At everything. At some of the strange recommendations or demands that come from my family, at the unfathomable amount of times my teachers will blame anything and everything on the cold. At the way kids continue to thrust their papers into my face in an attempt to be tended to first - and the fact that sometimes it works.
More often than not, the strangeness, craziness, loudly colorful mess of Nepal, fades into the background for me as more normal than not. But some days, it comes running at me, slapping me in the face like a huge gust of 90 mph wind. Why can't the kids just be quiet for once? Did my teacher really just brag about hitting students more than any other teacher in the school? Is it really necessary to spell every single word out-loud in a frighteningly hypnosis-like chant?
Nepal makes me really rethink the meaning of education. We insist, beg, and bribe kids to come to school; We rant about its importance. And I do believe education is important, more than anything. But I wonder sometimes if I can fully believe in the product we are selling at my school here in Gorkha, if I can still insist students stay in school; still insist that this is an education worth fighting for. Because sometimes I look at what the kids are learning, what they are truly being taught - and it's much more (or less?) than the ABC's and 123's.
Firstly, they are being taught to memorize. To pour over meaningless words, to chant their spelling, to repeatedly, repeatedly, repeatedly drill lines and formulas. Nepali education squeezes every ounce of creativity out of children that it can, twisting and turning them until the last drop is gone. Students are taught to copy exactly what they see before them, to ingrain it in their brains - as though the brain was a blank copy, to be filled with the words lining the book of general knowledge. They learn this from the moment they walk into school - and as a result, I find my students are most calm when they are writing, copying dust-written letters from the chalkboard. It's what they know. And after they have copied the meaningless letters into their notebook, they won't feel validation unless a red Teek (check mark) has been written across their page. Whether it is really teaching the students or not - this is the role that has been taken on by many teachers in Nepal - come to school, write with chalk across the board, and give a red check of validation to those who can copy your words onto paper. As if that were teaching. As if that could ever constitute teaching.What else are the students taught? They are taught to cheat, to rely on others, and to shuffle into their assigned place in the Nepali classroom - the role of top student, or that of the others. The best students know who they are. They are the ones who are called on in class, whom the teachers address, whose scores the teachers love to look at and compare. I do too. It's fun to see the students who get nearly 100% on their exams, who come within one point of each other. It's easy to give these students attention. But so few people ever look at the other scores. Those who just barely passed the exam, more from guessing than from anything else. Or the students in class three that still don't know how to write their name, the first grader that wrote gibberish instead of "c-a-t, cat" despite how many times we've gone over it. What about the five students in grade one math that can't produce the number 3 or 4 when I ask them to write it? Who struggle to count to five? These kids learn to rely on the smart kids, if they want to get by. Cheating, prodding the teacher into giving them the answer, or simply having another kid write the answer for them. As in most American classrooms as well, students are quick to learn their place - am I a good student or a bad student? I think I would be afraid to hear their answers. And when I feel at my breaking point in the realm of discipline, all I need is a quick remind that these kids need love and encouragement more than anything.
Finally, they are learning to hit. I can't say enough about this one. You know that old phrase: "monkey say monkey do?" And its accompanying philosophical warning: "practice what you preach?" Well they are right on point... especially in terms of young kids that absorb things like sponges. I'm at quite a loss, because I spend half of my day telling kids not to hit each other, and the other half watching teachers, themselves, beat students. And how quickly the students have learned the Nepali way to deal with their problems (so much for Kelso's choices). These kids will hit each other for anything and everything. They push in line (if you could call it a line), they grab things from each other, they throw things. They even hit me (out of love I tell myself), hang off of me, shove things in my face (as I've mentioned before), and I've definitely had some things thrown at me - I probably should have run for the woods as long time ago.
But no, I'm not in any real danger. My first graders sure are though. I literally have a kid crying in every single class. Or a bloody nose, a scrapped shin, a pen-punctured hole in someones hand. For the most part, the hitting isn't completely dangerous to the kids, in the sense that they don't usually hit hard enough to do any damage, but it is endless. And though I say the words "na pita!" (don't hit) like a broken record throughout the class, I know that it's exactly that - a broken record - and nothing more. As long as the kids see the teachers come in with sticks, giving misbehaving students hard slaps across the back, they will never agree to practice the badly pronounced Nepali commands that come from my American mouth.
Because they have already learned a lot, through this education of theirs.
On the other hand, I recently discovered this heavenly little sanctuary called Kindergarten. It's quiet, and happy, and filled with new brains with adorable little hats that look like football helmets. It's full of sponges that haven't been too heavily affected by all the things that have caused so many problems in all of my other classes. It's a warehouse full of boats ready to be built, instead a lake of sinking ships - with me desperately bailing water from boats with holes in their bottom.My father often laughs on days when I tell him I'm going to Kindergarten instead of class five. "You enjoy Kindergarten, huh?" he'll chuckle - likely with the common Nepali view that "babies" are too small to be taught anything. But if Nepal has taught me anything - it's to know where a problem begins, and to not fight a fight you can't win. So when my class three teacher insisted we stick to the textbook for the next three weeks to prepare for the exams, I nodded my head, and headed for a different class. When my teacher told his students to copy three pages of their textbook ten times as homework, I took a deep breath and started planning for the lesson where I'm going to teach them present tense (because they should know what "I am happy" means by fifth grade). When my teacher comes in and draws four pictures on the board and asks if it's okay if she leaves for the hour, or stays in class only to stare out the window for the entire period, I let out a high-pitched scream of frustration inside of my head, and turn again to my students, to give them what she will not, and to the teachers who come in with a desire for change. I don't stay in sinking ships. I've learned to find the ones that I can patch.
A good amount of time, I feel like I'm banging my head against a wall, but I'm also learning how to turn away from tall, immovable concrete walls to face a new direction. To know what I can change. And what I cannot. To see the progress in the teachers who adopt my songs and play new games in the class. To love the moments where I realize children I thought weren't listening have finally learned how to say "This is a hen." To love what is here, to learn from it, and to better it in ways that I am able. What is taught inside the walls of my school may not always be the greatest education for its students, but it sure has been an education for me.
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