“I inform my wife about important decisions I take for the family. But if I know something is right or good, I decide. I don’t feel the need to discuss every matter with her,” said an educated young person while discussing decision-making in his household. His response represents a common belief in our households—the belief that the household in-charge can unilaterally decide. For most households in our cultural context, that person happens to be an elderly male figure.

There are multiple problems with such a model of decision-making. First, by merely informing our wives, mothers and daughters about our decisions, we are taking away their agencies. In doing so, we reiterate that the decision-maker knows better and can decide on the lives of the others. Second, such a model of decision-making involves a risk of nurturing a passivity that brings more harm than good in the long run, for both the active decision maker and the passive follower.

For the most part of their shared lives, parents take decisions for their children. But as these children grow up, the same parents may expect their sons and daughters to make decisions on their own. And if there is a hesitation or inability to decide, parents may even express their frustration. Another example is that we ask our daughters and sisters to keep away from men outside the family all their lives but then want them to decide on marriage soon after they have met someone, even briefly.

In our education system, educational engagements for children at school are highly structured—the government provides a curriculum; the school chooses textbooks, extra- and co-curricular activities; the teachers set up exams and discussions without involving children. But, as soon as the students pass grade 10 they are expected to decide what to study for their 10+2, or bachelors. Such examples display the ambiguity embedded in our decision-making.  

It is wrong to expect someone to decide without equipping them with necessary social, cultural and psychological tools. How can someone who is not even encouraged to decide on seemingly simple things like choosing a dress, a meal, a magazine, or a movie take significant decisions like which discipline to study, what career to pursue, or which country to live in?

Those who decide for others commonly argue that they have benevolence at heart and more knowledge and experience at hand. But are prior knowledge and experience prerequisites or adequate for good decisions? Where then do qualities like creativity and novelty fit? How often do we reflect on the consequences of our earlier decisions on ourselves and on others? What have been the repercussions of the decisions our elders/parents/bosses/spouses have made on our behalf without including us? We find that there are hardly any right or wrong decisions; there are only right and wrong ways of decision-making.

The ‘right to self-determination’ principle, popular in social work, asks practitioners to allow the client to make decisions on their own. This principle is built on the belief that ‘only the wearer knows where the show pinches’. The practitioners treat clients as ‘experts by experience’ and facilitate the client’s understanding of their context, strengths and limitations. Practitioners offer help in the process but never decide for clients or merely inform them. Social work practitioners believe that clients strengthen their agencies and become empowered by practicing their right to self-determination.

We firmly believe that the ‘right to self-determination’ should be integrated in our everyday decision-making including families, offices, and bureaucratic apparatuses. We propose engaging people of all ages, including children, unfailingly in the decisions that matter to them. Children, particularly, should not be treated as individuals without agency and merely be informed, but be actively engaged in matters that affect their lives. Engagement in decision-making in one area empowers them to decide in other areas too.

However, some individuals and groups like people with mental challenges, young children, and the marginalized might need support in decision-making. This support should be extended by laying out the contexts and the consequences of the decision-making rather than deciding on their behalf.

The best decisions come from sharing and engagement instead of unilateral assumptions and patronization. So let’s not forget to engage people who have a stake. And haven’t we agreed over generations that two heads are better than one anyway?

‘I couldn’t sleep thinking if I had locked the main door’. ‘I was worried if the children had been fed properly’. These statements made occasionally in our homes are examples of the ‘mental load’ taken up by the people making them. In this brief write-up, we talk about the concept of mental load, its effects on our everyday lives, including on the current lockdown time, and how to deal with it.

Mental load or emotional labor is the time and effort put into remembering things that go behind a work but are invisible and unacknowledged. Emma, the comic known for introducing the concept, puts it as “permanent and exhausting work.”

Mental load is not gender specific: although women are known to bear the most of it, men also take these loads. Mental load is a concern for everyone; it exists in many kinds of work and in diverse spaces. For example, in an office or educational setting, an individual in a group who is working on a presentation might be bearing the mental load of following up with colleagues on the presentation, putting the power-points together, booking the meeting rooms, taking notes, emailing the power-points to colleagues, to name a few.

At home, a family member bearing the mental load might be involved in making a grocery list and shopping; planning family get-togethers, inviting people to these get-togethers, and planning the menu; or paying the bills (electricity, telephone, water, garbage). Although a lot of time and effort goes into remembering these tasks and making them happen, they are neither noticed nor valued.

