Bleak Picture of Education in Nepal

Photo Courtesy: Wise Initiative 

Quality education is the modern day tool to shape young potentials into future scholars and leaders of a country. However, providing the primary education has become a prominent concern for developing countries let alone the equitable and the quality education. It is estimated that seventy five million children, half of whom are female, are deprived from attending primary education institutions in developing countries (Federal Ministry for Economic Development and Cooperation, Germany). Poverty, gender based discrimination and warfare are primary constraints to access to education in these countries. Similarly, economic disparities, rural-urban connections and public- private education systems seem to hinder the equitable education in these areas. .  Let us  examine the comprehensive overview of educational system and its impact of one of the typical developing country-Nepal- through this piece.

Nepal is a small landlocked South Asian country sandwiched between India and China. The first education institution was established in 1853 and the first university was established in 1959, around eight hundred years after establishment of Oxford University. Nepal was an isolated country-quite like modern day Myanmar and Bhutan- and its educational sector was dawdling until 1951. The code of life-DNA- was discovered, technological gadgets such as television and telephone were invented on leverage of the educational institutions, but Nepal did not even have a basic framework for higher educational institutions till then. After the educational plan in 1971, development of educational system seemed to gain a momentum. Two distinct educational institutions emerged: public and private ownership educational institutions. Particularly after 1990, private educational institutes flourished in the urban areas of country, where kin of elitist, rich, and educated people enrolled.  Similarly, public institutes were left mostly for the kin of people of poor, uneducated, proletariats, marginalized and indigenous, whose main concentration was in rural area. A massive discrepancy in the educational standards in public and private institutions was thus created in these educational institutions.

Photo Courtesy: Etra Association

School Leaving Certificate (SLC) examination, also considered as Iron Gate to further education, is the tenth grade equivalent of American System and is administered by the education board of Nepal independently. Every year less than fifty percent of students pass the School Leaving Certificate. To break it down further, approximately three in four students from public schools fail in the same examination every year. While the pass rate for public schools is recorded at just 28.19 for year 2014, it is over ninety percent for the private schools (Sharma).  This is testament to poor educational standard in public schools of Nepal, the reasons of which have been linked with apathy from parents and teachers, party politics in schools, poor educational and economic background of students in public schools, lack of education conducive environment which sees perpetual value associated with education, among many other reasons. Teach for Nepal (TFN), an organization working to improve the educational standards of Nepal, claims that most of the public educational institutions are under resourced and that these institutions struggle to get and retain qualified teachers. The other reason for predicament of education is that teaching profession is regarded as the profession to be taken care by the people on the bottom half of academic aptitude.

The consequence of this educational system is that it has created a viscous circle of brain drain to western countries and labor drain to Middle Eastern countries. The brightest student who get an opportunity to attend good private school tend to migrate for education endeavors to western countries like Australia, United States, Japan and United Kingdom.  A statistics shows that staggering 28,216 students went for abroad studies in the 2013/2014 fiscal year, of which 1456 came down to the USA (Facts). As a matter of fact, around 9000 students are enrolled in educational institutions across USA and Nepal is the largest country to send students per capita to the USA as of 2013 (Anderson).It would be a fairy tale ending if these students could return to the country, but the bitter truth is that most of them settle down in these countries for better standards of life.

On the other hand, inefficiency of entrepreneurs and government to create jobs at local level has created inevitable flow of public school educated rural youth to Arab countries. About 1,500 Nepalese, in average, officially left for jobs abroad each day in the 2014 fiscal year excluding those leaving for India, which is the largest destination for Nepalese migrant workers (Harris). Nepal is the largest country in terms of population to earn its greatest source of its GDP from emigrant workers with around forty percent. However, a recent article published in the New York time claims,” While foreign jobs have eased Nepal’s endemic poverty, they may be creating a vicious cycle that forces more and more people to leave by keeping the country’s currency and inflation high while hurting domestic production” (Harris).

It makes me to wonder what alternative does the Nepal government have to spending nearly a billion dollar in educating students in rural areas for the menial jobs in Middle Eastern countries, the ramifications of which seems to hurt the national economy on long run. What purpose do the private institutions serve when they essentially prepare the brightest to leave the country and when the country does not seem to be ready to welcome them back? If you ask me, there is a massive flaw in educational policy making of Nepal which the developing countries need to heed. But, my mind boggles over the question of how these mishaps in education sector are to be cured in developing countries, the typical example of which seems to be Nepal.

