Changing CVE Education: Lessons from Pakistan

• In Event: Evidence-based decision making in education
  In Refereed Round-Table Session: Learning, education, and schooling in conflict settings

Proposal

Description:

Pakistan faces a problem of radicalization of mainstream educational institutions. Lack of positive and tolerant school practices along with biased curriculum and textbooks add to the overall problem of extremism in the country. Moreover, contrary to the popular perception, the number of private and public schools is significantly higher compared to madrassahs/religious schools.

As a response, several civil society organizations came together and with support from the USAID Community Resiliency Activity in Pakistan, piloted an innovative CVE program for public and private schools by the name of Badal Do! which literally means “Change It”. Conceptually, Badal Do! is transforming schools into resilient spaces through promoting tolerance, diversity and pluralism –both within and outside the classroom.

The program is based on the following 4 drivers of extremism prevalent in mainstream education:
1) Lack of critical thinking due to widespread prevalence of rote learning in schools.
2) Lack of positive role models.
3) Lack of civic action or information in schools
4) Lack of cultural engagement, including lack of discussion on diverse religious, cultural and ethnic communities that exist in Pakistan, reinforcing divisive stereotypes

As a response Badal Do! focuses on 4 fundamental values:
1) Critical Thinking. Improving ability to ask questions, analyze information while critically reflecting on existing stereotypes and biases. This is done through innovative in-class activities tied in to elaborate on concepts of conflict mitigation, resolution and peacebuilding.

2) Character Building. Building upon the concept of positive role models, character building works with the basic premise that there is a ‘hero’ within all of us. This is done through developing comic books which entails a process of self-reflection and identification of positive heroic attributes.

3) Civic Responsibility. Exposure to fundamental rights and duties of responsible citizens to promote civic action. This is done through various creative activities encouraging non-violence and peacebuilding.

4) Cultural Engagement. Sensitization towards multiple facets of pluralism, by fostering interaction with diverse religious and ethnic communities, debunking myths attached with the ‘other’. This is done through photowalks, diversity tours and storytelling sessions.

The sequencing of these 4Cs has been done after a careful deliberation to ensure that each component forms a building block of a composite program for holistic change. The central tenet of the program is to strengthen the school management and teachers to roll out these activities with the students. This is done through in-depth capacity building sessions, followed by an extensive roll out in schools by trained stakeholders with on-going support from Badal Do! Customized material for activities is also provided to schools for smooth implementation.

In our presentation, we’ll discuss the evolution of our 4 C model, explaining how these pieces were selected. Next, we’ll review some of the main pieces to our program and share lessons learned. Finally, we’ll discuss why we chose a product-type solution and why we believe that this approach will allow for scale, both within Pakistan and to other countries as well.

Author

• Elizabeth Villarroel, Program Director, Transition and Stabilization