It's virtually impossible to address a social ill without the society first acknowledging it for what it is. When the education system does NOT do that, what chance is there at all of there even being a discourse about it, forget take steps to address it?! That is the situation with the caste system in Nepal.
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?
A grade 9 textbook definition of love marriage and how it is different from arranged marriage...
Pretty much every Nepali school textbook I have seen and read about, I have decided, actually hinders children's learning, forget promote -- and contribute to -- them! In this blog post, I show how a fifth grade textbook completely misses the mark.
The solution? Do away with the local and national level examinations in grades 8 and 10 and eliminate textbooks.
A Grade 8 Social Studies textbook has nothing on the one system that has defined and shaped our society and is responsible for, directly or indirectly, many -- if not most or even ALL -- of the social, economic, and political problems our country faces, hindering its progress: the caste system! And the reason? It's a "small" issue!
The education system in Nepal is supposedly the most corrupt system in the country. If a system is corrupt and does not deliver what it's supposed to, one employs and implements best practices from around the world. In the education system in Nepal, it seems, the practice is to adopt the worst practices, with little or no regard for their negative impact on the education of our children. Here's one such practice prevalent in the system and what you as a parent can do to better prepare your children for the twenty-first century.