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Evidence of the increasing resistance that formal education institutions and teachers face these days, including in Nepal, is aplenty. The song “Teachers leave them kids alone” plays frequently and t-shirts flash: “I was born intelligent but education ruined me”. This development of resistance, particularly in higher education, forces educators to revisit the purpose of education and the relation between teachers and students.

Times have changed. Students no longer have to rely solely on the teacher for the course content. They have similar, if not the same, access to textbooks and online materials as teachers. So teaching as dissemination of information is gradually turning into an obsolete phenomenon. Teachers can no longer remain the ‘sage on the stage’ who transfer knowledge from their buckets to the vessels that students are thought to be.

This is particularly prominent in higher education where the students come with a broad range of academic and non-academic experiences and do not identify with empty vessels waiting to be filled. Neither do they appreciate the old-school teacher-student hierarchal relationship devoid of spaces to question the content and methods used in education.

The goal of education should be to help students learn; hence the focus should be on learning rather than teaching. Goldstein (2001) explains, “A Teaching Model is didactic, deductive, top-down—the typical classroom experience. A Learning Model … is an experience that involves one’s total self—mind and body, intellect and emotion, memory and foresight. It is an active and interactive process one experiences and engages in learning”.

A cursory look at the prominent higher education institutions in Nepal provides ample evidence that they largely follow the teaching instead of the learning model. Universities (in practice, a handful of people) design the curriculum without an active engagement of key stakeholders (the teachers and the students), conduct all or larger portions of student evaluation, and exercise authority over ‘monitoring’ education. Teachers have little or no space to engage students beyond this most often ‘content heavy’ curriculum or to even provide a deeper engagement, and students are largely passive recipients of education that lopsidedly happens within the physical classrooms. I believe that higher education in Nepal will benefit by shifting from the prevalent teaching model to a learning model—the sooner the better.

Although this shift throughout the nation would require policy changes (another top-down process area!) consuming a lot of time and other resources, higher education institutions and teachers can immediately benefit by incorporating elements of learner-centered education. Maryellen Weimer (2002) in Learner Centered Teaching points to five things that change when teaching is learner-centered: the balance of power, the function of content, the role of the teacher, the responsibility for learning, and the purpose and process of evaluation.

Weimer contends that faculty controlled learning diminish student motivation and results in dependent learners. She recommends a responsible power sharing with students to positively influence their motivation and learning. She believes excessive focus on covering the content (a ubiquitous phenomenon in Nepal) restricts the development of learning skills needed to function effectively on the job and in society. This might explain why many of our graduates lack the skills and struggle to perform at workplace despite having a ‘degree’ and good grades.

A learner-centered teaching focuses on using instead of covering the content to establish a knowledge foundation and develop learning skills. Such engagements might have implications on how much content can be covered in a course. Therefore curriculum developers in Nepal should aim at designing content that can provide deep engagement, with the focus on skill development rather than controlling students through expansive content.

In learner centered teaching, Weimer explains, teachers are guides, facilitators, and designers of learning experiences and not the ‘main performers’. Students are the focus of this approach and teachers are involved in careful design of experiences, activities and assignments through which students engage with the content. Learner centered teaching encourages students to understand and accept the responsibilities for learning, including coming to class—not because of the attendance policy but because they see the activities and events of class time making important contribution to their learning. Finally, Weimer advises using evaluation to promote learning and not merely to generate grades, and to encourage student involvement through self-evaluation and peer evaluation.

So teachers should stop teaching with the view that they are the experts and students are mere recipients of knowledge. They should critically revisit the idea that learning happens with transfer of information. To borrow Sir Ken Robinson’s words from his TED Talk “How to escape education’s death valley”, teachers should also mentor, stimulate, provoke, and engage.

The author is a PhD Scholar in the School of Social Work, Boston College, MA, USA

We already have a glimpse of the post-corona world order. When the pandemic subsides, the Americans could double down on China. Trump is sure to sharpen his anti-Sinic slurs in the lead up to the presidential elections, whenever they take place. Republicans are also trying to paint Joe Biden, the Democratic nominee for the president, as soft on China. As the bipartisan anti-China bias solidifies in the US capital, Biden will be forced into a more confrontational approach to Beijing. Then there are the Russians, who are again expected to meddle in the US elections. Whoever wins, the US-Russia relations will continue to be rocky.

At the same time, the India-US partnership under the Indo-Pacific Strategy will get progressively better, with a clear geopolitical ramification for Nepal. India and the US will increasingly work in concert to buttress the ‘democratic camp’ in Nepal, and China will try to help the communist government in Kathmandu to resist this pressure. And China could do so with Russia’s help. Were it not for the corona pandemic, Russian President Vladimir Putin could have come to Nepal this year. The Cold War-era bunkers in the Russian Embassy in Kathmandu await a new round of China-Russia tête-à-tête.

There is a remarkable coherence between the foreign policy outlooks of Moscow and Beijing, considering their troubled borders and centuries-old enmity. At the moment, the two regional behemoths reckon they have no option but to together push back against the new American designs in Eurasia. They are thus ready to bury the old hatchet. RT, the state-controlled Russian television, is these days dominated by discussions where participants heap praises on China for standing up to ‘American imperialism’ and for coming to the medical help of the likes of Italy and Spain, while the US, the supposed friend of these European countries, had nothing to offer.

The Chinese press has likewise been busy chastising Washington for its supposed failure to save the lives of its own people even while it pushes ‘criminal’, corona-enabling sanctions against Iran and Venezuela. And there are only good words for Russia in the Chinese press. China’s recent military maneuvers in the South China Sea, meanwhile, shows that it is intent on preserving its primacy in the neighborhood, corona or no corona.

