Senior educationist Dr Bernadette leaves Pakistan after receiving death threats
NB: Yet more evidence that communalism and extremist nationalism are assaults on the mind.. DS
KARACHI: A senior educationist and member of the
government-appointed advisory committee for curriculum and textbooks reforms
has left the country ‘fearing for life’ after receiving threatening calls and
facing a ‘hate propaganda campaign’, it emerged on Monday.
Dr Bernadette L. Dean, director of VM Institute for
Education and former principal of St Joseph’s College for Women and Kinnaird
College, in an email sent to her friends and colleagues first said ‘sorry’ that
she had not been able to contact them in recent days and then described reasons
for that. She said she had to leave Pakistan fearing for her life on the advice
of family, friends, colleagues and police.
She said a political party was instrumental in unleashing
the ‘hate campaign’ against her for writing textbooks as a member of the
advisory committee. “This campaign started a few months ago with threatening
phone calls to members of the advisory committee on curriculum and textbook
reform and Sindh Textbook Board, visits of religious leaders from the Punjab
and Sindh to the STBB to complain about me and the work I am doing with respect
to textbook writing, a vicious letter accusing me of being a foreigner woman
who has single-handedly made changes to the curriculum and textbooks that made
them secular and called me an enemy of Islam.”
With her email, she also attached multiple files. One of
them included a letter to the Karachi police chief from a civil society
organisation appealing for the removal of banners against her put up by the
political party. She also referred to the ‘All-Parties Conference’ held at
the Karachi Press Club in April where she had been blamed for carrying out such
amendments to the curricula. She raised the concern with the authorities but in
vain, said the email.
The fresh statement from Dr Dean came just weeks after the
gun attack on an American national, Debra Lobo, on Shaheed-i-Millat Road. Mrs
Lobo, the Jinnah Medical and Dental College vice principal for student affairs,
was seriously wounded in the attack carried out by four unidentified gunmen on
Shaheed-i-Millat Road. In her email, Dr Dean also clarified her role as a
member of the committee citing that she just co-authored the reformed books
with Muslim authors and all the books were reviewed multiple times before being
approved.
“The New National Curriculum 2006 approved by the federal
government included Islamiat as part of general knowledge in class 1-2 and from
grade 3 Islamiat was made a separate subject,” she said. “The decision was taken at that time that Islamiat-related
content would be removed from the other subjects, as Islamiat is a compulsory
subject for grade 3 onwards,” she explained.
Dr Dean said the new national curriculum 2006 was reviewed
by a committee appointed by the Sindh government following the devolution of
power to the provinces for education. With some minor changes, it was approved in 2011 and
textbook writing based on it began in 2012, she added.
“The textbooks for class 1 were written, reviewed, published
and distributed to schools in 2013. Books 2-4 in 2014 and Books for class 5 in
2015,” she stated in the email. “The general knowledge books 1-3 and social studies books
4-5 are co-authored by me. All the co-authors are Muslim and they were
responsible for writing the Islamiat sections. Moreover, all the books go
through an internal review and a provincial review,” she explained.
Dr Dean has served as principal of St Joseph’s College for
Women, Karachi, principal of Kinnaird College for Women, Lahore, and as
professor at the Aga Khan University. She has a PhD in education from the
University of Alberta, Canada.
Published in Dawn, May 12th, 2015
