Exploring links between national education and students’ militaristic national identity constructions – a case study of Pakistani state schools in Islamabad

Abstract

ABSTRACT This qualitative study problematizes the interplay between Pakistan’s national curriculum textbooks and students’ militaristic national identity constructions in six state-schools. Drawing on field-data collected employing interviews with twelve teachers and focus-groups and participatory tools with four-hundred and twenty-four students, it also analyses study-participants’ interaction with these discourses and students’ reactions vis-à-vis their teacher-mediated textbook positioning. Taking insights from Synder’s and Johnston’s concept of ‘strategic culture’ and Foucault’s ‘technologies of power and self’, the findings suggest Pakistani students’ militaristic national identity constructions in schools, portraying India as an existentialist threat to Pakistan. The textbooks glorify the India/Pakistan wars, heighten the feeling of insecurity amongst schoolchildren, and through that, build a heroic image of the Pakistan Army. The teachers reinforce these images in classrooms. Constituted under the influence of these technologies of power, students exude strong hostility towards India and adoration for the Pakistan Army, hence functioning as vehicles to further the militaristic approach of Pakistan’s ‘regime of truth’. The study illustrates how Pakistan’s increasingly strengthening strategic culture has subverted Pakistan’s civil institutions and served the vested interests of the military’s high command. Similarly, it highlights the dangers/implications involved in using national education for shaping vulnerable schoolchildren’s militaristic national identities in schools.