carriedon in the colleges. Some colleges too offer the MA degree but their courses aredetermined by the university with which they are affiliated. The MA in Englishin Pakistan used to mean a two-year general course in the canonical classics ofBritish English literature from Chaucer till T.S Eliot until the 1980s. After thatlinguistics, ELT and American literature have been added to the courses, mostlyas options, in most universities. In 1987 the University of Azad Kashmir inMuzaffarabad, started offering an MA in Linguistics and English LanguageTeaching. This was the first time that literary courses were eliminated andlinguistics came to dominate the syllabus. This course, however, was modifiedlater.

At present, linguistics, ELT and American literature are options in the coursesof the Punjab, Karachi and Bahauddin Zakariya universities. KarachiUniversity,however, is the only one that offers a one-year MA in linguistics to those whohave qualified in its literary MA of the usual two years. Post-colonial literatures


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in English are not taught at the undergraduate level anywhere. However, at thePunjab University it was introduced by Professor Shaista Sirajuddin in 1998 inthe MPhil course and is still being taught (Sirajuddin, 1999). Professor RafatKarim, of the University of Karachi, also said that it might be offered as an optionlater (Karim, 1999). There are people who have worked on Pakistani literature inEnglish in some universities but no university has so far offered it as a course inthe MA. On the whole, the MA in English is conservative and out of touch withcontemporary trends and developments. The only change from the 1960s is thatthere is more awareness of linguistics and ELT than before.

Another change is that there are several institutions, both private and govern-mental, for the teaching of functional, especially spoken, English. Among thebest known such institutions are those run by the British Council, the PakistanAmerican Cultural Centre, the Aga Khan University and the National Universityof Modern Languages (NUML) at Islamabad. The armed forces academies alsoteach spoken English by making it mandatory for the trainees to speak Englishand by making them deliver speeches, lectures and talks in English. The NUMLand a number of private institutions also follow the same approach. According toseveral administrators of private institutions, especially faculty members at AgaKhan University (Karachi), exercises in public speaking are held. Tests includespeaking, role playing and interview skills. However, as in the case of theEnglish-medium private schools, these institutions for grown-ups are of veryuneven quality. There are very well equipped institutions in fashionable parts ofthe cities (such as the Aga Khan University’s English Language Unit) and thereare small, dark-looking rooms in congested localities of the bazaar advertisingthemselves as institutions for teaching spoken English. Seeing the recent trend ofAmericanisation, some institutions claim to teach ‘American English’. As far asthe author could make out after visiting some of these institutions, they have thesame kind of teachers as other institutions. These teachers speak and teach Paki-stani English but, because of the low prestige of this variety of English or lack ofawareness of their real practice, they either pretend or really believe that whatthey teach is either British or American English.

In this context it may be mentioned in passing that the officially prescribedvariety of English in Pakistani institutions is still British Standard English.However, at the higher level teachers are aware of the concept of varieties ofEnglish and refer to work on Pakistani English (Baumgardner, 1993, 1996;Rahman, 1990a) in lectures and conferences. Literary figures like Bapsi Sidhwatalk of the ‘Pakistanised turn of phrase or choice of native word’ (Sidhwa, 1996:233) and, indeed, Sidhwa and Ghose as well as others have used PakistaniEnglish with great creative power in their writings (Rahman, 1990b). Yet, the factis that the well-known academics and literary figures all have near-nativecommand over English. They speak fluent English which, though not British inaccent, is far removed from the Punjabi, Pashto, Sindhi or Urdu pronunciation(of English) of ordinary, educated Pakistanis. Thus, no matter how much lipservice these eminent people may pay to endonormativism and the possibility ofaccepting Pakistani English, in practice they are far above the ego-shatteringdisapproval which is the fate of those who actually use Pakistani English. Thus,in actual practice teachers of English try as much as possible to teach British Stan-dard English, generally from outdated books, as far as they are able to do so.


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ConclusionTo sum up, English is still a very popular subject at all levels. It is popular as a

medium of instruction and as a skill which an enterprising, upwardly mobileyoung adult should possess. It is the most empowering language in Pakistanboth because it gives privileged access to the most lucrative and powerful jobswithin the country and abroadand because it gives socialprestige to one who canspeak it fluently and write it correctly. In this role, it empowers the elite andkeeps this power within it. It is also the biggest hurdle in the way of the vernacu-lar-educated student, especially one from rural areas, to positions of power.English is also a hurdle in the very process of getting higher education at all. Therate of failure in the matriculation, intermediate and BA examinations is highestin English. Thus English remains a device to close the ranks of the elite in Paki-stan. It gives power, which is why people are so desperate to acquire it and alsowhy they resent it so much. They resent it because they know that they are notplaced in an advantageous position while their elitist counterparts are. English,therefore, serves to maintain the present power structure which disempowersmost of our people.

However, besides providing a means to upward social mobility, English isalso a window to other world views. These world views, being created in theWest, are liberal-humanist and supportive of democratic values and humanrights – especially the rights of women and ordinary, otherwise marginalised,working-class people. Because of this, exposure to English might mean greaterexposure to and acceptance of liberal, democratic, egalitarian values. This mightbe an antidote to the increasing intolerance (especially of a religious naturewhich is often called ‘Talibanisation’) in Pakistani society. Thus, English, whichhas been taught very well but only to a small elite so far should now be taught,perhaps less well, but to all students. It should be spread out far more evenly.This is only possible by eliminating privileged English-medium schools whilepromoting the teaching of English as a subject in all schools. While the languageof employment in Pakistan need not be English, it should remain the language ofresearch, university teaching at the highest level, aviation and internationalinteraction. In short, instead of being almost a first language for a few Pakistanis,English should become the most commonly known foreign language for all Paki-stanis. In this new role English will not remain a stumbling block in the way of theordinary people of Pakistan. It might become the supporter of democratic valuesand tolerance in Pakistan.

CorrespondenceAny correspondence should be directed to Dr Tariq Rahman, Professor of

Linguistics & South Asian Studies, Quaid-i-Azam University, Islambad, Paki-stan ([email protected]).

Notes1. The survey of 1500 students carried out by the present author is given in detail in

Language, Ideologyand Power being published by the Oxford University Press, Karachi,Pakistan.

2. Interview with Mr Hasan Badruddin Khan, Principal Public School and College,Abbottabad, 4 July 1997. This is confirmed by interviewing, talking to and observing


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the behaviour of students in Burn Hall, Aitchison College, Cadet College Hasanabdal,Military College Jhelum and Lawrence College, Ghora Gali.

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