It made me ponder on an email that landed in my inbox a month ago about an announcement for a Ph.D. program whose general abstract was, “Why South Asian people, especially Nepalese, want to migrate to Europe or North American countries?”
There might be a lot of reasons behind that, but offering my opinion, one of the prominent factors is the frustration among the younger generation, yet being capable, is forcing them to leave their country. Let me light upon the concept of “frustration” mentioned here. Most importantly, we do not love our work, and following, we are confined within Society which evaluates our work based on its profile or company’s profile rather than the effort and dedication put upon that certain work/job. Mostly, we are fascinated with decorating jobs and are running after them, we are self-embracing the frustration but do not want to start our career with unadorned job opportunities.
Talking about other reasons for leading frustration might be probably lack of administrative quality, as Nepal was the only nation to publish load-shedding schedule just as a university publishes the examination schedule. Students were compelled to lead them towards frustration.
Other, reasons behind are the frequent shortages of petrol and cooking gas have created lots of frustration. There is no certainty of getting the cooking gas cylinder in the market and people have a fear of petrol shortage, cooking gas shortage. The prime time where one is supposed to think of one’s complete development, these hindrances led them to utmost frustration, compelling them to meditate on different platforms.
In today’s world scenario country is complete if health services are at their best. But, considering recent condition we came to know what sort of Health Services we are standing upon. Thus, Health service is the next factor that is prominent to frustration among the students. There is a popular saying in Nepali “Rin lagos tara din nalagos”. However, people are dying due to a lack of timely health service. To mention they are dying of a disease that can be termed as “died out” in another world. Talking about other factors, there are overcrowded people either in public transport or in the temple/cultural places or in government offices and even on roads. We do not even have the slightest idea of discipline. As people do not have simple patience to wait for their turn and, not even have a general idea of how to stand in line and follow some etiquette. The only thing we have in our mind is shouting at leaders, “It’s the leaders who have made the miserable condition of Nepal”. But, we never question our own credibility of shouting at someone.
Education is the foundation of development and civilization. But education here has now become more business than platform creating geniuses. The opportunity to gain a quality education has come under the capacity of the rich family. There are so many private schools charging the monthly tuition fee more than the monthly average salary of Nepali. People are afraid of uncontrolled and expensive fees being charged by the schools. No one has paid serious attention to it. The condition of public school is worse, in turn, most of the parents do not want to send children to the government school due to poor education delivery and management, but they are compelled to send them as private schools are beyond their capabilities. Hence, these are some factors that have compelled Nepalese citizens to think of migrating to European or American countries in search of a good future.
On contrary to the above mention factors, there lies a question, why people are running far from the problems and not diving themselves to solve such problems, rather choosing to migrate to a foreign land as an easy path? If I am to examine this disappointing situation through the lens of the naturalism of Jean Jacques Rousseau, one of the famous nature philosophers of the 18th century whose theory of naturalism revolves around nature, the education should be according to the nature of the child, but due to the cultural hegemony, we have gone unnatural and from the day child starts to think, they dream of going abroad.
I believe that the curriculum must be child-centered as per the present and future needs of the child. But, the curriculum and courses that we have been teaching to the child today are not as per the local community. The child is taught to say “Apple” instead of “Shayau”. This clearly shows we are preparing them for abroad. We take speaking in English as a symbol of prestige, but this way we are motivating our children for abroad. Rather than giving them the spirit of our “own”, we are molding them with “others” soul. Furthermore, parents are natural teachers. However, due to the growing race for career growth; parents have very limited time to spend with their child. Most of the parents believe that dropping their child at school and paying a handsome amount of fee will automatically inject the contextual education into their child. Less attention from parents towards their children has made them unnatural and creating a circumstance to enjoy on their own and confined within themselves.
The most important merit of the child-centered education process is, it should focus on learning from the experience of the child so that the child is educated to solve all the problems of life successfully. We must train them to take risks and dig deep and find a solution to the problems. However, the education system, today has taken an unnatural way, and children are not taught to solve the problems of life, they find the best resolution is to run away from the problem. Thus, when they grow young they take it easy to migrate rather than take initiative and solve the problem.
Bijaya Kumar Shrestha (bijaya.kumar.shrestha1@gmail.com). The author is an Information Technology graduate of Kathmandu University working in an Educational Institution.