Education: Point To Be Noted

Arjun Dahal

When we talk about curriculum of Nepalese academica till grade 10, it is excellent in itself. Then why aren’t we able to produce manpower who possess rigour in all aspects like theory, concept and visualization. The answer is due to our own methodologies of teaching.

I had time to study the textbooks published by celebrated Oxford and Cambridge University Presses for Nepalese students, and what I found that they are precise. Truly they are precise, but what makes Nepalese textbooks better is Nepalese textbooks are elaborative, descriptive, and precise. This makes Nepalese textbooks far more better then the textbook published by Oxford and Cambridge University Presses.
Then question arises, where are we lacking?

The answer lies in our methodologies in teaching. For an example, in science textbooks, most of the textbooks till grade 10 consists of activities as shown in figure below.

What we do is, we generally skip these activities or just provide theoretical knowledge by defining the terms. Being a teacher, as q matter of fact, even I do same and I hurry to complete course in time much faster then the time provided by curriculum to do sufficient revision.

Let us take a example of why demonstration is important.

When we talk about photosynthesis, we describe and let the students imagine themselves. I doubt if any single school in Nepal follows the textbook with prescribed activity where students are supposed to be taken out of class, let them to observe a plant with one of it’s leaves kept inside plastic rapper, then waiting for few days to let the plastic open and allowing them to observe the leaf and the changes in it with respect to other leaves. That would let student know about the entire process, and the materials needed for photosynthesis.

For the picture shown below, we can do a classroom activity.

[The above picture has been taken from science textbook of Grade 8 by Nova Publication.]

Alas! such aren’t done in Nepal, and that results in manpower who has good grades but not conceptual knowledge on the subject matter and hence from our schooling itself our imagination and visualization gets killed and ripped off.

Government too should focus on syllabus and the activities prescribed on syllabus to be done in schools as experimental activities. Private schools too can do same without hesitating to do business in the name of education. Let the business yield some badasses not jackasses.

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