A short video surfaced last week on many Nepalis’ Facebook and other social media. Contrary to my usual practice of not sharing media links of trivial matters, I was compelled to check this one out. Our countryman clad in traditional Nepali costume was among those captured in the video. He seemed utterly clueless about the interviewer’s questions, many of them asked in lucid English.
The frustration displayed on Facebook was perhaps a right measure of the extremely poor linguistics skills of this interviewee, especially when he was asked what Nepali cuisine was, and what things to do in Nepal were. [break]
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Even after subsequent attempts—after the interviewer translated ‘cuisine’ to food—our fellow seemed more puzzled and less embarrassed about his inability to comprehend and respond.
This particular segment of the interview episode became a hot topic in a popular American Television Talk show. Many took to the new media to vent their anger at being ridiculed for a visiting delegate’s lack of English language skills, and for the fear of being further ridiculed among their foreign friends.
That the delegate had gone to the United States General Assembly, perhaps the highest ranking meeting of its kind in the world, was further embarrassing. Before making premature judgments about the incident, I waited, only to find that the interviewed gentleman was not a government servant. He was the president of Federation of Disabled Nepal, a non-governmental social organization working for the welfare of differently-abled populace of Nepal.
Later, I got to know that under his leadership, the federation had made impressive accomplishments and advanced disability right movement to a whole new level. His prosaic English language skills aside, the entire episode definitely urged me to ponder on our English language skills, without bickering and pinpointing any particular individual.
First of all, any discussion of our English language skills calls for a reflection on our entire education system, which is structurally flawed and poorly executed. I vividly remember beginning the letters of English Alphabet only in fourth grade, and getting by on a single mediocre English class throughout my secondary education.
It was only when I travelled to capital city in pursuit of higher education that I figured out that I needed to make my own initiatives to improve my English. What is more troubling is that when I visited my alma matter only this year, I found the same system of learning and the same set of instructors as 15 years ago.
They were oblivious to the changing dynamics of education, thanks to government policies that offer no curriculum and skill development training to teachers during their entire tenure.
Public schools are a mess when it comes to quality teaching, instructor training and extracurricular activities. Even the exorbitantly priced Xavier’s, Angels and Banasthalis and others in the cohort perform poorly in communication. The occasional requests for help in editing and English coursework I receive come from boastful private boarding school products.
Often, our academic fiasco is attributed to continuing political stalemate, coupled with ephemeral governments and frequent Bandas. We fail to recognize that our education system—focused on forced memorization and having limited space for creative thinking, innovation and ideas sharing—should take the most blame.
Linguistic borrowing continues to evolve as emerging technological breakthrough and cross-cultural exchanges introduce newfangled terminologies. New York Times recently reported that the editors of the Duden dictionary, the German equivalent of the Oxford English Dictionary, added 5,000 new words to its 26th edition, many of them English or of English origin, including “digital native” and “flashmob.” While English is not the ultimate passport to intellectual success and material prosperity, it definitely strengthens our credentials to thrive in an increasingly competitive globalized society.
Take our northern neighbor for an example. China, the world’s second largest economy with its growing political and economic clout around the world, whose students are increasingly enrolling at American, British and Australian Universities, is testament to the profound impact of English language in education and career. The southern neighbor, India, competes in the global economy with manpower adept at technological and scientific skills and well versed in English.
Secondly, the incident introduced in the first paragraph teaches a harsh yet telling lesson to our government, private sector, and non-government entities: we lack ‘preparation’, whether it is for a routine meeting or a high level intergovernmental summit. Several prior international deliberations by our bureaucrats have been intellectual insults against our collective conscience. Our government agencies who take the onus of organizing and coordinating national and international meetings must conduct preparatory classes on soft skills such as communication, language, dining etiquettes, international travel proprieties, networking protocols and even personal grooming.
Foreign visits by civil servants are on the rise and will continue to do so as international linkages provide opportunities for education, training and capacity development of our workforce. More than the semantics, the style of communication where political correctness, composure and confidence of a speaker can outweigh the depth of subject matter, is of paramount importance. When our civil service exams do not test aspiring civil servants’ skills in problem solving, communication, teamwork and leadership, it’s imperative that new hires be inducted and trained thoroughly in these areas prior to assignments.
Lastly but most importantly, the problem lies in our psyche. Perhaps inspired by our botched leadership, we refuse to open the doors to personal and professional improvement. At schools, administrators and academicians resist new forms of teaching and scholarly engagement. At government offices, civil servants delightfully stick to the status quo.
Collectively, our poor reading habits contribute much to our feeble linguistic foundation.
Putting aside inadequately resourced libraries in colleges, community libraries are virtually non-existent in Nepal, and people loiter around small tea shops engaged in political chatter. On personal levels, we are so accustomed to complacency and fundamentalism that any change from status quo is a nonsensical proposition to us. During my days as an educational counselor, I remember that students aspiring for the US and Australia would always look for short-cuts, and try to avoid exams. That is a glaring testimony of our unsystematic approach to learning.
I hope we will be able to make a paradigm shift in our education system, keep an open mind to lifelong learning, and understand and respect the importance of soft skills in professional lives. I urge the gentleman in question to translate humiliation into opportunity by learning foreign language skills. For me, it is time to enroll in an online course in Machine learning.
The writer has an MBA from George Mason University, Virginia, the US
Arun.america@gmail.com
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