Nationalizing Education in Pakistan: Teachers' Associations and the People's Party

Abstract

JN THE WAKE of Pakistan's dismemberment in December I97I, ZulfiIqar Ali Bhutto, chairman of the Pakistan People's Party (PPP), was called to head the martial law administration, restore confidence, and lead the injured nation back to civilian and parliamentary rule. With a mandate for his party in the I970 election, Bhutto drove the Islamabad administration feverishly to prepare sweeping policy reforms designed to appeal to the lower and middle classes and to consolidate a popular base. Among the first such measures was the new Education Policy, announced by Bhutto (then President) on March I2, I972.' The education proposals were nationalist in content, developmental in design and radical in spirit. Infused with ambitious egalitarian rhetoric, they promised to bring about a wholesale restructuring of values, local participation in educational affairs, equal access to education, and eradication of illiteracy. However laudable, these objectives were more visionary than realistic under Pakistan's social and economic conditions. But there was one practical measure-that of nationalizing private educational institutions-that could be enacted promptly so as to convey the resolve of the new government to use