The Single National Curriculum has been introduced in Pakistan and will be implemented progressively up to Grade 12 by 2023. It is claimed to be the first step to ensure equal education for all children in the country and to foster national integration.

Unfortunately, Pakistan is a graveyard of initiatives that overpromise and underdeliver. In that context, what can be expected of the Single National Curriculum? How likely is to succeed? And what will be the consequences for students taught under it if it fails? Is it the most logical first step to achieve equality in education given many other more proximate causes? Can it promote national integration or could it become the source of further divisions? The history of earlier attempts to achieve integration through uniformity urges us to be cautious of unintended consequences.

The essays in this collection address these questions and provide a critical reflection on various aspects of the Single National Curriculum and its likely implications for the majority of children in Pakistan. The collection includes a separate discussion of the medium of instruction, an integral component of the Single National Curriculum with its own set of issues. Some alternatives for achieving the desired objectives are also offered for consideration.

Dr. Anjum Altaf, a member of the International Coalition for Education Reform in Pakistan (ICERP), obtained MA and PhD degrees from Stanford University. He was a Visiting Associate Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Dean of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS). He is the author of Transgressions: Poems Inspired by Faiz Ahmed Faiz (2019), More Transgressions: Poems Inspired by Faiz Ahmed Faiz (2021), and co-author (with Amit Basole) of Thinking with Ghalib: Poetry for a New Generation (2021).

Education in Pakistan is in crisis and everyone has a list of recommendations to fix it. Few ask why there is a crisis in the first place, why it has persisted for 75 years, and why it has become worse with every passing decade.

This set of essays explores these unasked questions by locating the economic and political functions of education in their societal context and tracing their history in the subcontinent. The analysis calls into question the assumption that the state is always and unambiguously interested in improving education.

The realisation that education might be the terrain on which battles for the domination of society are fought can help explain many otherwise puzzling phenomena and one can begin to understand why in the 21st century, the focus of education in Pakistan is shifting from inquiry to dogma. The chasm between the education we should demand and the one we are being given is widening. This book raises the big question: How can this chasm be bridged?

Dr. Anjum Altaf, a member of the International Coalition for Education Reform in Pakistan (ICERP), obtained MA and PhD degrees from Stanford University. He was a Visiting Associate Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Dean of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS). He is the author of Transgressions: Poems Inspired by Faiz Ahmed Faiz (2019), More Transgressions: Poems Inspired by Faiz Ahmed Faiz (2021), and co-author (with Amit Basole) of Thinking with Ghalib: Poetry for a New Generation (2021).