Mother tongue education policy in Pakistan

Abstract

This chapter describes language policy as it relates to the role of languages in education. A major study of language in education policy and practice is by Zubeida Mustafa who goes over the same ground as her predecessors and advocates the use of the mother tongue in education. The most comprehensive analysis of language policy, once again mostly referring to education, is by Shahid Siddiqui, a scholar on education in Pakistan. Teaching in the mother tongue, called Mother Language Education witnessed unprecedented activity in the last ten years or so. Pakistan’s language education policy has always given lip service to the indigenous languages of the people but has never put this rhetoric into practice. The state’s language policy is really to reserve English for the elite while Urdu is spread as the lingua franca of the country.

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