Mandarin Teaching in Pakistan: A miserable failure
As a reciprocal measure to the massive investments China made in Pakistan, the government of the Sindh province of Pakistan decided to teach Mandarin language in the schools. However, in an appalling policy decision, the Sindh government announced the plans to make Chinese compulsory in schools from 2013. As per the decision, all educational institutions in the province would have to provide Chinese language courses from class six (10-11-year-olds). At the time of implementing this policy formulation, the then Sindh Education Minister Pir Mazhar-ul-Haq said that the initiative reflected China's growing role as an economic giant in the world and would benefit Pakistan in the long term and remarked that since Pakistan’s trade, educational and other relations were growing with China, it was necessary for the younger generation of Pakistanis to have command over the Chinese language. It was also announced then that the students would be given incentives, including foreign scholarships, to encourage them to study Chinese. The higher authorities of both the countries had even inked a memorandum of understanding (MoU) that read: “Teaching of Chinese will be made compulsory in all schools in the province and students learning the language will avail scholarships and other opportunities in China.” The opportunity was not limited to students alone as it was decided that “teachers, scholars and employees of the education department will get training in Chinese institutions and, on their return, will teach the language in schools.”
At the time of these announcements, there were a few voices that had raised concerns about the feasibility of the project and had criticized it for its distinctively political overtones. Such critics had also apprehended that plan would need considerable investment in teaching staff and materials, and further stretch limited resources.
The apprehensions of the critics have come true to the last word and presently, the state of Mandarin teaching is in a state of limbo in Pakistan. Thus far, 121 crore rupees (US $1.1 million) have literally gone down the drain in the implementation of the scheme and yet, there is nothing to show for this exorbitant splurge of funds. There have been no concerted efforts to implement the project, except frequent visits of senior bureaucrats, officials of the education department and elected representatives to China. Moreover, the compulsion to include Mandarin in the school curriculum has created rifts between the provincial government and teachers, as the latter are unable to decipher a single Mandarin character, let alone teach it to students. There is the perennial problem of finding trained experts in Mandarin language, and even if a rare case they are available, there will be the problem of acclimatizing him/her to the local education standards which is in a completely shambolic state.
The decision has also invited the wrath of parents, who are unwilling to pay any extra to compensate for the salaries of the Chinese teachers. Moreover, the parents do not see any feasibility in their children learning an extra language, which is regarded as one of the toughest in the world to learn due to the presence of monosyllable characters. The parents rightly argue that their children could dedicate the time and resource wasted in learning Mandarin towards the learning of the other subjects like science and mathematics, which would surely benefit them more than a foreign language.
Even some of the school administrators are not very zealous about the teaching of Mandarin. Most of the private schools in Sindh province have refused to add Mandarin to their already hectic language teaching curriculum. The school administrators say that already Urdu, English, Arabic, and Sindhi were already taught in schools and adding of a new language would create problems in completing of the normal course.
The Pakistani education policy makers though have deliberately chosen to ignore these facts and are giving lame excuses for the non-implementation of the program. Khursheed Junejo, the chairperson of the Sindh Assembly’s standing committee on school education has cited technical issues behind the delay in the Mandarin teaching program. The Chairperson though did not dwell in detain about the exact ‘technical reasons’. There are reports that Sind province plans to introduce the program in the next fiscal year.
It can be said that in the absence of a lack and curriculum and structure for the introduction of the Mandarin language in schools, the plan will falter again. Pakistani authorities must realize that though learning something new is not bad, it becomes problematic and burdensome if reasons behind the promotion of a new language or subject are completely mired in political interests and lack a planned approach. This is exactly the present state of the Mandarin education in Pakistan.