AN ATTEMPT TO REVIVE

‘Education’, the word that exhibits teaching and learning, is one of the basic-o-secondary needs of ours. “Education, Mr. complete, makes our life complete”, as quoted by one of the pioneering personalities, is true not only because it has got a complete set of vowels but also in a sense that it helps us distinguish between right and wrong, and choose the right alley. It carries a sole endeavor so as to advance us and the world at large, in counterclockwise direction. But I think the route of commercialized education in Nepal has not been able to fulfill complete hankerings of education. With dark stains utterly strenuous to remove, the current format undoubtedly produces quality free quantities each year, which is surely not good news for our country.

 During these thirteen years of schooling, I have been able to visualize the reality, the vogue that has been following since a long time, the trend truly poisonous. Since last couple of years, when my brain got its actual orbit, I used to spend most of my times reasonably juxtaposing our education system with everything I see with nothing: with a drunkard’s speech or one of my favorite birds parrot (hope you know why) and so on like that. Sometimes I think “Why are we doing this? I should stop this, change this” but then I realize “I have no alternatives.” Changing the system is not possible by an individual and even if anyone knows its reality, one has to jump in it. Sometimes when I watch TV channels like Discovery or something like that, it feels as if we are too far. Sometimes it feels like being a tortoise and even subjugation seems disgusting. We are very reluctant, we know why we are so, but can do nothing. Neither the ones in the driving seat ever realize this nor do the parents, thoroughly unpleasant.

It’s a great matter of disappointment when an outsider annotates,” Education for the Nepalese people means just the piles of certificate they receive but not the boundaries of knowledge they penetrate.” We love quantity; quality is surprisingly optional. This may not be legitimate for 10% students but for the rest 90%, it is absolutely true. Of course there are students who like to understand the facts and create ideas, but the ratio is very less. The curriculum and examination format has been developed in such a way that the culture of mugging up has filled up the atmosphere. We do everything for marks, we give bribe, they take bribe, we become parents and transfer the same culture to our wards, ultimately strengthening this ghastly culture. The consequence of this very lurid culture is not far from us. The culture of “certification” has produced engineers, who are afraid to step onto the house they have built; doctors who do away with the patients instead of disease; teachers who snore in the class; the politicians who bamboozle the nation and so on so forth. The reason for this very culture to develop is the parents turned students who have learnt just the same thing and these acquired characters transfer to the next generations and so on. But the main reason is the system, the loathsome system that embraces facts and neglects ideas. We are in the same condition as primitive England, the difference is that Englishmen advanced but we are in the same condition even after approximately two centuries of formal education.

Einstein had said,”Children are foundations of the nation. They should be treated with love and care.” Today’s children have to carry the load to forge the tomorrow’s nation. To design a good nation, they should be made well educated, otherwise the same politicians, doctors and engineers will be manufactured who may be congruent to the ones discussed above. But the main point is that the way they are being produced today is not systematic; rather the path of ‘crime’ is adopted. They violate child prerogatives, making the innocents victim of physical and mental punishments. Well, a kind of impression has been made upon the minds of our kids, that has concocted a huge gap between the teachers and students making the students afraid of teachers. The commercialization has made teachers and students a pair of parallel lines. It’s just because the qualified teachers do not teach the students, unlike in those developed nations where even the Ph. D holders teach nursery kids.

Surprisingly, in educational institutions a large fraction of teachers practice chastisements. They are engaged in mission punishment even if they know that they are on an erroneous lane. Now this teacher centered education system has created such atmosphere in which teachers scream for nothing, some students remain silent, some sleep mentally, some imagine, and some play with themselves. There is no teacher-student interaction nor the students’ participation or involvement. In that case the teachers’ speech turns out to be worthless just because no one learns and those who try to learn, they learn nothing in conventional learning environment. Sometimes I find no difference between politicians and teachers, both speak a lot but all in vain. There is no implementation of politician’s commitment and there is no idea of practical teaching within the teachers. The lack of technical or practical education system in our nation has manufactured huge cardinality of machines and produced donkeys. A ninth grader knows the exact definition of Fibula (a type of bone) but he cannot locate where it is. When I was at that stage, I could just see my friends with books on their hands, nodding and shouting the verses written in book, spilling the same in exam and securing marks, the only way to be successful. The ones worshipped on that occasion, may not always be the real one, and administration does not bother to find the real one as for the school’s publicity marks are needed, same ghastly marks, totally deteriorating the minds of the innocent students.

The present curriculum and examination module has been designed in such a way that the facts are paid more heed to rather than new ideas. If any one wants to use new methods, different from the ones being taught traditionally, he cannot. The students are wrongly assessed. They are installed a huge fence that prevents them to enter the garden of ideas. Their ideas are stabbed, enthusiasms are annihilated, interests are liquidated, and all the qualities are butchered. The only thing done so far by the system is that it has been successful to jab exactly the same lines written in books, nothing more than that.

The person of the century Albert Einstein had rightly said,” It’s not the fact that matters but ideas.” Well, it has always been a very good source of inspiration for me and if it were same for the ones in the driving seats then that would be some good for country as well. Why do we teach the dates of the war? The dates carry negligibly less meaning. Why don’t we teach them ‘why’ the war was taking place or why the humans were killing each other. At least students will utilize their time in refreshing their minds rather than wasting time learning those ugly dates. This present curriculum has failed to germinate the “WHY” culture in the meadow of the students’ minds. We should adopt the “why” culture and try to raise “why” upon the “why”s. Students should be given freedom to express their own opinions. The students have fresh minds and fresh minds have fresh ideas. If we don’t respect those then they will be freezed. There will be no creation; there will be no invention, which of course is not the target of education.

The world is advancing with a great pace. Every second new things are being invented, mysteries are being unfolded. But the sad thing is that we are not a part of it, and we should be a scrap of it. We have a very good quality within ourselves but the leading problem is that we are not able to utilize it properly. The concerned authorities should carry out such steps which will help us compete with rest of the world and most possibly help us be on top. We are no less than the aliens who are termed more advanced than us. We can and we shall overcome. We should be larrikin, be practical, respect ideas and be reasonable. We all must be aware of the wide generation gap and reduce it.  Then every thing is beneath us, world is on our hands.

Let’s revive!