Politic and Power in Education

The word education means “to draw out’, facilitating realization of self-potential and latent talents of an individual. It encompasses teaching and learning specific skills, and also imparting knowledge, positive judgment and well-developed wisdom. Texas Democrats attach great importance to the power of education and rightly so. To quote famous Texas Democrat and President Lyndon B. Johnson

“At the desk where I sit, I have learned one great truth. The answer for all our national problems – the answer for all the problems of the world – come to a single word. That word is “education.”

(more…)

“…they (certain Whites) didn’t want “peaceful relations” disturbed by the teaching of a new political thought….” Carter G. Woodson, The Mis-Education of the Negro”

Dr. Carter G. Woodson believed that if you wanted to create a good “citizen”, one dedicated to the growth and success of this country, then you must create in that person an allegiance to this country. That allegiance is developed through a proper education of the content of The Constitution. And, it is developed through engaging in the use of the political process while actually seeing that process work to change the lives of those he/she interacts with. Certain Whites on the other hand, believed that if Blacks had a functional understanding of the Constitution then they would demand social justice and would be willing to fight and die for it as they had done. This of course would have disrupted the “peaceful relations” Whites had already established with Blacks since emancipation. Therefore, following emancipation, the opponents of social justice began teach History through the perspective of Black inferiority. “If you make a man feel that he is inferior, you do not have to compel him to accept an inferior status fore he will seek it himself.”

Blacks in America had their view of the Constitution and the rights offered therein shaped through intimidation and Mis-education to the point where they believed that affairs of the government really did not concern them. As long as they were able to acquire the bare necessities in life, they were somewhat satisfied. They had to be, fore in their thinking there was no workable solution other than an all out war with the majority who seemed to control everything. Acceptance of social injustice became suitable to death.

(more…)

The role of national languages in defining and articulating national identities is a hackneyed subject, but, somehow, the privileging of learning a sacred language has not been explored much in the debates on nationalism. In this brief article, I intend to draw attention to the rise of Arabic studies in Pakistan and its long-term consequences for the Pakistani public sphere.

In his 1983 book Imagined Communities, Benedict Anderson provides three major causes for the waning of the pre-national empires and the rise of modern nation-states. One of the reasons, according to Anderson, was the rise of vernacular languages in place of what were considered the sacred languages, Latin and Arabic included. I have long maintained that Anderson misses the point as he only looks at the official use of these languages and not about the symbolic aspects of their power. In case of Arabic, for example, while it never was the official language of Muslim India, it still remains a language that wields immense symbolic power.

(more…)