Tag Archives: learning

Current Issues, Pakistan, Sindh, Sindhi

Language in Sindh schools

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By Zubeida Mustafa

THE language dilemma in education remains unresolved in Pakistan because educationists fail to understand how basic language is to the child’s learning process, as also to the psyche of the speakers.

Those who ignore this fundamental truth can undermine national integrity. If they are running schools they cannot maximise the learning advantage of their students. Language has a political dimension as well. When our leaders fail to understand that imposing a language on a people amounts to linguistic imperialism, the consequences can be grave. We know what happened in 1971.

In this context, Sindh should be the last province to pose a problem. It has speakers of mainly two languages — Sindhi and Urdu. Geographically they are broadly divided between the rural and urban areas. Public-sector education follows this demographic feature in the medium of instruction policy. Unsurprisingly, from ASER 2012 (the annual report on the status of education) to be released in January it emerges that 90 per cent of the parents in Sindh want their children to be taught in Sindhi (presuming that is the language of their choice when they said no to Urdu and English and opted for “other” in a survey conducted there).

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Current Issues, Human Rights, Pakistan, Politics, Sindh, Sindhi

East Pakistan, Balochistan, and now Sindh – Mohammad Ali Mahar

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Not learning a lesson from the debacle of East Pakistan has brought Balochistan to the point where it is at the brink of ending its ties with the rest of the country, and the blame is being put on the ‘foreign element’ and the ‘misguided’ Baloch. If the real powers running the country refuse to hear the cries of Sindhis at this time, they would have no one to blame but themselves.

The PPP was always seen as a ray of hope for the Sindhis for a long time. A kind of last refuge. This administration has brought a common Sindhi to the point where he feels robbed of this hope. If ever there existed a Sindh card, the government has already sold it to its coalition partners for a few years in power

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Culture, Human Rights, International, Pakistan, Sindh, Sindhi, Sindhi Media

International Mother Language Day 21 February

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It seems the founding fathers of Pakistan never really imagined a place for a Bengali speaking, large Hindu minority province. This is because the TNT demanded a full divorce from all that was Hindu. Such was the force of the ideology, there was even an effort to make Bengali arabicized and de-sanskritized!!

Bengali muslims were at the forefront of the partition movement but giving up Bengali was a bridge too far for them.

In the course of the Pakistani government’s occupation of Bangladesh (is there a better word though there were benighted efforts to improve “East Pakistan” it seemed an occupation stroke colonisation) to “Arabify” & “DeSanskritise” Bangla or Bengali (I don’t know which is appropriate to refer to in the English language I prefer using Persian over Farsi, Gypsy over Romany, Eskimo over can’t remember what oh yes Inuit, etc etc) it inadvertently sparked off a global movement to preserve “mother languages” (the usage of the word mother language reminds of me of the elegant song ….

Read more » Brown Pundits

News, Pakistan, Politics, Sindh, Sindhi

Sindh to teach Chinese language in schools

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SINDH – KARACHI: The government of Sindh on Sunday decided to launch compulsory teaching of Chinese language from grade six in 2013. The decision took place in a meeting led by the Chief Minister of Sindh Qaim Ali Shah. It was also decided that students learning Chinese will gain extra marks, scholarships and foreign visit opportunities. Shah also ordered the authorities to finalise the method, rules and instruction materials for the teaching process. It was also decided in the meeting that learning Chinese will be made compulsory in Cadet College Pitaro, grade six onwards as well. …

Read more → ARY News Tv

via → Siasat.pk

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More details → (BBC) Schools in Sindh to teach Chinese

Current Issues, India, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan, Politics, Punjab, Religion

Debate: Feeding Pakistan’s Paranoia

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When Pakistan Says No to the C.I.A.

Will Pakistan’s demand that the C.I.A. curtail its activities be a blow to American efforts to fight terrorism?

Feeding Pakistan’s Paranoia

Excerpt:

Shuja Nawaz is director of the South Asia Center at the Atlantic Council in Washington. He is the author of “Crossed Swords: Pakistan, its Army, and the Wars Within” and “Learning by Doing: the Pakistan Army’s Experience with Counterinsurgency.”

Behind all the talk of a strategic dialogue and strategic partnership between the United States and Pakistan lurks the reality of a persistent transactional relationship, based on short-term objectives that intrude rudely into the limelight every time a drone attack kills civilians inside Pakistan or in the instance when an American “operative” is caught by the Pakistanis after killing two people on the streets of Lahore.

In “Paranoidistan,” as the historian Ayesha Jalal has called Pakistan, the public and the authorities are prepared to believe the worst. Conspiracy theories abound, involving the C.I.A., Israel and India, in various permutations. …

…. The United States needs to stop paying the Pakistan army with coalition support funds to fight in the border region and instead provide it adequate military aid in kind, as part of a carefully structured cooperative program to build its mobility and firepower against the militants. Money cannot buy love. ….

Read more : The New York Times

–  http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/04/12/when-pakistan-says-no-to-the-cia/feeding-pakistans-paranoia

Health

What is Down syndrome?

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Down syndrome is caused by the presence of an extra chromosome in the body cells. John Langdon Down the doctor who first described it. Down syndrome is a genetic condition. Different countries use different names for Down syndrome. People with Down syndrome all have a certain degree of learning disability. It means that they are slower to learn new things than other people. The common features of Sown Syndrome are; A lower than average birth weight and shorter than average, Broad hands with short fingers, A small mouth and tongue look a bit too big, looser muscle an joints. The older woman is, the more likely she is to have a baby with Down syndrome.