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Pakistan is revising school textbooks on history to remove age-old biases -- anti-India and others.
"Now many things have changed. We are revising the books of history from class six onwards. We should not hide the truth from our children, whether it is good or bad," Education Minister Zubaida Jalal told The News daily.
Asked why school textbooks in Pakistan were full of "hatred" towards India and Hindus, Jalal said: "I would not go to the extent of saying that. Yes, there are lots of such things. The whole curriculum had not been revised since 1984."
"If we don't tell them the truth about the 1965 war or the 1971 tragedy, and if they find it out themselves, they would feel betrayed. They will accuse us, and even their parents, of telling them a lie," said Jalal, who was an NGO activist before she was invited by President Pervez Musharraf to take over as minister for education in 1999.
On how she compared education in Pakistan with that in India, she said: "We made a mistake by not making English a compulsory subject right from class one. The Indians continue to have English as a medium of instruction. We have now made English compulsory from class one," she said.
Stating that education in Pakistan has been politicised, she accused politicians of appointing their "cronies" as teachers.
PTI
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