43
editions catalogued
Overview / The historical layer
Punjab Textbook Board · 1949–2005
What the books used to say
Everything else on this site describes textbooks in use now. This section holds 43 editions that were withdrawn — the oldest printed in 1949 — so that a claim about the present has something to be measured against.
These books are not taught anywhere today.
Nothing in this section describes what a Pakistani child is currently learning. Quoting a 1983 edition as evidence about the present curriculum would be a straightforward error, and it is the error this section is most likely to invite. Every record here is badged, and none is scored against the rubric — that instrument was built for the current curriculum generations, and stretching it across fifty years would compare instruments rather than books.
Why a historical layer exists at all
A finding like “Partition violence is absent from every book” is much weaker than it sounds if the same absence has held since 1949, and much stronger if it appeared in a particular decade. Without older editions, every claim about the current curriculum is a snapshot that cannot distinguish a long-standing silence from a recent deletion.
The layer also answers a narrower question this project was set. It began partly from one former pupil's recollection of Punjab schooling between 1989 and 1994 — a memory that history, Islamiyat and social studies had jointly framed pre-Islamic India and pre-Islamic Arabia as a shared state of barbarism from which Muslim rule delivered rescue. Testing that against today's books can only ever be suggestive, because today's books are not the books in question. This collection holds 7 editions printed inside that window.
Two of the site's studies bear directly on it: the moral-rescue thread and the iconoclasm thread. Both report negative results on the current corpus, and both are more interesting read against these older books than alone.
What is here, and what is missing
25
with a printed year recovered
56
years spanned
Classes present: 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9-10, 9, 10-11, 11, 11-12, 12. Subjects: Anatomy Physiology · Civics · Computer Science · Deeniyat · English Grammar · General Mathematics · General Science · Geography · Health Physical Education · History Islamic India · History Stories · History Tarikh E Islam · History Tarikh E Pakistan · Home Economics · Household · Ilm Ut Taleem · Islamic Philosophy Ethics · Islamiyat · Islamiyat Deeniyat · Jaid Metrical · Libas Sazi Dressmaking · Livestock · Mathematics · Pakistan Studies · Parcha Bafi Textiles · Physics · Social Studies · Urdu · Urdu Bahar E Urdu · Urdu Bostan E Adab.
Honest limits of this collection
- It is Punjab only. No comparable historical run was found for Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa or Balochistan, so nothing here supports a cross-province claim about the past.
- It is not a complete series. These are the editions that survived into a digital archive, which is not a random sample. Absence of a year proves nothing about that year.
- 18 of 43 carry no recoverable printing year — the imprint page is missing from the scan or was never captured. They are listed below, undated, rather than being assigned a guessed date.
- Most are Urdu-medium. Under this project's evidence rules Urdu material is theme-grade: usable for structure, chapter titles and proper nouns, never quoted verbatim. Nothing in this layer is quotable at the sentence level.
- Several fall outside classes 6–10, the range the rest of the study covers. They are kept because a primary or intermediate book still evidences what the board was publishing.
1940s 1
The first years after Partition. Textbooks were still being written for a state that did not yet have a settled account of itself.
| Year | Subject | Class | Medium | Pages |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1949 | History Stories | 6 | Urdu | 249 |
1970s 5
The 1973 Constitution, then the 1979 education policy under Zia-ul-Haq, which made Islamiyat and Pakistan Studies compulsory and set the terms much of the later curriculum inherited.
| Year | Subject | Class | Medium | Pages |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1974 | Social Studies | 1 | Urdu | 54 |
| 1976 | Anatomy Physiology | 9-10 | Urdu | 254 |
| 1976 | Livestock | 9-10 | Urdu | 170 |
| 1977 | Deeniyat | 4 | Urdu | 36 |
| 1977 | Health Physical Education | 9-10 | Urdu | 350 |
1980s 3
The Islamisation decade. The books printed here are the ones a pupil starting class 6 in the late 1980s would have carried.
| Year | Subject | Class | Medium | Pages |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1982 | Islamic Philosophy Ethics | 11-12 | Urdu | 316 |
| 1983 | Household | 9-10 | Urdu | 316 |
| 1984 | Civics | 9-10 | English | 174 |
1990s 10
The books in use through the 1990s, largely continuous with the 1980s revisions rather than a fresh generation.
| Year | Subject | Class | Medium | Pages |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1991 | History Islamic India | 11 | Urdu | 268 |
| 1992 | General Mathematics | 9-10 | English | 384 |
| 1992 | Geography | 9-10 | Urdu | 133 |
| 1992 | Parcha Bafi Textiles | 9-10 | Urdu | 135 |
| 1993 | Home Economics | 9-10 | Urdu | 174 |
| 1993 | Jaid Metrical | 9-10 | Urdu | 220 |
| 1994 | Ilm Ut Taleem | 10-11 | Urdu | 145 |
| 1996 | Libas Sazi Dressmaking | 9-10 | Urdu | 138 |
| 1997 | English Grammar | 9-10 | English | 348 |
| 1998 | Civics | 12 | Urdu | 230 |
2000s 6
The last editions before the National Curriculum 2006 rewrite reached the classroom, and the immediate predecessors of the books analysed in the current corpus.
| Year | Subject | Class | Medium | Pages |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2001 | Deeniyat | 3 | Urdu | 46 |
| 2001 | Computer Science | 9-10 | Urdu | 104 |
| 2003 | Urdu Bahar E Urdu | 9 | Urdu | 156 |
| 2004 | Physics | 9-10 | English | 136 |
| 2005 | Social Studies | 4 | Urdu | 130 |
| 2005 | Urdu Bostan E Adab | 9-10 | Urdu | 282 |
Undated 18
The scan carries no imprint page, so no printing year could be recovered. They are catalogued rather than dated by inference, because a guessed date in a reference work becomes someone else's fact.
How to use this section responsibly
Read it as a record of what was printed, not as a measurement. The current corpus is scored; this one is catalogued. Where the two are compared anywhere on this site, the comparison is named as such and the gap in method is stated with it. If you want the measured findings, they are in the findings; if you want the current books, they are in the database.