When it comes to identity, most formal and informal education system around the world focus on and elevate the person's nationality, religion, class, sex/gender, official position/profession, age, race, caste, sexuality etc. What is most important, however, is to teach a person to think of themself as a human being first and to value humanity above all.
A primary school poetry textbook contains 108 poems by 66 poets representing only 44 surnames. All but three were male poets. A vast majority (88%) of the poets were Bahun/Brahmin, hill so-called high Hindu, men who make up 6% of the population. And that's not even the worst.
Regardless, that makes one wonder, among other things, what the accomplishment of seventy or so years of education for the public has been. Who has the State been educating?
Studies in the US have demonstrated differential treatment of black students by white teachers affecting their learning outcomes as well as, in the long-term, their lives. 80% of public school teachers in the US are white.
In Nepal, disproportionately high percent of school teachers are Khas-aryas, the hill so-called high caste Hindu. How do they treat students belonging to other castes? Likely not the same way they do their caste and that likely has affected the educational achievements of students of other castes, as well as their lives later on.
Given how money has been the driving force behind what a majority do in Nepal and given how little people with power and influence value other people's lives, even during calamitous times -- such the aftermath of the 2015 earthquakes and the unprecedented coronavirus pandemic--we in Nepal must education children about empathy at home and school and raise them to be compassionate human beings.
Of course, there are at least a few different ways of doing that.
Nepali teachers, I have observed, do not use humor much or often. I am not sure why.
This blog contains embeds of two short clips from a presentation to students at a school in Kathmandu in which I use humor.
When behavioral changes have taken place in an adult, we say that change has really taken place. When enough adults change their behavior, society changes.
Behavioral changes in adults, however, is a three step process and that's why it does NOT happen readily or easily or quickly. It start with awareness, which then leads to changes in attitude, which in turn leads, finally, to changes in behavior.
What’s interesting about children, however, is that they start with behavior, which adults can instill in them by modelling.