One prominent issue with mental load is the undefined, un-agreed and unseen responsibility that is shouldered unto an individual within a workspace or family unit. Non-acknowledgement of the mental load might also be interpreted as under-appreciation of the work being done. And excessive mental load can lead to emotional exhaustion or mental fatigue.

The distinction between home and office has been blurred by the stay-home situation right now. The result is that although the volume of work might not have changed (thanks to the work-from-home arrangements), the way in which these works are done has changed significantly. Unlike in past when people could compartmentalize household chores and lock them away in their minds while at office, they now find themselves constantly shifting between work-related responsibilities and household chores throughout the day.

This change affects the way people experience mental load as the mental labor of planning, arranging, and organizing chores has to be done for tasks of varied nature at once and in the same space. Importantly, Nepali women bear most of the mental load of caring for the family, and the lockdown has added to their challenges.

The first step in handling it is acknowledging it, giving it a name. Mental load is invisible work. And its invisibility to people not sharing this load is the thing that makes the load heavy and exhausting. So when we acknowledge that not all work is visible and mental labors like thinking, planning, organizing, and even worrying count as real work, the first constructive step is taken. The next step is for you to take responsibility for some aspects of the mental load so that the other person does not have to bear all of it. When every member sharing the common space, whether at home or at office, acknowledges and assumes individual responsibility, the load will be shared and its burden on any one person greatly reduced.  

How can we share the mental load?

The first step to sharing the mental load is acknowledging the existence of mental load and making it visible. In the earlier example of mental load in a group presentation, sharing the mental load could be done by listing each of those tasks in the to do list and assigning responsibilities to the members for each of them. Mental load within family settings can also similarly be shared by acknowledging the work that is often overlooked and unaccounted for and sharing the responsibilities of these works among family members. Rotating responsibilities among members of the group (be it at work or family) can also help in building awareness about the invisible yet exhaustive mental work. And sharing the mental load can reduce the load of the individuals taking them as well as serve in the acknowledgment and appreciation the efforts put by these individuals earlier.

The stay-at-home situation for families due to the coronavirus pandemic has given us an opportunity to reflect whether the mental load within our families are equitably shared and to work towards sharing the mental load when it is lopsidedly shared.

‘I couldn’t sleep thinking if I had locked the main door’. ‘I was worried if the children had been fed properly’. These statements made occasionally in our homes are examples of the ‘mental load’ taken up by the people making them. In this brief write-up, we talk about the concept of mental load, its effects on our everyday lives, including on the current lockdown time, and how to deal with it.

Mental load or emotional labor is the time and effort put into remembering things that go behind a work but are invisible and unacknowledged. Emma, the comic known for introducing the concept, puts it as “permanent and exhausting work.”

Mental load is not gender specific: although women are known to bear the most of it, men also take these loads. Mental load is a concern for everyone; it exists in many kinds of work and in diverse spaces. For example, in an office or educational setting, an individual in a group who is working on a presentation might be bearing the mental load of following up with colleagues on the presentation, putting the power-points together, booking the meeting rooms, taking notes, emailing the power-points to colleagues, to name a few.

At home, a family member bearing the mental load might be involved in making a grocery list and shopping; planning family get-togethers, inviting people to these get-togethers, and planning the menu; or paying the bills (electricity, telephone, water, garbage). Although a lot of time and effort goes into remembering these tasks and making them happen, they are neither noticed nor valued.

One prominent issue with mental load is the undefined, un-agreed and unseen responsibility that is shouldered unto an individual within a workspace or family unit. Non-acknowledgement of the mental load might also be interpreted as under-appreciation of the work being done. And excessive mental load can lead to emotional exhaustion or mental fatigue.

The distinction between home and office has been blurred by the stay-home situation right now. The result is that although the volume of work might not have changed (thanks to the work-from-home arrangements), the way in which these works are done has changed significantly. Unlike in past when people could compartmentalize household chores and lock them away in their minds while at office, they now find themselves constantly shifting between work-related responsibilities and household chores throughout the day.

This change affects the way people experience mental load as the mental labor of planning, arranging, and organizing chores has to be done for tasks of varied nature at once and in the same space. Importantly, Nepali women bear most of the mental load of caring for the family, and the lockdown has added to their challenges.

