Reading the wanted advertisement Kathmandu University put out in early May 2021, you would think that nothing was amiss in the world...like there were no such thing as a pandemic raging!
I tear apart the advertisement in this blog post. It's like the decision makers at KU were a bunch of clueless individuals running a small family-owned and run business, NOT academics!
TW: Graphic and sustained description of physical violence and abuse against a child, and brief reference to sexual abuse.
Reproduction of a harrowing Facebook account of a Nepali classmate's childhood experiences of abuse suffered in his father's hands.
If, as an adult, you are CONVINCED that your academic institution SUCCEEDED in providing an excellent education, BUT has made you an ardent and blind supporter of the institution -- approving of everything it says, does, represents, and stands for unquestioningly -- then it failed you. Here are some examples of that from Nepal.
Among other things, North-American teachers at St. Xavier's induced in me a love for words by teaching us the etymology of words during lessons. I am trying to do the same for Nepalis by offering online classes on words and their meanings.
As much as we are products of our culture, education, society, and people, and as much as a closed and inward-looking society and people might fail us, as individuals we are also influencers and shapers of our culture and society!
When it comes to verbal, emotional, and physical violence against children is concerned, for example, we Nepalis have a choice. We don't have to follow the dictates of our culture and society. We can instead teach about empathy and compassion and even display them towards our children to end the vicious cycle of childhood violence, a hallmark of child-rearing and educational practices.
Cultivating the mind of a child is analogous to cultivating a garden. In Nepal, however, our still very traditional and regressive ways is to tightly control, confine, and constrain the garden of the mind of a child. In order to cultivate the mind, what we must teach and learn to do is to free it.