Beyond nominal inclusion: Religious equity and language neutrality in the ethics curriculum of Sindh

In principle, ten religious and cultural traditions are treated equally in the Sindh's Ethics curriculum, but not in practice. Ethics was introduced as an alternative to Islamiyat for non-Muslims in Sindh, but no study had been done to examine whether the subject could give the same level of depth, respect and register as its subject matter. Official papers of the Ethics curriculum for Grades III – VIII (frameworks, textbooks and Student Learning Outcomes) are analyzed qualitatively in this paper, with religious equity as a theoretical basis from Banks' multicultural education theory and the UNESCO (2017) framework for inclusivity. Seven key learning areas, six religious traditions, and two honorific density and truth-claim phrasing were coded for 72 items from six documents. Each of the ten traditions has one introductory unit. Further away from that unit, the coverage splits with festival content being more Hindu (4 of 11) and personality content being more Christian (4 of 15). Honorific density ranges from 9.00 per item (Sikhism) to zero (Zoroastrianism, Confucianism and Taoism). In three of five Islam and two of three Hinduism items, doctrine is presented as "fact," even though both source documents assume a "neutrality" policy. The curriculum is thus nominally inclusive but only partially substantive equitable and this can be addressed by tweaks to policy or wording.