 Kia ora everyone and good evening well today I'm talking about a topic which has not only the certain significance but which has personal relevance for me as well I grew up in a country where the kind of education that I'm talking about I am a product of that education and I have experienced all the conflict that I'm going to mention in this presentation so it's not just a kind of a mental curiosity because of which I am presenting all this but it is something that I have experienced and I have experienced it very recently in 2008 when there was a huge military operation in the in the area after the Taliban took over for a brief time and then they were overthrown so I have I have titled my topic a tug of words because this is what is going on there is a conflict along the educational fault line and I like to put this in perspective by mentioning the highly controversial and best-selling book of Samuel Huntington clash of civilizations in which he claimed that the 21st century will be shaped along battles and clashes would be more along the cultural fault lines instead of being primarily fashioned by national interest and economic interests that gave rise to a lot of headmongering as well as stereotyping in the media in the public Islam and Western countries and Western civilization they were conceptualized as being in clash that was another now Huntington said that the new world order would be characterized by the fact that the greatest division among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be culture and the area of study that I have been interested in for the last 14 years and have been teaching language in a university in my country is language that's my area of interest for the last 14 years as I mentioned and that is closely connected with culture and that's why I am interested to see whether the conflict scenario that Huntington talks about and the increasing conflict conflicts that we see around us in the post 9 11 era can they be conceptualized in terms of language so I want to see what is the relationship between language and culture on the one hand it has been said that language is at the core of a culture and Nietzsche even goes further the German philosopher says we live in a prison house of our language by which he means that our worldview is fashioned by the kind of language that we are born into which affects not only the way we see ourselves but it also affects the way we see others it has both potential as well as potential as well as hazards so relationship between language and culture language is obviously one of the distinguishing feature of our species it is what distinguishing distinguishes us from the non-articulate kingdom language is this is central in giving us our identity and as I mentioned before it is a defining feature of it defines and limits the range of our thinking and worldview and this is indirectly in connection with identity the way we see ourselves the way we see others that is how we form our identity so this brings me to language in education if there is a connection between language and culture and language is place a significant part is the central place a central part in education language in education and culture how can they be understood in terms of its effect upon the identities of those who learn a language that's why I have taken two school systems in Pakistan and I in order to see are we preparing the children in these schools for hatred or accommodation in the future because in the increasing era of mobility international mobility globetrottering globetrottering and global a possibility of flying across continents there is both potential and danger for global harmony as well as global conflict I have taken the dividing line between these two two schools as English which cause the the language the English language it provides a kind of ticket to upward social mobility it's the doorkeeper to upward social mobility and it's because of that apart from identity that the tussle in a society like in my country arises so I have taken these two schools which are situated in my country which is Pakistan and I have conceptualized these two schools is promoting national and Islamic identity on the one on the one hand because the country projects itself as an Islamic country and the nation the state is usually because it is portrayed as synonymous with Islam in the political discourse as well as in the media on the and they are using local textbooks in these schools the government schools in order to instill a local Islamic identity in the children on the other hand there are the elite schools which are giving English medium instructions along the lines of British school systems and they are installing more global identity and liberal identity in the students and they are using books which are Oxford indoors now the education system is Pakistan the education field is a conflict zone and a few glimpses apart from many other can be seen in the case of Malala Yusuf Zayib when she was shot when she was on her way home from her school in 2012 at that time she was only 14 she was going to an English medium private school and she had been advocating universal education for girls and the Taliban threatened her but as she said we realize the importance of our voice when we are silenced and they tried to silence her but she didn't she survived she not only survived but went on to collect the Nobel Prize for P for peace then another event happened in 2014 religious extremists attacked an army run school in the northern city of a shower more than 130 children were killed these are these are tragic but true stories so my question is the national and Islamic identity on the one hand which is promoted by the hundreds and thousands of schools throughout the country and on the other hand the global and western identity which is so blatantly proclaimed and promoted by the private schools which are also if not in hundreds and thousand at least in thousands throughout the country what is it doing to the children where is the voice of the children what do they think they get when they are in a foreign language class so whether it is these children who are studying in a private school sitting in a koogee environment or these children who are sitting on the floor in a government school both of these need to be heard and I think their voices should be put together the two schools have two ideologies as I mentioned before the government schools they have more Islamic ideology their English is taught as a foreign language and the key line the key word is foreign here what are these children getting and what the teachers think that these children should become in the future what is the conception of the teachers about their students and what is the conception of these students about themselves in the future so because of the social and cultural repercussions and importance of this topic I have set my topic in a post-structuralist framework in order to see phenomenon of assimilation and resistance in these two schools and to place it in a post-colonial context by assimilation I mean acceptance of Western culture teaching books to children which has Christmas snowfall Santa Claus and by resistance I mean wiping everything out teaching them about the mosque about prayer about local culture but not telling them anything about the West these are the two extremes now I am using as my method I'm using imagine communities which is a concept which is a construct proposed by Bonnie Norton in order to see what these children want to become in the future and what is the effect of that imaginative flight upon their learning so my methodology would be to take the data from the students and the teachers to interviews analyze it in a critical discourse analysis in order to put it in the broader sociocultural context I would also be using other sources of information by research and broadly are how culture and linguistic identities of the students are shaped in these two schools what are their imagined communities when they are studying English as a foreign language and what effect does it have on learning of English in the meantime Malala turn 18 the previous year she's doing a lot of work in my country as well as another and she opened a school for refugee girls in the Syrian refugee camps while I dream I dream I dream of a just an equal education system for all children in my country thank you because I think that apart from the identity crisis that I'm going to focus on this identity crisis is just a manifestation of a larger socio-economic phenomena which is which is structured along the class system in the in the society so the class system it perpetuates itself in collusion or in agreement with the education system the education system provides very little opportunity of good education to these children and they have very little opportunity of getting quality teaching in English and English in the country in this country is the key to access high pair job high-paid jobs access high high positions in the military in the bureaucracy politicians business everywhere you see so these children they are not they account for 92% of the population the children to your right they account for about four to five percent while there are other schools that are in the middle they account for three to four percent so by just I mean why the education system is not being being being harmonized in a way that every child whether they are born to poor parents or to rich parents they have equal chances thank you the challenges are that on the one hand these the elite schools especially they would not want themselves to be put in the same basket with the with the non-elite schools because they themselves of themselves as you know symbol status so at first I would I had a bit of a challenge in convincing them that I am not a threat to them I'm not going to degrade their their their value in the society I'm not going to degrade their prestige by putting them against a school which to them is like nothing and they would say like oh you're going to place us against them but we train our teachers and and and Oxford certified trainers they come to Islamabad and the trainer teacher and you are placing against those schools so I said no this is not my purpose and I had to do quite some bit of convincing that I am here just as an observer I am not here to judge I'm just trying to find out what is happening and to present it that's that's a key point they all the the proliferation of the private sector in the country it is because of the lack of a clearly defined education policy in the country so the education policy is in place but if you read the document by end of reading the document you read to the last page you get no sense of what they want people to do there is so much school for people to define it in their own way and that is what they are taking advantage of some people are teaching Oxford indoors books other people are printing their own books in the country there is a government school system which is printing its own books there are mother's house which are printing religious books so this is all because of a lake of a clearly defined education policy and this you pointed that very well this is a central concern for my research