Hating School
Pakistan’s madrasas (religious schools) are, says U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, "teaching terrorism." Which is particularly scary considering the number of pupils they reportedly have. In 2002, the International Crisis Group estimated that more than 1.5 million children — by its calculation, one in three Pakistani students — are enrolled in these schools. With ...
Pakistan's madrasas (religious schools) are, says U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, "teaching terrorism." Which is particularly scary considering the number of pupils they reportedly have. In 2002, the International Crisis Group estimated that more than 1.5 million children -- by its calculation, one in three Pakistani students -- are enrolled in these schools. With so many children soaking up the extremist curriculum, Islamist militants would never have a hard time filling their ranks.
Pakistan’s madrasas (religious schools) are, says U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, "teaching terrorism." Which is particularly scary considering the number of pupils they reportedly have. In 2002, the International Crisis Group estimated that more than 1.5 million children — by its calculation, one in three Pakistani students — are enrolled in these schools. With so many children soaking up the extremist curriculum, Islamist militants would never have a hard time filling their ranks.
But al Qaeda’s recruiting pool may not be as deep as once thought. According to a recent World Bank report, these numbers are wildly exaggerated. Using four Pakistani government national surveys and one funded by the World Bank, researchers found that only around 0.7 percent of all school-enrolled children between the age of 5 and 19 matriculate in madrasas, and the total number of madrasa students is not much higher than 200,000. The report, Religious School Enrollment in Pakistan: A Look at the Data, shows that the popular perception that madrasas are full of poor, religious students is also wrong.
In fact, the Sustainable Development Policy Institute, a Pakistani non-governmental organization, reported in 2004 that it was the country’s public schools that promote hatred. The curriculum for many secular subjects, such as Urdu and social studies, is suffused with extremist Islamic teachings. Under pressure to reform the madrasa system, President Gen. Pervez Musharraf has said that he will eventually require every religious school to adopt the public school curriculum. But such a move could make matters worse. "Targeting madrasas directly is missing the point. Improving the quality of [public] schools in Pakistan is the most useful reform," says Tahir Andrabi, an author of the World Bank report. It’s a fair point, as most Pakistanis are educated in public schools. Instead of pestering Musharraf to rein in the madrasas, perhaps his critics should urge him to come up with his own plan to leave no child behind.
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