References

Anderson, Nick. "The Wahington Post." 27 August 2014. <http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/howard-us-kathmandu-connection-nepal-emerges-as-top-source-of-foreign-students/2014/08/27/4cd70376-2a20-11e4-958c-268a320a60ce_story.html>.

"Federal Ministry for Economic Development and Cooperation, Germany." n.d. Education in Developing Countries. <http://www.bmz.de/en/what_we_do/issues/Education/hintergrund/bildungsituation/>.

Harris, Gardiner. "In Nepal a better Life with Steep Price." The New York Times 14 August 2014.

Facts. 22 July 2014. Facts. <https://www.facebook.com/factsnepal/photos/a.601603456529911.1073741825.461353277221597/822088927814695/?type=1&theater>.

Sharma, Nirajan. 28.19 pass in public. 14 June 2014. <http://www.myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=77105>.

The Philosophy of Life

                                                                  

Wavering layer of water glimmered golden by the diminishing shafts of sunlight as the sun paced to hide behind the lake. Ephemeral rays of light shone on my eyes, just as the floodlight focuses the protagonist of a featured drama, and these waves of light swept the banks of Lake Pontchartrain leaving traces of darkness behind. The sun looked like a semi-circle dipping behind the lake as the color of the sky changed from orange to red to blue, and the sun soon disappeared from mauve sky like a deflating balloon. The sun has rose and set exactly for twenty years since my birth, but today it has invited me to contemplate fundamental question of purpose of my life which still hovers over the horizon. 

Photo Courtesy: Wikipedia

Mark Twain quotes that the two most important days in our life are the day we were born and the day we find out why. However, finding the purpose is not one time eureka moment; thus, it needs a thorough and continuous introspection. Emily Griffin in her book Where We Belong iterates that the purpose of the life should be the life of purpose thorough self-actualization. A step further, as Simon Sinek in one of his TED talk suggests that our purpose should be contemplated in question “why” rather than “what”, here I am, at the banks of Lake Pontchartrain, reflecting on my eclectic life.

My current state of life is the result of series of events and coincidences, and my present day beliefs are amalgamation of the beliefs of people I have come across on real or virtual front. From the high hills to the sea level and below, and from conservative Sanopakha to liberal-lewd Bourbon Street, I have seen destitute and affluence of many aspects comparable. In having lofty dreams and in being sunk to smell the dust with bitter disappointment, I have become both a freak and have tried to become a sage, or that is, at least, what I reckon. I have lost people close to me from life and have lived in isolation for a considerable time. The family for me has become what Matt King describes in film The Descendant: “All part of the same whole, but always separate and alone and drifting apart like an archipelago.” These experiences have treated me to form two basic realization in which, I think, I need to base my purpose. 

The first realization is that happiness is an essence to living and that our happiness comes through validation and through happiness of people whom we care. The second realization I have made is that our life is a message, and that it is not the destination but the journey that is more important. I have figured that riding Mercedes in 200 km/h in I-20 lane will not give me happiness, when my relatives have to struggle to buy a pair of slippers with a daily average income of less than $2.00 a day. Getting good GPA, having good connections and finding a job with a steady income is not a perpetual source of happiness, when students of the same academic aptitude have to toil in Middle Eastern countries for living. It is easier said than done, but “an attempt”, I emphasize “an attempt”, to change the lives of around thirty millions people every day can be a greater source of happiness than a paycheck of some thousand dollars which may give no validation to my life.  I am aware that life is not lived in rhetoric and that it is not idealistic, but there is a so much in our system that needs an improvement, and my inner conscience seems to lead me to fixation of same.

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Mahatma Gandhi said that the only tyrant we have to accept in this world is the “still small voice” within us even though we may be in a prospect of a hopeless minority. Similarly, Herman Hesse in Novel Siddhartha describes most people as falling leafs that drift and turn in the air, flutter and fall in the ground  and few as the stars which travel one defined path where no wind reaches  and which have within themselves their guide and path. I am not sure if I am a leaf drifting on the wind, carried away by an impulsive thought, or the star on its own path, what I know for sure is that I have the “still small voice” budding inside me. It may take few more walks to Lake Pontchartrain to validate the voice, but I am patient and hopeful, not only patient in the “still small voice” gaining the shape, but also patience in waiting for my purpose to become vivid. And I am hopeful because, as the theme of Shawshank Redemption depicts, fear holds us a prisoner and only hope can set us free –beyond this horizon into new beginning.

Happy Birthday, Birthday Boy!