ISLAMABAD: For helping the children to tolerate each other with better sense of responsibility, improve their critical thinking and civic sense, a language and literacy programme, 1001 Nights, was presented in a meeting held here on Tuesday.
The presentation on the language and literacy programme was given by Mehnaz Aziz and Children Global Network (CGN) to State Minister for Education Muhammad Baligh ur Rehman.
The visiting team requested the minister to have the programme reviewed by the National Curriculum Council in an upcoming meeting to further scale it up for implementation in Pakistan.
The basic purpose of the programme was to inculcate civic sense in children through TV shows, comics, and academic curriculum. The meeting was informed that children were being given one-hour class on civic sense by using this material of tales of 1001 nights.
Aziz said the children would be engaged in classroom as well as home activities with the help of this programme.
A TV show has already been screened on local cable network along with the programmes in the countries like Jordan, Syria, Morocco and Iraq in 2012.
The CGN team told the minister that this programme has already been reviewed by the Federal Directorate of Education (FDE) in 2012 and signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the ministry of Capital Administration and Development Division (CADD).
This programme was tested in 20 schools of thefederal capital and 10 schools of Punjab in 2014, and was implemented in grades 2nd, 3rd, and 4th.
The state minister highly appreciated the concept and assured the CGN team to review it by the curriculum council for further improvement.
“I always accent on character building more than just getting simple education in schools,” said the minister. “If our civic sense and tolerance level as a nation can be improved through such programmes then we should support it whole heartedly.”
Moreover, he said that it’s just not tolerating each other what matters, but understanding each other’s point of view is very essential in this global age.
The meeting was attended by Additional Secretary Dr Allah Bakhsh Malik, Joint Education Adviser Rafiq Tahir, and General Education Director Talat.
