Nepal-06: Graduation

After a year since I started working at school, I had been used to teaching and feeling improvement of the school little by little. Especially 5 students in grade-5 were really motivated and I was deeply impressed by their will to break though their current predicaments. We hardly see students with such a will in Japan. Most children in Japan dislike studies as I used to be, but those grade-5 students looked that they really like it. And the more they improved, the more I wanted to do something for them.

By the way, Nepali students must pass the exams to go to the next grade even in primary schools whereas all students can automatically go up as long as they go to school regularly in Japan. And I thought Nepal’s system was more practical than Japan’s. However the evaluation of students’ performances actually wasn’t done properly enough because of cheating is a very common habit among not only students but teachers as well. Students naturally cheat on exams without any sense of guilty, and teachers do not care about it. On the contrary, sometimes teachers indicate the answers during exams so that weak students can get pass marks. Primary level students learn fundamental knowledge and skills at school. If they cheat and skip the necessary process, it would trouble them over their entire school time and eventually ruin their future. But most children, of course, can not understand how harmful cheating is. Therefore teachers must watch them carefully and keep telling that cheating is wrong though, most teachers do not understand this either, unfortunately. Therefore I tried to get rid of this habit all the time.

In comparison with grown-ups, village children are hopeful; of course not all of them are though. They look much more mature than children of the same age in Japan regardless of knowledge and intelligence. Maybe the village customs, that children need to help house works, give them a sense of responsibility and push them to glow faster. Since I don’t feel such an impression from kids in urban areas, perhaps poverty makes children simple and pure.

Day by day, the 5th grade’s students improved rapidly, and I started thinking to do something for them after graduation. This primary school is up to grade-5, and most students go to a government secondary school nearby from grade-6. However, as I wrote before, government school is the worst choice for education if one wants to be a success. If my students go to those schools, sooner or later they will forget what I taught and become like other students. I didn’t want such to happen, so I decided to let them try the entrance exams of a private boarding school in Pokhara which provided a full scholarship. The school’s name was “Shamrock School”. It was founded by an Irish ex-army businessman, for helping children with difficulties. It has only one class from 5th to 10th grades each and there were about 10 students in each class.

Shamrock was a small school, like Shukla Gandaki, but many children were trying the entrance exams, even from middle-class families for free schooling. Therefore, the selection was very tight and competitive that I was not sure if any of my students can go though it, but still I wanted to give them a chance. Actually there was another option for them that they go to one of the private schools near their village. Frankly speaking, I didn’t think that going to one of those was the best option since private schools in rural areas are not as good as those in urban areas. I found it from students of those schools who sometimes took my extra classes during a vacation. Although a government school was not the school of choice, a private school nearby was just slightly better than it. Therefore I thought that could be the best if they go to Shamrock at the time.

The result of the entrance exams was announced sometime later. And fortunately two of them were chosen that made me surprised and so happy. They are still studying there in grade-9 now. The other three students couldn’t join Shamrock, but their parents made a great decision to send them to private schools near the village. After all, everything had been all right, and the rest will be on their own hands.

After this, I started thinking about the aim of my activity more seriously. Even if the children became good with English by my teaching, it wouldn’t be much enough to change their destiny drastically. The children themselves need to face to their own circumstances and be proactive in making their future better. It must be hard for kids about 10 years old. But children of poor family can not be as childish as of rich family if they want to get out of the poverty spiral. And I found there were some students who had been prepared for it. So, I started having extra classes for those students to train them competitive from the next academic year.