Today, the government and opposition alike are investing in their vote bank; the inherent messaging, the hidden curriculum, is that the power is with us, the people. It is this hidden and, perhaps, inadvertent curriculum that ensures the norms of citizenship and political participation of the millennials will be radically different from that of the Zia generation. Some might argue for a simpler time, when the risk of ‘confusing’ our young was mitigated in exchange for a safer, more stable Pakistan. But there’s a fine line between superficial stability and slavish subservience. When concerned parents rallied against the teaching of comparative religion in an elite private school, for fear of their children going astray or converting to another religion, they short-changed their children’s potential scholarly courage, an inherently Islamic value, for the highly debauched comfort of ignorance. Pakistani youth are rejecting overprotective and superficial notions of stability, and redefining the state as a political entity worth saving and celebrating outside the framework of cosmic wars. While religious terms remain inherent to the discourse of change and progress, religion itself is not the headline; corruption, accountability and political legitimacy, are. Mariam Chughtai
Posted on: Sun, 31 Aug 2014 05:54:17 +0000
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