The first step in handling it is acknowledging it, giving it a name. Mental load is invisible work. And its invisibility to people not sharing this load is the thing that makes the load heavy and exhausting. So when we acknowledge that not all work is visible and mental labors like thinking, planning, organizing, and even worrying count as real work, the first constructive step is taken. The next step is for you to take responsibility for some aspects of the mental load so that the other person does not have to bear all of it. When every member sharing the common space, whether at home or at office, acknowledges and assumes individual responsibility, the load will be shared and its burden on any one person greatly reduced.  

How can we share the mental load?

The first step to sharing the mental load is acknowledging the existence of mental load and making it visible. In the earlier example of mental load in a group presentation, sharing the mental load could be done by listing each of those tasks in the to do list and assigning responsibilities to the members for each of them. Mental load within family settings can also similarly be shared by acknowledging the work that is often overlooked and unaccounted for and sharing the responsibilities of these works among family members. Rotating responsibilities among members of the group (be it at work or family) can also help in building awareness about the invisible yet exhaustive mental work. And sharing the mental load can reduce the load of the individuals taking them as well as serve in the acknowledgment and appreciation the efforts put by these individuals earlier.

The stay-at-home situation for families due to the coronavirus pandemic has given us an opportunity to reflect whether the mental load within our families are equitably shared and to work towards sharing the mental load when it is lopsidedly shared.

With the physical closure due to the global coronavirus pandemic, educational institutions around the world including Nepal, are exploring, experimenting, and experiencing other modes of teaching and learning. Social distancing being the most important preventive measure to check the transmission of the coronavirus, educational institutions have responded by canceling the classes in a traditional face-to-face format and moving to an online format, where and when possible. This write-up looks at the online mode of education based on the authors’ online educational engagement as students and teachers, as well as on their reflections on the issue.

The absence of face-to-face interaction among teachers and students, and among students, has been cited as a feature of online education. This is because asynchronous communication is the norm in online learning where participants do not need to be online at a particular time to access and respond to information; they can do so at their own convenience. For example, in one class of the first author as a student, the teacher had uploaded a video recording and associated assignment, and he engaged with this material towards the middle of the day. Although the class was held in the morning, he had slept late due to other assignments and could only engage with the class material later.

However, online education can happen synchronously where the participants come together at a particular time over the internet. And with the availability of applications like Zoom, Skype, Google Meet, GoToMeeting, and TeamViewer students can now engage in face-to-face interactions even online. As a teacher, I mostly invited students to synchronous classes, which allowed me to use class discussions in teaching and learning. Hence we see the availability of both synchronous and asynchronous forms of teaching and learning in online education, which is an advantage not available in traditional in-person education.

Easier documentation of teaching and learning is another vital strength of online education. For example, educational materials including videos are made available prior to a class in an asynchronous mode. Class engagement can be video-recorded with the click of a button in a synchronous mode and made available as soon as the class ends. The video recordings of classroom interactions are a great resource for the evaluation of teaching and learning to make the engagements more effective, both for the teacher and for the students.

As some form of physical distancing will be in place for the foreseeable future, online classes are the only safe method of teaching and learning worldwide, including in Nepal. This makes it imperative for Nepali educators and education planners to reflect on the advantages and challenges of online teaching.

When everything in the country is deeply affected by the pandemic, and the experience of daily life, including educational experience, has changed significantly, online classes to some degree ensure continuity in the channels and habits of learning for students. Additionally, students don’t have to pick up on educational engagement from where they last left long ago in the traditional in-person mode of education. To top it up, online classes are also helping parents to engage children in creative and intellectual pursuits which the traditional in-person education might not leave space for.

Unequal access to high-speed internet is a big challenge for online education in Nepal, as the country exhibits a huge internet infrastructure differences among its regions. Because of this, many people who are not connected by the internet, mostly in rural areas, are failing to participate in online classes, and their absence is depriving them of learning. Such experiences can be disempowering. So the government should focus on closing this gap in technology infrastructure.

Besides the gap in internet accessibility, another significant challenge to online education is inadequate technological competency. Technological competency in both teachers and students is a precondition for successful online teaching and learning, and in the absence of such competence, imparting online education is a challenge for many educators and students. To run online classes in Nepal in the present context would mean excluding those teachers and students who did not have the need, interest, or the opportunity to gain mastery over these learning tools in the past.

Therefore, providing formal training to build competence for the use of online learning platforms and tools and bridging the infrastructure accessibility gap are pre-requisites for effective teaching and learning online, which has now become an essential mode of education globally.

