Nepal-04: Teaching Days

School education in Nepal is called 10+2 system that consists of primary level of 5 years, lower secondary level of 3 years, secondary level of 2 years and higher secondary level of 2 years. However, all students take the examination called School Leaving Certificate (SLC) which is organized by government all over the country simultaneously in the end of secondary school. And this exam is the first milestone of schooling for Nepalese students.

Since I happened to become a teacher, I went to Shukla Gandaki Primary School 5 days a week, from Sunday to Friday. Strangely, Sunday is not a holiday in Nepal but the first weekday just like Monday for us. And Saturday is a holiday instead. It’s one of most unique customs of this Hindu country.

Every morning, I took a bus from Pokhara to the bus stop near the school for, and then walked 20 minutes across the river to the school. School started at 10:00 AM, and I taught continuously until 4:00 PM. And then, I went the same way as morning back to Pokhara. In first few weeks, it was a little tiring to commute from Pokhara to the village spending nearly 3 hours in total everyday. Nepali local buses are not punctual and comfortable at all. The seats are narrow; the driver usually drives too fast; the road is bumpy that sometimes causes other passengers carsickness; sometimes a passenger brings goats into the bus; and the attendant tries to get as many passengers as possible even though there are no spaces to ride. But after a while, I realized that was meaningful time to understand Nepalese habits and customs. People were basically friendly and often spoke to other passengers as if they knew each other. That was totally different from the train scene in Japan that people never say a word, just stare at cell phones. Sometimes I wonder what we have lost in exchange for the highly modernized society.

In my classes, I taught only English intensively for grade 3, 4 and 5. Practically speaking, English is the most important subject in Nepal. Since Nepal is one of the poorest countries in Asia, all financial systems are based on Indian or western styles. Other industries haven’t developed yet except tourism therefore about 2 million Nepalese are working abroad. Under this circumstance, English skills directly relate to students’ future. However, government schools cannot match private schools in English education at all. I believe that children should be given opportunities of education equally without regard to their financial backgrounds. That’s why I accepted to volunteer at this school.

It was really difficult to make children understand what I said in the beginning. They could barely speak their own names in English then, but English was the only way we could possibly communicate each other. Actually, there was one teacher speaking English, but he had to take care of another class due to lack of teachers. I just kept teaching the fundamental knowledge and simplest grammatical structure until children fully understood them. I also re-arranged the timetable and made each teacher take charge of only specific subjects which they were good with. The teachers’ abilities didn’t seen high enough to teach all subjects of a grade, because they had graduated from government schools and the quality of education in their childhood was even worse than now. This kind of system is quite ordinary in developed countries, but even it had been beyond their imagination. This is one facet of under-developing countries’ reality. And I did feel how essential for the society education really is.

Even though grownups were unreliable, children were pure and eager to study that was totally different from those in Japan. And I found myself enjoying working at school so much. Everyday I made mistakes and then tried to find out better ways of not only teaching but controlling children also. It was like a series of psychological experiments. And these days made me feel full of energy.