Secondary education curriculum And ethnic intolerance: a case Study of Quetta

Abstract

Education has the potential to mould the way an individual view and understands things. It can completely transform an individual’s perception for good or for worse. For a multicultural, ethnically diverse society like Quetta (Baluchistan), educational curriculum is more likely to act as two way sword. It could either have a constructive influence on the social life of the people by promoting an acceptance of ethnic diversity and containing ethnic intolerance or could affect the society in a negative way by exacerbating ethnic intolerance, leading to social exclusion and worse, conflict. The interlinked connection between ethnic intolerance and educational curriculum is an under analysed field specifically with reference to the context of Quetta. This study has been conducted to investigate the potential role that the secondary education curriculum plays, in an ethnically diverse society, in reinforcing or containing already existing ethnic intolerance. This study employs a sequential exploratory design which involves an initial phase of qualitative data collection followed by quantitative data collection. Qualitative data includes the descriptive-evaluative content analysis of curriculum documents and textbooks of Pakistan Studies and Urdu for secondary education students. The quantitative data includes the analysis of data collected with the help of a survey questionnaire from 30; 15 Pakistan studies & 15 Urdu teachers teaching 9th and 10th classes in the city of Quetta. This research has been based on two significant theories, the cultural hypothesis (Smith 2005) and the two face model of education (Bush and Saltarelli, 2000) The results for qualitative phase of research reveal the direct issues with the content; this is also backed by teachers’ responses to opinion questions in the survey questionnaire. The results of quantitative analysis further explored the findings of qualitative analysis by showing majority of teachers’ disagreement with the effectiveness of textbooks in exposing students to different ethnic cultures or curtailing ethnic biases. Policy implications have been drawn for curriculum designers, textbook board, and the department of education of Baluchistan, Pakistan.