Dismal education system
By Dr Ghanshyam Bhatt
Literacy, according to UNESCO, is the ability to identify, understand, interpret, create, communicate and compute using printed and written materials associated with varying contexts. The literacy rate of Nepal is 49 percent of which roughly 63 percent are males and 35 percent are females. It has been observed throughout the world that raising the literacy rate results in better socio-economic life. The primary and secondary school attendance ratios in Nepal are close to 87 percent and 42 percent respectively (Nepal Demographic and health Survey, 2006). Although these rates are increasing, we are still away from one of the UN's Millennium Development Goals - achieve universal primary education by 2015.
At a greater risk are people who don't make it to the primary schools or who dropout before reaching grade five. The existing primary education in rural areas is still very primitive and less qualitative. Lack of accessibility, overload of students and lack of teachers and facilities are a few things to be blamed. Chewing tobacco in classrooms, smoking, asking students for favors, playing cards in free times and knitting sweaters while teaching are what teachers commonly indulge in those schools. This affects the motivation of the students; a main reason for dropout besides economic conditions. Yet they work under very adverse conditions like low remuneration, low social respect, donation drive, huge teaching load and responsibility. The worrisome issue is that the students left behind at this stage can rarely contribute to the economy.
The secondary school attendance ratio lags far behind the primary one, and the number of women and unprivileged group fall way low. We always had less than 50 percent pass out rate in the SLC except last year and the majority belong to Kathmandu and other urban areas. The rural parents face tremendous difficulties to send their children to secondary schools. Statistics show that a vast majority of the rural students fail to get through the SLC exams. This tradition is in effect for a long time, so the flaws need to be overviewed.
Most of the students in the rural areas fail in English, Science and Mathematics because they don't get proper education as compared to their counterparts in the urban areas. An urban high school student can watch and enjoy a Hollywood movie but for his rural counterpart even understanding a simple English lesson is a nightmare. Some schools don't have enough teachers throughout the year in rural areas. They fail not because they are incompetent and lazy, but because our policy treats them unfairly. We have had just one student passing in the whole district, what on earth are we doing?
The differently taught students are made to sit together for the same exams. Some educationists opine that it is the standard everyone has to meet for homogeneity. How fair is it to test students on something they are never taught? Who is to blame for this unfair treatment? In the absence of any monitoring system there is negligence from the teachers but the truth is that their hands are tied, too. At this level, a majority of our youth are left in the middle not because they are incapable but because they are the rural poor. The scenario gets worse if this group comes under the influence of antisocial elements. The burning down of our national flag, vandalism, extortion etc are the consequences of this negligence. The people living in the cantonment sites would probably be capable of doing something constructive and contribute to the economy if they had proper education. There could be some vocational and technical trainings or some employment-generating education. The time is ripe for us to think about the injustice done to the majority of the rural poor.
Privatization has made college education further inaccessible to the rural population. The government's lack of monitoring has turned it into a business, sometimes a family business. The examination in the colleges is so unscientific that your exam paper can get lost, mixed up with others, the digits might get interchanged and all of the students in a class can get the same points. Passing an intermediate or bachelor level not only requires one to be smart and intelligent, but also you have to be equally lucky. The inability to maintain academic calendar puts extra burden financially. The professors here are more responsible for the mess as they have more freedom as compared to the high school teachers.
The lack of job opportunities and uncertainty of future create frustration and low self-esteem as a small portion of the students reach Masters level. By this time, they have extremely good experience of how weak, unplanned and chaotic our education system is. So, failing an exam could result in a vandalism to protest against the institution. This is because of anger and frustrations which don't develop overnight. Most of the vociferous professors get engaged in the national politics than concentrating on teaching, although they have their own legitimate problems and limitations.
The scariest part is that it is becoming difficult for our graduates to get the job of their kind. One has to be extremely lucky and powerful to get a decent job. The government is not genuinely committed to address the problems of this intellectual community. However, the privatization of education has created some academic jobs. Most of these institutions, directly or indirectly, run by the academia who voice for academic honesty, freedom, good working environment, remuneration, democratic administration and creation of better institutions of teaching and learning. Unfortunately, under their institutions, the hard-earned degree of our graduates gets exploited as they work for a meager salary and under an unfavorable environment where there is no academic freedom. The government's inability to monitor the privatization of education has turned these vociferous institutions into educated thugs. Thus the government's ignorance towards these anomalies in the education sector—the painful exploitation, frustration and uncertainty among intellectuals and students etc—results in what is called the brain drain, a huge loss to the nation.
