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Whither Education Policy? — [Republica Repost]

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Good private schools are being praised for the wrong reasons and the rest are selling snake oil.

During a recent conversation about education in Nepal here in New York City, a fairly informed fellow Nepali essentially argued that public schools are a thing of the past. So I asked him what percentage of students he believes goes to community schools in Nepal. He said 25 percent. The actual proportion is above 80 percent!

Among “city people” like that gentleman, the belief that “almost everyone’s children now go to private schools” seems widespread. And that is disturbing because such blurred vision or willful disregard of reality also underscores educational policies. While our educational experts and policymakers certainly know the statistics, they seem similarly insensitive to the vast majority of poor people around the country who can’t afford private schools. Even worse, the general premise for everyone’s strange attraction to “private” schools is that these schools are inherently superior. Good private schools are being praised for the wrong reasons and the rest are selling snake oil. And if that is the direction that we are headed as a nation, may the Lord Pashupatinath help us.

Read full article on Republica (Feb 16, 2016)

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Knowledge Economy — [Republica Repost]

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No amount of money, my colleagues say, would motivate them as much as the desire to help the next generation catch up to the reality of our times

When he returned after the first day of teacher training, Gokul (pseudonym) told me proudly: “You see, I’ve earned my first fifty rupees today. And that’s all I am here for, young man, the allowances—for forty days of bhatta.” This was during the summer of 1993 and I was just beginning to dream of becoming a teacher. So I found it deeply offensive that someone entrusted to educate the community’s children would come all the way from a remote district to the regional teacher training center in the city, occupy a college student’s single-room apartment, and brag about his bhatta. This is challenge one, among many others, in Nepali education: monetary incentive has failed and nothing seems to improve professionalism among the vast majority of teachers.

Read full article here

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Soft Skills for International Graduate Students

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International graduate students accepted in US universities are arguably the best products of the academic systems in their home countries. However, when it comes to translating their prior academic success, these students still face an uphill battle.

Especially for students in the STEM fields, academic transition can be challenging because their academic disciplines and programs cannot afford the time and priority toward helping the students develop a broad enough range of academic and professional “soft” skills.

In this blog entry, I highlight some of the causes and consequences of academic and professional skills gap among international graduate students especially in STEM. Let me try to do so by using my personal experience of academic transition and my professional experience of working to support other international students navigate and succeed in the US academy. Continue reading

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Diversity and Broader Goals of ELT

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Choutari Repost

Sitting down to write this post on diversity and ELT, I remember a story that scholar David Foster Wallace tells in a famous college graduation speech. Two younger fish ask an older one: “What the hell is water?” The point of the story is that “…the most obvious, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about.”

The point I want to make in this post is that while we are a nation of very diverse peoples, cultures, languages, and so on, we have to pinch ourselves to remember that we are diverse. I argue that as educators, it is worth pinching ourselves and our students—intellectually, that is—into realizing the value of diversity as a broader goal of education, especially in a country like ours and an interconnected world like today’s.

Read full post here.

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Eastern Non-Science — [Republica Repost]

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At a dinner conversation among a few scientists and scholars from Nepal a few years ago, our host, a medical scientist, shared a whole host of “scientific” evidence about how the knowledge of the East has “always” been highly advanced and “superior” to that of modern science.

Yes, the East (though the term is old-fashioned and controversial) is a gold mine of intellectual traditions and resources. But its most visible proponents today harm more than help when it comes to doing justice to that heritage.

And, yes, there is a lot of value in the knowledge—embodied in and transmitted through folk science and philosophical wisdom since ancient times—which the East has produced. I would even go so far as to say that the South Asian region was probably one of the richest in terms of generating its own natural science as well as other bodies of knowledge. The Ayurveda (life+science) is a good example of how some medical knowledge of the time was eventually recorded and passed on in writing. Continue reading

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Freedom of (Which) Speech? — [Republica Repost]

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Freedom of Speech The title of an article in an American newspaper reads: “Last Week French Officials Stood Up for Offensive Speech. This Week They’re Arresting People for It.” The understandably complicated response of French government to the terrorist attack in Paris last month is an interesting case from which we can learn how seemingly universal principles and values—such as the “freedom of speech” in this case—are actually contingent on specific cultures and complex sociopolitical issues.

Full article here (Jan 4, 2015)

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Too “Knowing” Society? — [Republica Repost]

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I came home from school one day to find my father and uncle Padam sitting beside the beautifully decorated Tulasi platform in the front yard that my mother, sister, and I had built the day before.

Uncle Padam [speaking to my dad]: Brother, you have such great artistic skills, you know. Look how beautiful that muth is!

Daddy: [smiles and continues to smoke]

Me: No, uncle, dad didn’t build that. Mom did, and sister and I helped her decorate it.

Uncle: Hey, phuchche [little kid], don’t be a janne [knower]. Go to play.

Read full article on Republica  (Oct 29, 2014) Continue reading