When I asked an old China hand in Nepal how the corona crisis would change Nepali geopolitics, pat came his reply: “There is now a clear case for closing the open Nepal-India border. The corona pandemic has clarified that the open border is a danger to our sovereignty.” Such voices will get stronger in the days ahead, and they will find plenty of ears in the Oli government.

Many think the prospect of Russia and China working together to secure their geopolitical interests in South Asia is fanciful. But as the Americans get more and more assertive here, it is only natural for the two to pool their resources to fight against this ‘American hegemony’. In the long run, the curse of geography forces Russia and China apart. But for the time being the calculations of individual strongmen like Xi and Putin will prevail. 

At some point in life, we have all been told to be ourselves. But that’s a misleading advice. Mostly, we confuse it with being selfish. There is a fine line differentiating them, and it is easy to mistake one for the other. It’s like two similar-looking buttons placed together on the mental switchboard. By choosing one over the other, we set ourselves in two totally different states of mind.

In fact, we often take the advice of being ourselves as a freedom to let our ego play. We try to ‘be ourselves’ by speaking up whatever our egotistic mind tells us to say, and do whatever it tells us to do. We speak things even if it hurts others, and do things even if it harms others. Only our thoughts, feelings and emotions matter. Everyone should comply with what we think is right.

We put ourselves at the center of the universe and magnify our selfish selves out of proportion. Not others, but ‘I’ need to feel good, be happy, grow rich, have fun. In most of our engagements with the world, this thought become central. And that creates problems—a whole lot of them. There are over seven and half billion people in the world. As everybody is prone to think that way, there are about seven and half billion centers of universe in this planet alone. No surprise that we have so much conflict.

In true sense, to be ourselves is not to be at all. When we try ‘to be’, our habitual tendencies compel us to do selfish things. Being fearless becomes being arrogant, speaking up your mind becomes being rude, being goal-oriented becomes being self-obsessed, and being ambitious becomes being inconsiderate. Even being humble becomes a means of gratifying our sense of greatness and bragging about our own humility. ‘I’ am better than ‘others’.

When we are ourselves, the self shouldn’t be there, or it will be selfish. It entails letting one’s ‘self’ dissolve into just ‘being’. It means being in harmony with others, the nature, entire humanity, entire existence. Let’s not forget that others are pretty much part of the existence as we are. So any separation of ‘I’ from ‘others’ will be a separation from the existence. When we think in terms of I—my life, my likes, my choice, my freedom—we are in disharmony. We are colliding with billions of centers of the universe. That is not very helpful.

So how do we identify the right button and be in the right frame of mind? Maybe we can give it a thought during the coronavirus lockdown.

From 1995 to 2000 I lived in Bardia in western Nepal. During my first couple of years there bottled water had to be ‘imported’ from Chitwan and things like bread were just not available. At that time I did my shopping in Bluebird (where Big Mart is now located) on Lazimpat maybe three or four times a year. What we did have in Bardia was time… plenty of time. 

Having moved to Bardia from Singapore (go figure!) the pace of life was very different. Long hours of sitting around, especially in the hot months when to move was just too sweaty anyway. The time passed at the same rate as the seasons and was reflected in the crops being grown. There was high excitement when a salesman came along, pushing his bicycle full of wears such as lungis, ladies hair ornaments, children’s clothes, and jackets in the winter. That always passed an hour or so as everyone pulled out their wares to inspect them carefully. 

In the summer a guy came along selling basically frozen water on a stick with a slice of coconut inside. Despite the immense heat I always turned down his offer. After the initial couple of years we could get blocks of ice from Nepalganj, which were delicious to the touch and cooled off fizzy drinks as well as our hands! In short, life was laidback and slow-paced, for me at least.

Yesterday, sitting on my balcony during the lockdown, I was sipping my morning tea, watching a neighbor irrigate his newly created vegetable field, and reflecting how the world has been forced to slow down. Here in Kathmandu, instead of the clothes seller (although they do come to my neighborhood also), the vegetable seller with his basket of goods perched on his cycle is what causes a flutter of activity.

The arrival of the guy spraying disinfectant on the street brought everyone out of their houses to watch—masks tightly worn against the pungent smell. A truck with jar water caused my heart to race as my usual supplier is not delivering. With the help of my neighbor, I got four jars (two-week supply) and only had to pay for the water, not the bottles. Guess he is trusting we are not going anywhere with his empty bottles. I felt I gained entertainment, goodwill and financial bonus all rolled in one! Women are gossiping from balconies and rooftops and the men are playing cards. I can see children and grandparents interacting on the same balconies and rooftops, the children perhaps fed up with TV cartoons. Yes the pace of life has slowed right down.

The supermarkets I missed in the 1990’s are again ‘missing’. But now there are online deliveries—something the village never had. Although it’s true there was always a helper in Bardia willing to cycle off to shop to pick up whatever was available that day. Or spend the day in the next town when, eventually, a little bakery opened. Small loafs, far too sweet, were produced, but bread never the less.   

Isn’t it just as exciting waiting to see if and when your supermarket delivery will turn up as it was waiting to see what was on sale in that week’s haat bazaar? Isn’t it true today that we would all love to fight our way over the boxes that block the aisles of a certain well know supermarket chain or visit the organic market that is way over-priced? We used to stress over the amount of time activities took, trying to fit shopping in between work, looking after children and meeting with friends. Today, we have all the time in the world.  But our regular entertainments are not available to us. So for now I watch the neighbor irrigate the land, and spend more time (virtually) with loved ones.