Posted on: 2007-11-06 10:32:12 (Server Time)
(Source:The Kathmandu Post))
Literacy, according to UNESCO, is the ability to identify, understand, interpret, create, communicate and compute using printed and written materials associated with varying contexts. The literacy rate of Nepal is 49 percent of which roughly 63 percent are males and 35 percent are females. It has been observed throughout the world that raising the literacy rate results in better socio-economic life. The primary and secondary school attendance ratios in Nepal are close to 87 percent and 42 percent respectively (Nepal Demographic and health Survey, 2006). Although these rates are increasing, we are still away from one of the UN's Millennium Development Goals - achieve universal primary education by 2015.
At a greater risk are people who don't make it to the primary schools or who dropout before reaching grade five. The existing primary education in rural areas is still very primitive and less qualitative. Lack of accessibility, overload of students and lack of teachers and facilities are a few things to be blamed. Chewing tobacco in classrooms, smoking, asking students for favors, playing cards in free times and knitting sweaters while teaching are what teachers commonly indulge in those schools. This affects the motivation of the students; a main reason for dropout besides economic conditions. Yet they work under very adverse conditions like low remuneration, low social respect, donation drive, huge teaching load and responsibility. The worrisome issue is that the students left behind at this stage can rarely contribute to the economy.
The secondary school attendance ratio lags far behind the primary one, and the number of women and unprivileged group fall way low. We always had less than 50 percent pass out rate in the SLC except last year and the majority belong to Kathmandu and other urban areas. The rural parents face tremendous difficulties to send their children to secondary schools. Statistics show that a vast majority of the rural students fail to get through the SLC exams. This tradition is in effect for a long time, so the flaws need to be overviewed.
Most of the students in the rural areas fail in English, Science and Mathematics because they don't get proper education as compared to their counterparts in the urban areas. An urban high school student can watch and enjoy a Hollywood movie but for his rural counterpart even understanding a simple English lesson is a nightmare. Some schools don't have enough teachers throughout the year in rural areas. They fail not because they are incompetent and lazy, but because our policy treats them unfairly. We have had just one student passing in the whole district, what on earth are we doing?
The differently taught students are made to sit together for the same exams. Some educationists opine that it is the standard everyone has to meet for homogeneity. How fair is it to test students on something they are never taught? Who is to blame for this unfair treatment? In the absence of any monitoring system there is negligence from the teachers but the truth is that their hands are tied, too. At this level, a majority of our youth are left in the middle not because they are incapable but because they are the rural poor. The scenario gets worse if this group comes under the influence of antisocial elements. The burning down of our national flag, vandalism, extortion etc are the consequences of this negligence. The people living in the cantonment sites would probably be capable of doing something constructive and contribute to the economy if they had proper education. There could be some vocational and technical trainings or some employment-generating education. The time is ripe for us to think about the injustice done to the majority of the rural poor.
Privatization has made college education further inaccessible to the rural population. The government's lack of monitoring has turned it into a business, sometimes a family business. The examination in the colleges is so unscientific that your exam paper can get lost, mixed up with others, the digits might get interchanged and all of the students in a class can get the same points. Passing an intermediate or bachelor level not only requires one to be smart and intelligent, but also you have to be equally lucky. The inability to maintain academic calendar puts extra burden financially. The professors here are more responsible for the mess as they have more freedom as compared to the high school teachers.
The lack of job opportunities and uncertainty of future create frustration and low self-esteem as a small portion of the students reach Masters level. By this time, they have extremely good experience of how weak, unplanned and chaotic our education system is. So, failing an exam could result in a vandalism to protest against the institution. This is because of anger and frustrations which don't develop overnight. Most of the vociferous professors get engaged in the national politics than concentrating on teaching, although they have their own legitimate problems and limitations.
The scariest part is that it is becoming difficult for our graduates to get the job of their kind. One has to be extremely lucky and powerful to get a decent job. The government is not genuinely committed to address the problems of this intellectual community. However, the privatization of education has created some academic jobs. Most of these institutions, directly or indirectly, run by the academia who voice for academic honesty, freedom, good working environment, remuneration, democratic administration and creation of better institutions of teaching and learning. Unfortunately, under their institutions, the hard-earned degree of our graduates gets exploited as they work for a meager salary and under an unfavorable environment where there is no academic freedom. The government's inability to monitor the privatization of education has turned these vociferous institutions into educated thugs. Thus the government's ignorance towards these anomalies in the education sector—the painful exploitation, frustration and uncertainty among intellectuals and students etc—results in what is called the brain drain, a huge loss to the nation.
Posted on: 2007-11-06 10:32:12 (Server Time)
(Source:The Kathmandu Post))
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