SLC and beyond

When the SLC exam result came out last week, I was struck by how much this country has changed since I appeared for my SLC exam in 1986. This year, my niece, Manisha, viewed her result on the net in Jhapa before I managed to log on to the result site, thanks to rapid expansion of the internet across the country. In 1987, I had to wait impatiently for two weeks even after the announcement of the result for my report card to arrive at the school. But that was because I was among the lucky few to have attended a private school in Kathmandu. One of my colleagues, who originally hails from Bhojpur, an eastern hilly district, says he came to know that he had passed the exam many weeks after the result was announced in the state-owned Radio Nepal while report cards arrived much, much later. For my niece, she just had to type in her symbol number and her date of birth and the report card was on the screen. No one ever predicted such a possibility 23 years ago.



1986 doesn’t seem to be that long ago. It isn’t. But then look at the changes Nepal has gone through during the past 23 years: Nepal TV had just arrived and a TV antenna at the top of the building was a status symbol in Kathmandu; forget satellite TV. If you wanted to call your relatives in Biratnagar, you had to go to Nepal Telecom’s exchange center at Tripureshwar. Mobile phones? Internet? Those words meant nothing. Less than 10 percent of Nepalis had access to electricity and we had just one airline company; just two private banks; no private TV or a radio channel. And not even a private daily newspaper!




Let’s imagine an urban life without a cable TV; without a mobile phone; without an internet; and without a newspaper. It’s simply unimaginable. Two things happened in the last two decades or so that swept Nepal, along with many other developing countries.



Technology, mainly digital technology, exploded at an unprecedented rate. And advent of liberal democracy, especially after the end of Cold War era, and liberalization of trade and services facilitated the expansion of these technologies. Never before in history had technology traveled this fast across continents. Take for example, the 19th century technological wonders: Steam engine-propelled locomotive (1825), telegram (1844), electric bulb (1874) and telephone (1887). All of these stayed in Continental Europe and America for many, many years after their invention assisting and enriching the European and American civilizations before they finally came to Asia and Africa.



With railways they traveled faster, with telegram they communicated quicker and with electric bulbs they worked for longer hours. The cumulative effect was that the Europeans and Americans did things in a year that others could do only in several years. This is when the gap between Europe, America and the rest of the world began to widen. Otherwise, till the 1820s, India and China together contributed over 40 percent in world trade and they were also the two largest exporting countries.

In terms of technological exposure, things are different today. Want to buy the latest 3G i-phone? No problem, go to Pashupati Plaza and get the latest version of any company. You may have to wait for a few months to pick the latest technology but it won’t be for years.



What do all these mean to the new SLC graduates? It’s certainly more than getting their results quicker: They are better connected to the world; they are better exposed to opportunities; and, most importantly, they have a better chance of excelling.



A few decades ago, hardly any SLC graduate or other Nepali students would dream of going abroad, other than India, for studies. Recalling her first stint in Nepal, US Ambassador, Nancy J Powell, told us that only 900 Nepalis filed for US visa in 1982 and hardly any of them were students. But, last year, 35,000 Nepalis filed for US visa. And Nepal has become one of the major countries to send students to the US every year. As affluence and opportunity gradually shifts to Asia, they even don’t have to go to the US or the UK or Australia. They just have to study hard, be creative, be confident and be ready to seize the opportunity. If this is an Asian century, it’s their century as well.



But they have to make choices carefully. They have to figure out what they want to study and what they want to do in life, and why. It cannot be someone else’s decision. It cannot be their parent’s decision, nor can it be their friends’ decision. Advice they may seek from others but decision should be theirs. Many SLC graduates take decisions based on their parent’s wishes and sometimes succumb to peer pressure. The result can be devastating. Many can’t complete their study simply because they were not competent enough for the discipline they chose or because they had no passion in pursuing it. For some, it can be an end of their academic journey, even for the talented ones. Parents have a role to play here. They are their children’s best advisors and they should help them take an informed decision.



Unfortunately, many parents see their children as vehicles to realize the dream they failed to achieve and impose their wish upon them. That’s dangerous and could be destructive as well. For the obsessively imposing parents, here are a few lines of advice from Khalil Gibran.



Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of life’s longing for itself. They come through you but not from you, and though they are with you, yet they belong not to you. You may give them your love but not your thoughts. For they have their own thoughts.



ameetdhakal@gmail.com

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