Literacy in Pakistan: A Language Socialization Perspective

Abstract

An important facet of Pakistani education system is socialization of students
conducted through textbooks at schools. The paper argues that there is existence of a certain
ideology in the texts that promotes statism, nationalism, patriotism, hate culture and
islamification. The state controls the masses with the ideology that claims to benefit them by
making them submissive, passive and yes menish. The texts reveal asymmetrical relations of
power and dominion between the state and its citizens. Reading the text in its particular socio
cultural setting one can easily decipher symbolic phenomena embedded in the texts that socialize
the students into unequal relations (domination being one aspect of this association) between the
state and its people who are oppressed, marginalized and persecuted in this whole process.