Dahal is a Ph.D. Scholar in Social Work at Boston College, USA, and Dhamala is an Assistant Professor of English at Ratna Rajya Laxmi Campus, Nepal

Many teachers, particularly in cities, are present at an academic institution only during the time of their classes, and work at several other institutions. In this process, they spend considerable time commuting on motorcycles. Thus the phrase ‘helmet teachers’ (wearing a helmet is mandatory in Nepal) is commonly used to refer to teachers who teach part-time at several institutions. 

Many of us have encountered such ‘helmet-teachers’ who are all unique in their own way, largely in terms of their orientation to teaching and learning. We have also heard diverse opinions about these helmet teachers, ranging from ‘they are money minded individuals’ to ‘they are the soul of higher education’. Sushil Kumar Pant in “Innovations in Nepali College Classrooms: The Experiences of a Helmet Teacher” captures these sentiments by arguing that the phrase ‘Helmet Teacher’ is often associated with teachers who are not committed to their profession. He also draws attention to several innovative classroom practices of these helmet teachers including case studies, internships, project and thesis work, seminars, audio-visual aids, article reviews, and reflection journals in teaching-learning engagement. 

Helmet teaching results from the way our education system is organized. Underlying the phenomenon is the belief that teaching and learning can be accomplished in a 45 to 60-minute classroom where the instructor is the purveyor of some curriculum based knowledge and students the passive recipients of that knowledge. Although some helmet teachers might be innovative, as Pant suggests, helmet teaching hardly supports important aspects of teaching-learning, like building a strong teacher-student relationship, encouraging active learning, giving prompt and adequate feedback and accommodating and respecting diverse ways of learning. 

An economic lens offers a clearer view of the phenomenon. Most teachers in Nepal are paid based on the time they spend in classrooms (or the number of classes they take, or the number of courses completed). As the pay at most educational institutions is minimal, teachers can make only so much income from one institution. So they need to work at several institutions. 

Economic benefits being their key incentive, helmet teachers want to maximize their income by scheduling classes at two institutions with little time in between. Considering the traffic situation in Nepali cities, particularly Kathmandu, the commute time is unpredictable. Many times the teachers arrive late in the classroom, and at other times they cannot come at all. Retrospectively, as teaching-learning in Nepal is largely limited to the transfer of knowledge from teacher to student, this process is severely impacted when the teacher or the knowledge provider is absent. 

The economic struggles of teachers are not limited to Nepal though. In many parts of the world, teaching is not a lucrative job. For examples, in the US teachers take a second or even a third job to make ends meet, a phenomenon called ‘moonlighting’. Both ‘helmet teaching’ and ‘moonlighting’ illuminate the need to provide teachers with a decent income. 

We see helmet teaching as an important issue that calls for immediate attention because of its cyclical nature and manifold impacts. At the micro level, the most prominent and immediate impact of helmet teaching is that it deprives students of engaged, holistic learning and limits them to simply meeting curricular requirements. At the meso level, these teachers are part of or lead academic institutions and run the risk of transferring the same values to their students, making it an inter-generational problem. And at the macro level, helmet teaching even impacts educational policies. 

We understand educational policies as a product of the experiences of educators and concurrent discussions on education. In an education system that values helmet teaching and undervalues holistic learning, educational policies are unlikely to transcend this limited understanding. 

Educational institutions should take the lead in establishing the value of the teaching and learning process. They are the ones that should expand teaching-learning from the confinements of the syllabus and incorporate its other values like research and skill-development. Students too can contribute to changing the teaching-learning culture by being active participants in the process, not relying completely on teachers, and going beyond the syllabus and examination scores to incorporate career goals and life skills. 

If the majority of teachers practice teaching-learning engagement as adding value to life’s purposes, and academic institutions strive to prepare students for life by facilitating skill development—rather than preparing them for exams and decent grades and educational policies can be made context-specific and holistic, helmet teaching would be an obsolete phenomenon. 

Dahal is a PhD scholar in Social Work at Boston College, the US. Dhamala is an Assistant Professor of English at Ratna Rajya Laxmi Campus, Nepal.

