Ideology In Education

An ideology that combines all and provides relevance to the developmental needs of the people; is an instrument of society development ideology that is appropriate and sensitive to the peculiar needs of the people, therefore these ideologies might resolve the imbalances in societies (Giroux and McLaren 1989).
'Ideology', in simple words, can be defined as a set of beliefs, usually entertained at group levels. Ideology at group levels can be contrasted with individual opinions in a society. Ideology constructs the stereotypes that are legitimized and supported by certain social institutions. Thus, ideology that has the backing of powerful social institutions becomes dominant in a society and has the potential to capture the minds of marginalized

Among other social institutions engaged in the process of socialisation, educational institutions play an important part in the construction and perpetuation of certain ideologies which generally serve the interests of the dominant groups of society.
If we look at the history of education in Pakistan we see how education has been used to propagate certain ideologies favoured by powerful rulers. In Ayub Khan's era, the whole emphasis was on 'economic development' whereas social development was undermined. During Zia's regime, educational institutions were used to 'Islamise' society, whereas Pervez Musharraf's emphasis was on an imported brand of 'moderate enlightenment'.
No ruler ever asked the masses for their choice or preference. They could make a decision on the part of others as they enjoyed power. The fact that every powerful ruler tried to use education to legitimise and promote a certain ideology suggests the significance of education and its two-way relationship with

The ultimate aim of this learning is to cram pre-existing and fixed items of knowledge and reproduce them in examination papers. This ideology of learning is devoid of any critical thinking. Thus students find no motivation to reflect and reinterpret a phenomenon.
This process of dominant teaching and passive learning gets encouragement and reassurance by the ideology of the existing assessment system. Our prevailing assessment system is geared towards the piecemeal assessment of disjointed items where students are not required to understand and apply acquired knowledge. This prompts us to look at the ideology of a broader aim of the present educational system that is biased in favour of powerful groups. The kind of education, prevalent in most educational institutions, not only supports existing power structures but also widens the gap between the haves and the have-nots.
Recently there have been calls for qualitative improvement in education. The required improvement cannot come from cosmetic changes. The problem is far deeper. We need to challenge ideologies associated with notions of education, pedagogy, learning, assessment and the