​A murmur breaks out in a fifth-grade English class in Karachi as the teacher asks 10-year old Wali* to answer a question. But before he can respond, laughter spreads across the room as a classmate comments that Wali won’t know the answer since people from the north are ‘stupid’. 

In his five years of teaching, Munir Lalani, an Institute for Educational Development (IED) alumnus, has noticed many instances in the classroom where students make generalisations about a social group or describe different beliefs as being ‘weird’.   

“Boys and girls are influenced by the behaviour and attitudes of those around them,” says Mr Lalani. “As teachers, we need to challenge prevailing stereotypes about gender, religion and ethnicity so that students learn how to be respectful and tolerant of diversity.” 

Mr Lalani believes that the best teachers have an inspirational effect on their students that motivates them to do their best. This impact extends beyond academics as teachers are also responsible for imparting valuable character-building lessons, he adds. 

For his master’s thesis at the IED, Mr Lalani decided to design a study to test whether literature could be used to introduce students to different points of view thereby promoting tolerance in the classroom. His study saw him choose two classes at an English-speaking school in Karachi; one which would receive a literature-based teaching intervention while a comparison group would be taught concepts tied to pluralism and the dangers of prejudice without the use of literature. 

Before launching his project, he developed a pre and post intervention test to measure prejudice in the areas of gender, religion and ethnicity. Over a period of two months, he worked with IED faculty to validate this assessment method so that Grade 5 and Grade 6 students could relate to the situations mentioned in the test. Students were then introduced to extracts from two-renowned works of non-fiction: The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank; and Hannah Goslar Remembers: A Childhood Friend of Anne Frank. Both works chronicle the lives of two teenagers who endured immense hardship and much prejudice during the Nazi occupation of Amsterdam in World War II. 

Mr Lalani recalls that the students were particularly moved when they read that Anne Frank was forced to switch schools and even stopped from riding a bicycle due to her religion. They were also struck by a scene in which Hannah Goslar meets her childhood friend, Anne Frank, in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in northern Germany. 

Besides learning about the emotional journey of the two young women; students took part in activities that made them reflect on the suffering of those facing discrimination. Through the use of role-play, group discussions and assignments focused on the viewpoints of different characters; the project made students consider how they’d react to instances of unfair treatment. 

“Reading personal stories showed the students how prejudice can lead to acts of great cruelty and injustice. They were able to empathise with what Anne and Hannah went through and this helped them question other instances where people were treated differently on the basis of who they were,” he added.   

While both groups benefited from their respective interventions with post-tests showing a reduction in prejudiced attitudes, the group receiving the literature-based intervention reported a more significant reduction in negative attitudes towards other social groups. Mr Lalani noted that the need to respect others and concerns about equality were recurring themes in the presentations at the end of the literature-based activity. He was especially impressed by two students who went on to buy Anne Frank’s diary and another who researched the life of Hannah Goslar on YouTube.

Since his graduation, Mr Lalani has returned to teaching and is grateful for the guidance and supervision he received from IED faculty for his project. 

“Their feedback from review to defence was really helpful as it helped me explore my project from different perspectives. It was wonderful to pursue my passion for pluralism through this study and I’ll always remember how satisfying it was to see students think about what it means to be a tolerant member of society,” he adds.