Nepali students travel all over the globe for higher educa­tion. Their interest in going to the West for studies, most com­monly countries with English as the primary language, is increas­ing significantly. According to the Ministry of Education, 67,226 stu­dents got the ‘No Objection’ certif­icates for studying in 74 different countries between Magh 2073 and Falgun 2074. The highest number of NOCs were issued for Australia (33,241); and Australia, the US, Canada, New Zealand, and the UK together made up 55.73 per­cent of the total NOCs issued in this period. Depending on the destination country, the academic institution and the program of study, the experiences of students might be wide-ranging. However, one thing that possibly underlies all the var­ied experiences of Nepali students travelling and studying overseas is academic culture shock. The majority of the students face it, while only a handful of them may be able to discern and understand it for what it actually is.

The Merriam-Webster dictio­nary defines culture shock as “a sense of confusion and uncer­tainty sometimes with feelings of anxiety that may affect people exposed to an alien culture or environment without adequate preparation”. The academic culture shock, similarly, can be understood as the experience of being confused and anxious as the result of the differences in academic practices, including classroom engagements, assess­ments, and the overall teaching and learning practices between the academic institutions of the country of origin and destination.

Many Nepali students get some preparation for the possible cul­ture shock through movies, songs, books, and experience-sharing from people who have already been to those countries. But few are aware of and prepare for the academic culture shock in their destination countries. One way of preparing is to adequately inform and educate oneself about the academic culture of the desti­nation country overall, and the destination academic institution in particular. Internet provides ample resources and opportuni­ties for doing so.

Also, many of the internation­al-student-receiving-education­al-institutions in the aforemen­tioned destination countries show basic similarities in academic cul­ture, which might be the result of their strategies to accommodate the needs of the diverse students they get. Understanding the basics of an academic culture is the first step towards integrating in that academic culture. By sharing our experiences of the Western education system, we hope to be taking a step towards preparing potential Nepali International stu­dents to the West for the kind of academic culture shock they are likely to face.

One of the biggest could be the general academic expectations from the students. For example, in the US, students are expected to contribute to classroom dis­cussions and express their opin­ions and not merely agree to the teacher; “they are encouraged and even rewarded for challeng­ing authority” (Godwin, 2009). The relation between the teacher and student is expected to be informal. Nepali students coming from an educational experience of hierarchy and the unquestion­ability of teachers can find this difficult to adapt to.

Besides having done the read­ings described in the syllabus and expressing their opinions in the class, students are expected to take complete responsibility for and the lead in their learning—this might include things like choos­ing the research topic, resources, and presentation style. Some stu­dents might find it overwhelm­ing, especially coming from an academic culture in Nepal where students largely find themselves at the receiving end of education­al engagement.

Fink (2013) in “The Human Significance of Good Teaching and Learning” offers the meta­phor “helmsman” to describe a teacher who acts as a guide in the learning process. Teacher’s role in the Western education system as a “helmsman” or “guide on the side” is different from the “sage on the stage” (Fink 2013) role that most teachers in Nepal take on. For the former two roles to bring out the best of the learn­ing engagement, students are expected to be active learners and work as the ore-men in the educational raft.

Avoiding plagiarism is another non-negotiable academic norm in the West that Nepali students might struggle with initially. Stu­dents are expected to follow the rules of reference and citation prescribed by their academic institutions. Although the styles of references differ according to the discipline of study, com­monly used ones are APA, MLA, Chicago. It would pay off for Nepali students planning to study abroad to learn at least one style of referencing adequately. Even though there are slight variations in how each referencing style works, the essence of each is the same. Besides, learning any one reference style properly will sig­nificantly aid the learning of any other referencing style.

Sticking to the deadlines is yet another serious expectation in the Western academic culture. As most of the academic institutions use online learning management systems such as Canvas, Moodle or Blackboard to post and submit assignments, the systems consid­er the submissions delayed even if they take place a few seconds after the stipulated deadline. In case of emergencies, you can talk to the teacher and ask for an extension on the deadline. While some flexibility in deadline may be allowed, the request for exten­sion has to be made well ahead of the due date with appropriate explanation.

We believe that academic cul­ture is largely an extension of the prevalent culture. As there are visible cultural differences between the East and the West, the differences in academic cul­ture are neither unfounded nor irreconcilable. And Nepali inter­national students are not the only ones who struggle with these expectations and norms; stu­dents in general, either domes­tic or international, might strug­gle with them. The good news is that these differences can be smoothened out with careful and appropriate practice.

Dahal is a PhD Scholar in Social Work at Boston College, US, and Dhamala completed an MA in English from Virginia Tech, US where she taught English Writing to undergraduate students