Views of a Nepali Economist

The following opinion piece was published in Republica on June 17, 2013 with the title "Fatal error".

On June 11, when the SLC results were announced, I was in Bhatbhateni Supermarket in Boudha. A thin gentleman who works in the store was dressed in daura-suruwal-topi and parading his teenage son on the ground floor, shaking hands with anyone and everyone he knew and informing them that his son had passed SLC with distinction. The son held a plastic bag full of candies, and gave one to every person his father stopped and spoke to. The father looked enthused about his son’s accomplishment, and the son looked bored with the affair.

But there is an ugly side of the SLC story too. Soon after the SLC results were announced, national media started carrying stories of students who had committed suicide after learning they had failed. Sunita KC from Rukum, Pratikshya Sharma from Nepalgunj, Phul Kumari Kurmi from Parsa, and Anish Amgain from Chitwan ended their lives hours after learning of their failure. Why was it that these teenagers felt the need to kill themselves for failing? After all, they were not the only ones who failed. Of all the students who took the SLC exams this year, a whopping 58.43 percent did.

While it is too soon to say anything about these teenagers’ motives, all Nepalis know at least a few reasons behind their actions. We burden our children with too many expectations. Ever since we are kids, our parents, relatives, teachers, friends, family, and entire society forces us to strive towards excellence in a manner that is just not possible. We forget that not every kid in the classroom can become the “First boy” or the “First girl”. The fact that Nepali children kill themselves when their parents’ expectations are not met speaks not of their character, but of the cruelty of their high-expecting parents.

I have a niece who is not the best student in her class, but is a promising athlete and wins every single sporting event she participates in. I had friends in school who could never learn how to throw a cricket ball or kick a football, but they could explain to me how atom bombs were made, complete with diagrams of atomic fission chambers and radioactive decay equations. Every one of us is unique, we have special abilities and special disabilities. Diversity of skills, knowledge, thoughts, philosophies, and actions is what has made human beings the superior species on this planet. We have been able to send people to the moon, robots to Mars, and build telescopes that let us see galaxies forming and dying billions of light years away.

Nepali parents need to realize that not everyone grows up to become an Einstein. When a Nepali boy asks his parents what he should do in the future, the parents reply, “You can be anything you want. Either a doctor or an engineer.” The kid is never allowed to aspire to become an Amrit Gurung, a Ganeshman, a Buddhisagar or a Haribansha. In addition to not giving their children any choices, parents make them bear the burden of upholding family prestige and societal bragging rights. The father may come home drunk every night, the mother may have an affair with the next-door neighbor, but it is their son not securing a distinction in SLC that “brings shame” to the family.

In addition to Nepali parents, the Nepali education system is also to blame. In the name of meritocracy, we reward rote learning. How can an end of the year exam like SLC determine whether a student is good or bad? I have been teaching for a number of years now, and my personal observation throughout these years has been that results of final exams are not good indicators of student quality. For all we know, the student who gets only 60 percent in Biology exam is the biggest admirer of Jonas Salk, and wants to grow up and find cures to diseases. Our promotion and rewarding of rote learning has been killing our children’s creativity, originality and passion.

The events of the last few days have shown that we need to make two immediate changes to our school system. First, we need to get rid of the SLC system. If the government is mandating that all Nepali schools have +2 level classes, it makes no sense to give the SLC exams so much hype and importance. Second, the percentage system fosters unhealthy competition between students about who gets the highest percentages, and schools about how many students secure distinction. We should abolish the percentage system and replace it with the Grade Point Average (GPA). It will help minimize negative competition. Of course, there are many other important changes that are necessary in our school education system, but these two changes alone will help save many Nepali children from suicides.

Labels: education, nepal, SLC, suicides