Addressing Social Justice and Cultural Identity in Pakistani Education : a Qualitative Content Analysis of Curriculum Policy

Pakistan was set up as a relatively egalitarian and democratic state. However, the trend has been for successive governments to create a more theocratic/Islamic, less inclusive, and less democratic state especially during the Zia regime. This led to the dominance of a relatively narrow and exclusionary conception of Pakistani national identity—based on the aspirations of the dominant Sunni Punjabi ethnic group. This increased the difficulties of the remaining ethnic and religious groups, whose cultural diversity was less clearly recognised either politically, socially, or educationally—and indeed there was a distinct prejudice practised against them. In the early twenty first century, the Musharraf regime tried to make changes to this approach through policies based on enlightened moderation—a variant of liberal democracy. Against this background, this chapter presents the findings from a qualitative content analysis of some of the key education policy and secondary school curriculum documents produced during the Musharraf regime. The aim of this analysis was to understand how these policy documents addressed social justice and cultural diversity issues in Pakistan.