Reform and education are contested terms. When the two words are put together, the topic is sure to spark a lively debate. Debates, however, do not produce answers. They merely generate more questions.[break]
Reform seeks to remove “faults or abuses, especially moral, political, or social” and does so without dismantling what already exists. It is thus a substitute of revolution, which implies a fundamental change or reversal of conditions.
Reforms can sometimes also initiate a process that culminates in complete transformation leading to peaceful revolution.
The definition of education is somewhat more complex, but it basically means systematic learning. Instructions can be informal.
Learning takes place in many ways. Discovery of fire may have been accidental. However, those who observed the phenomenon in nature, improvised methods of replicating it and taught themselves to use the flame for cooking were contributing to human knowledge.
Steve Jobs and Bill Gates dropped out of college, but they have taught a lot to those willing to learn from their entrepreneurial success stories.
The purpose of education varies. In early childhood, it is meant to instil social values. Schools attempt to create normalcy and order through a standardized education system. Colleges impart life skills. Universities aim to ignite curiosity and creativity and generate interest in the importance of continuous learning.
The common thread at all levels of education is the intention that a learner should develop character and mental powers to cope with the challenges of living in a constantly changing world.
Education is necessary for living in increasingly complex societies. Reforms become desirable when established methods cease to satisfy existing needs. But what does reforming education actually mean? From Plato to Robindro Nath Thakur and from John Dewey to Osho, all kinds of philosophers, poets and preachers have struggled with the question of reforming education.
The endeavour will probably continue in the future too. It is not easy to suggest measures for improvements in an ad hoc manner when experts of all kinds have failed to identify what exactly ails Nepal’s present education system.
Since clarity is difficult to achieve, here is a slight digression: pathologies of the education system that produces enforcers of bandas.
RAMPANT RESENTMENT
Marxist and Leninists brought in the politics of banda (forced shutdown) from West Bengal to Nepal. Later, Nepal Communist Party (UML) adapted the technique to suit Nepal’s soil, air and water during the early years after the restoration of democracy in the 1990s.
Given the experiences of the People’s Volunteers and Youth Force, there need not be any confusion about the nature and culture of an Akhil Force.
They would be extremely efficient enforcers of bandas in the future.
After the demise of Girija Prasad Koirala, the Nepali Congress has lost its moorings. Libertarians want to turn it into a replica of Rastriya Prajatantra Party.
After a short flirtation with Madhav Kumar Nepal, conservatives in the party have been enamoured with the politics of UML and wish to become its clone. NC’s call for a banda early last week was probably a unanimous decision of the party.
Once a banda has been announced, it is no more under the control of the political party that had called it. Professional enforcers take over once the decision has been made.
The NC was a novice in the business, but by UML standards, the banda on December 19 was indeed peaceful, despite instances of arson and intimidation here and there.
On the day of the banda, helmeted youths were keeping an eye on the empty streets from every corner. Motorcyclists with party flags monitored positions of every enforcer.
Roads had become impromptu cricket grounds. Shops in by-lanes did brisk business from behind their half-open shutters. Rickshaw-pullers were making a killing.
Instead of apprehensions, the mood in the city was that of a vacation. A banda had come to town after a long time, and everybody wanted to make the best use of it.
An idea dating back to Maoist insurgency year, that every Friday should be reserved for announcement of banda by whichever group wants to call for one, probably merits consideration.
It would create a five-day working week by default and give roads and environment of the Valley a traffic-free day to recuperate and recover from the stress. But that becomes a double digression.
In most parts of the city, traffic-free streets appeared feisty. All was not well everywhere, however. Wherever there was trouble, students were involved. Many of them were children; some of them were school kids with or without uniforms.
What have we done to our children? Where did they learn to burn tyres? Who taught them to release the pressure from wheels of motorcycles like professionals? How did they acquire the brutality of pulling drivers out of cars and breaking windshields? When street children are involved, it is easy to dismiss them as deviants.
But most young hooligans that day appeared to be middle class, some even apologizing in English to tourists forced to walk to the airport.
It is easy to dismiss youngsters enforcing bandas as criminals. Committing an act proscribed by law is after all a crime. However, when such misdemeanours have political sanction, calling it a crime is not of much help.
In societies emerging out of authoritarian regimes, respect for authority becomes low. Traditions begin to lose legitimacy.
