Unit 4 Major Shabbir Sharif Shaheed: "he embraced martyrdom… awarded him with the Nishan-e-Haider" (english-6-en · PAGE 43). Unit 11 A Poem by a Soldier. A third martial text appears as the model essay for teaching essay structure — Rashid Minhas Shaheed (· PAGE 120). Aspiration is explicit in the unit's dialogue drill: "I want to be a soldier when I grow up… Pakistan Army is the best army in the world" (· PAGE 44). Review question: "Why should we not cry over the death of a soldier?" (· PAGE 128)
Overview / Findings / Militarism
Military martyrdom enters at class 6, in two languages at once
Punjab is the only board that puts military martyrdom in an English reader, and its class-6 reader carries three separate martial texts. The same Nishan-e-Haider roll appears in its Urdu reader in the same year — the board is redundant across media at age eleven. Punjab's militarism peaks at the start and falls steadily to matriculation, which is the opposite of the usual assumption that this material arrives as pupils get older.
Punjab's English 6 puts it in front of a child three times over. Unit 4 is Major Shabbir Sharif Shaheed, who “embraced martyrdom… awarded him with the Nishan-e-Haider” (p. 43); Unit 11 is A Poem by a Soldier; and the model essay used to teach essay structure is Rashid Minhas Shaheed (p. 120). The aspiration is made explicit in a dialogue drill — “I want to be a soldier when I grow up… Pakistan Army is the best army in the world” — and a review question asks, “Why should we not cry over the death of a soldier?” The Urdu reader of the same year names eleven Nishan-e-Haider recipients at pp. 55–59 and sets an exercise to write one up. Class 7 then repeats it with two full biographies. Now the comparison: KP's English 6 has zero martial content — its only “army” is a grammar drill — and no Nishan-e-Haider appears in any KP English book from class 6 to 9. Sindh's English 6 has none either, and the single Nishan-e-Haider in Sindh's whole corpus is a wrong-answer distractor. The Federal Board's English 9 returns zero martial tokens across 44,960 words. One board out of five made this choice. The age pattern is the second surprise: Punjab's militarism score is highest at class 6 (3.5) and falls every year to 1.5 at class 10, so the material is front-loaded onto the youngest pupils rather than saved for older ones. Sindh stays flat near 1.2 throughout and the Federal Board near 1.1. Balochistan is the one board that moves the other way, rising from 1.3 at class 6 to 2.5 at class 10.
What the books say
Each entry below is the catalogue's own record for that book on that
axis, printed as it stands. Pages marked PDF p. are counted from the first page of the scanned file, which is how most of this corpus was read; pages marked printed p. are the folio printed on the paper. The two differ by however many unnumbered cover leaves a volume carries, so the label matters when you go to check.
Theme-grade. A lesson at pp.55–59 names eleven Nishan-e-Haider recipients (Sarwar, Tufail Muhammad, Aziz Bhatti, Rashid Minhas, Muhammad Akram, Shabbir Sharif, Muhammad Hussain, Mahfuz, Sher Khan, Lalak Jan, plus Saif Ali Janjua/Hilal-e-Kashmir) — urdu-6-ur · PAGE 58. Exercise directs pupils to study the deeds of Pakistan Army martyrs and write up one martyr in their own words (· PAGE 64). Nishan-e-Haider defined again at · PAGE 77; a martyrdom narrative at · PAGE 79
Unit 2 Martyrs of Pakistan — two full martyr biographies. Major Tufail Muhammad: "He embraced martyrdom on 7th August, 1958. He was awarded with the Nishan-e-Haider" (english-7-en · PAGE 21). Rashid Minhas "deliberately sacrificing his life for the honour of Pakistan… the nation remembers Rashid Minhas as a national hero with reverence, due to his bravery and supreme sacrifice" (· PAGE 22). Post-reading: "When is Defence Day celebrated?" / "Name the first martyr who was awarded Nishan-e-Haider" (· PAGE 22); writing task "Nishan-e-Haider and its significance" (· PAGE 27)
Unit 4 The Great Visionaries (Quaid + Iqbal). The single "Nishan-e-Haider" occurrence in the whole Sindh corpus is a wrong-answer distractor in an MCQ about which award Bilquis Edhi received (english-9-en · PAGE 145). It is not martial content and should not be counted as one
No national-martial content of any kind. The most "national" unit is a Sindh diary entry from Badin; unit 5 is Brazil/Ghana/Thailand
What was checked and not found
A claim that one board does something and the others do not is only as good as the search that failed to find it elsewhere. These are those searches.
Zero. Role model is The Fantastic Shoemaker, a Peshawar artisan. No Nishan-e-Haider in any KP English book, classes 6–9
Zero martial content. Unit 8 Taxila, unit 17 Qissa Khwani Bazaar, unit 18 the Sikh Pakhtun boy Vikram Singh. The word "army" occurs once, as a grammar drill: "The army walked across the land" (english-6-en · line 3043)
Zero martial tokens across 44,960 words.
Limits
An earlier version of this finding said the class-6 reader carried martial content twice and that militarism rises with age in no board. Both were understatements of the record: the reader carries three martial texts, and Balochistan's militarism does rise across the classes. Corrected 23 August 2026.
Boards and confidence
Punjab high confidence
Confidence reflects the evidence tier this rests on. High means native or English-medium text verified by exact string match; medium means it depends partly on Urdu-medium material read at theme grade, or on an absence. See the method.
Source
Punjab English 6, 2022-23 edition — PDF p. 43; Punjab Urdu 6 (Urdu medium), 2022-23 edition — PDF p. 55; Punjab English 7, 2022-23 edition — PDF p. 21; Khyber Pakhtunkhwa English 9, 2006-curriculum reprint edition; Khyber Pakhtunkhwa English 6, 2006-curriculum reprint edition; Sindh English 9, portal-listed edition — PDF p. 145; Sindh English 6, portal-listed edition; Federal English 9, NBF printing edition
In the Urdu reader the lesson is Lesson 9, “Defence Day of Pakistan”, at printed p. 57 — PDF p. 55 in the scan.
Cite this finding
Textbook Evidence Project, “Military martyrdom enters at class 6, in two languages at once”. Evidence from 8 textbooks (Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Sindh, Federal). Corpus version 210 records. Retrieved from https://textbookevidence.com/findings/martyrdom-at-eleven/
Two citations are appropriate here, not one. The line above cites this finding. If you are quoting the textbook passage itself, cite the book — its full bibliographic record, edition and approval reference is on its own page, linked from each evidence entry above — and say that you found it here.
Challenge this finding
This is a claim about a printed book, so it is checkable, and it should be checked. If the citation is wrong, the edition is misidentified, the passage is quoted unfairly, or the finding does not survive its own evidence, that is worth reporting and it will be acted on whether or not the correction is convenient for the argument. Corrections are logged publicly in the corrections log; this applies fully to the boards themselves.