Interrogating National Educational Policies in Postcolonial Pakistan: Whose Agenda?

• In Event: Agency and Implicatedness in Postcolonial, Global Contexts of Education: Interrogating Race, Language, Policy, and Practice

Abstract

Language education policies in postcolonial Pakistan are shaped by historical legacies of colonialism, as well as present-day global, political, economic, and cultural influences. This paper analyzes the language of Pakistan’s National Educational Policies (NEPs) of 1998 and 2009 because they are most recent, implemented around the beginning of a new millennium, and reflect the influence of Education for All (EFA). EFA is the educational reform imposed from the Global North that sets benchmarks for so called access and equity in education around the globe, overshadowing the contextual and discursive realities of each individual country. Linguistic analysis of the NEPs is crucial in order to reveal the hegemonic prevalence of the legacies of colonialism in Pakistan’s educational system during the twenty­first century.
Drawing on techniques of discourse analysis (Rogers, 2011), this paper examines the power dynamics underlying the language policies in postcolonial Pakistan. I also engage postcolonial perspectives (Asher, 2009; Ramanathan, 2005; Tikly, 2009) to develop this critical discussion. I use postcolonial theories and discourse analysis in combination because postcolonialism is useful in and relevant to unraveling the academic violence caused by the colonizers, while discourse analysis lends itself to close examinations of language and power. Thus, in this paper, I examine Pakistan’s NEPs through the following questions:
What historical and present-day power structures and hierarchies at the local, national, and global levels, are reflected in the language of Pakistan’s NEPs?
In what ways does the language of the NEPs of 1998 and 2009 reflect the influence of the EFA for postcolonial Pakistan?
Whom do these policies and resulting reforms ultimately serve?
My analyses reveal that the overall recommendations and outcomes of the 1998 and 2009 NEPs work against the national constitution of Pakistan. For instance, that the suggested policy actions emerging from the 2009 NEP indicate English as the only language for science and technology instruction from the third grade, thereby reifying English as the language of power. Thus, global influences (such as EFA) and colonial agendas continue to shape policy­making in post­colonial Pakistan. This paper, therefore, contributes to educational discourse, policy, and practice by inviting educational researchers and practitioners to challenge the historical hegemony of colonial language and power relations and to identify ways of re­visioning global language, education, and policy.

Author

• Sadaf Rauf Shier, University of Minnesota