Education in Pakistan is in crisis and everyone has a list of recommendations to fix it. Few ask why there is a crisis in the first place, why it has persisted for 75 years, and why it has become worse with every passing decade.

This set of essays explores these unasked questions by locating the economic and political functions of education in their societal context and tracing their history in the subcontinent. The analysis calls into question the assumption that the state is always and unambiguously interested in improving education.

The realisation that education might be the terrain on which battles for the domination of society are fought can help explain many otherwise puzzling phenomena and one can begin to understand why in the 21st century, the focus of education in Pakistan is shifting from inquiry to dogma. The chasm between the education we should demand and the one we are being given is widening. This book raises the big question: How can this chasm be bridged?

Dr. Anjum Altaf, a member of the International Coalition for Education Reform in Pakistan (ICERP), obtained MA and PhD degrees from Stanford University. He was a Visiting Associate Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Dean of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS). He is the author of Transgressions: Poems Inspired by Faiz Ahmed Faiz (2019), More Transgressions: Poems Inspired by Faiz Ahmed Faiz (2021), and co-author (with Amit Basole) of Thinking with Ghalib: Poetry for a New Generation (2021).