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.
Want to play logic games, analyze them, and learn HOW to think? In other words, how to analyze, apply, evaluate and synthesize through modeling, the way some mathematicians and scientists do? Read this blog post and follow the instructions if you are game!
In part II of this two-part blog, I shred the contents of a grade 12 chemistry paper the students took last month. It's full of mistakes showing how little attention to details the examiners and board have paid in creating it. The contents also show how the syllabus has NOT been revised and updated at all to reflect newer practices and topics that have evolved over the last few decades etc., indicating how the whole point is just to put the students through a wringer.
A look at how the board managing the grade 12 examinations have failed the students. The examinations, originally slated for May, was cancelled and, finally, in October, rescheduled for November. The examination, supposed to consist of questions papers in the new format, did go ahead in spite of the student not having seen any sample papers prior to it.
What's more, analyzing the chemistry paper, it had some major issues. The whole exercise, as far as I am concerned, has amounted to putting the students through a wringer.