Conventions are contested. In order to cultivate order and stability in society, laws have to be modernized. Institutions have to be reformed to reflect changed social realities.
Enforcement has to be made in an impartial manner with no hint of favoritism or discrimination. However, what matters most in creating a culture of peace is to impart education that instils a sense of belongingness among youngsters. Is that where Nepal’s education system has failed?
Everyone in this country wants to run away somewhere, anywhere, just to escape. The frustration that results from the yawning gap between expectations and achievements can turn anyone into a raving rebel bent upon destroying everything in sight as long as it is relatively safe to do so.
Political causes, whether genuine or fake, encourage people to go on a rampage without any fear of reprisals.
HOLISTIC EDUCATION
Buzzwords are invented to avoid specificity. It is safe to say that a holistic education should incorporate head, heart and hands of a learner, but it is not easy to design a system that operationalizes the strategy for a large number of pupils at an affordable cost.
The word compulsory entails a huge responsibility, but universal primary education is the declared goal of most governments, even in the poor and heavily populated countries. Some form of uniformity then becomes necessary to make such a mammoth task practicable.
For basic education, clamor for emphasis on mother tongue will probably continue. Governments, however, will find it hard to discard the Prussian model of manufacturing unity through teaching the same language from kindergartens.
Even though Nepal was never formally a British colony, the impact of Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859) on Nepal’s education is hard to miss.
Inspired by the Macaulay Minutes, an American consultant, Dr. Hugh B Wood, designed Nepal’s education system in the 1950s to produce a class of persons, Nepali in blood and colour, but American in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect, as also in aspirations and attitudes. Obviously, these goals have to be changed.
That has to be the aim of educational reforms.
Priorities of reform would depend on the kind of choices Nepal’s politicos are ready to make. If labour export is seen as an unavoidable method of employment creation, the BEST (Basic education and skill training) approach after primary education is still a safe bet. It would also help turn Nepal into a competent service economy capable of benefiting from the boom in India and China.
However, if competitiveness in the international market were the ambition, huge investments would have to be made in science education.
Technological training is all very well for the short-term, but researchers and scientists of the future would have to be creative and not just competent. Wasn’t it Albert Einstein who said that imagination was more important than knowledge? The ability to imagine can also be acquired, but not without spending several years in the lab or field after a sound grounding in theories.
Interest in liberal education that taught philosophy, literature, arts, politics, law and economics is on the wane. Every college student wants a diploma in information technology to go abroad or earn a degree in sociology to be able to find a job with donor agencies or their front NGOs. Dr. Wood’s values have spread beyond his own imagination as individualism sprouts everywhere.
At some point of time, sooner rather than later, the government will have to intervene and take proactive measures to lure the best and brightest of the land into humanities so that the country does not become bereft of home-grown leadership material in future.
The bane of Nepal’s education system, however, is commercialization on a massive scale. Privatization of education contains everything of what Mahatma Gandhi called Seven Deadly Sins. Investors amass wealth without work.
Regulators get to indulge in pleasure without conscience. Teachers impart knowledge without character. Managers conduct commerce without morality. There is no humanity in education of sciences.
Worship, mostly of the Goddess of Wealth, entails little sacrifice. It all ends up producing politics without principles.
King Mahendra was made to hire Wood in the 1950s to institute an education system that would help Americans prepare for the Cold War in Nepal.
In retrospect, it seems that the program was fated to fail right from the start: Manufacture of uniformity works best when the political system is open, fair and competitive.
When the dice is perceived to be loaded in favor of the privileged, uniformity does not create unity. It ignites a backlash and blinding rage.
It is time for educational planners of Nepal to go back to the drawing boards and chart a new course for our children so that they do not pick up a stone as soon as they see something alluring and realise that it would always remain beyond their reach.
A common school, anyone? A place where children of a rag-picker, an army officer, a banker and government minister sit on the same bench, eat the same complementary midday meal and appear for the same examination together may appear impractical now, but such an idea is perhaps less bizarre than a communist utopia.
When he uttered these words in an address to the diplomatic corps of the Latin American republics on the first anniversary of the Alliance for Progress on March 13, 1962, US President John F Kennedy probably knew what he was talking about: Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.
The best way of peaceful revolution is continuous reform.
Lal contributes to The Week with his biweekly column Reflections. He is one of the widely read political analyst in Nepal.
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