The Construction of Nationalist Narratives in Textbooks and Process of Radicalization in School and College Students. A Study of Social Sciences Textbooks in Pakistan

This research is about how social science textbooks contribute to the process of radicalization among school and college-going students. The central argument of this argument is that education has become more like a political project in states like Pakistan, faced with the perceived existentialist threat. The result of all this is the inclusion of heavily militarized content in the textbooks in both the public and private sectors of education. These contents promote narrow nationalism based on us versus them narratives by dubbing India and other Western countries as enemy states that pose an existentialist threat to Pakistan. This research further challenges the wrongly held belief that Madrassa education has been the real source of radicalization by arguing that the real problem lies in the mainstream education system taught in schools and colleges. This research employed secondary sources of data collection, including research papers, books, and newspaper articles.