Rethinking Education

Connecting the association between people, ideas and investment scattered across the nation will help shift people from having raw ideas into investment opportunities that the school needs to seriously address. The opportunities within any given nation hugely lies in creative and innovative ideas of youth. there needs to be a common platform where people discuss their ideas that seems to be implementable. and it is not that there are no opportunities and platform where people are not discussing and seeking for investment in Nepal. However, what seems to be lacking significantly is working on the ideas that has been anticipated and discussed during seminars, workshops and round tables to bring changes to make a society better and greater. I found from speaking with more than 50 business leaders from various sectors of our economy that an important role is reserved for investors, as a lot of money is needed to make anything happen since great ideas require lots of investment. The ideas we see are scattered across the country and had lost within no time since people with ideas don’t find platform to showcase it for the investment, neither do our education system have a culture of developing ideas to transform the nation. As we discussed more on idea generation in schools, colleges and university level the respondent reported that they don’t necessarily feel that idea generation from this level will make any difference since schools and colleges with no or less collaboration with outsiders.

But when I went on to speak with some students individually, I then  asked them the same questions what I have asked to their respective colleges and school teacher faculty members, principals and the top level of management, out of 250 students from 25 different colleges surveyed between the age of 18- 25, 120  students responded that they have few ideas that are in an initial stage and needs encouragement, mentorship and more over need a platform within the school to heard their creative voice, 55 students reported that the need for innovative clubs in addition to existing clubs where hardly any innovation comes out of the same  hence students demand such clubs within the school where they can express their creative genius in front of the people that matter the most. And remaining 125 chose not to respond to my question being put forward to them. The above result makes us to rethink about the need to discuss more about our young minds and their ideas and the need to bring it to the stage where students themselves present their own ideas in front of the people who are desperately looking for great ideas to invest and a concrete support system.

The foundation of the present education system was laid down at the end of the nineteenth century. They were designed to meet the need of only handing over certificate to the ever growing population of Nepal but the education systems were never being transformed by industrialization. The challenges we face now are of the same magnitude, but they are of a different character. The task is not to do better now what we set out to do then. It is to rethink the purposes, possibilities, methods and scale of education in our new circumstances. It is not wrong to argue that no education system can be world class without valuing an integrating creativity in teaching and learning in the curriculum and leadership demonstration without linking this to promoting knowledge and understanding of cultural change diversity and possibilities lies to tap available resources. That follows are to help set a course for the next century while addressing the urgent demand of the present.

Countries throughout the world are reorganizing their education systems. They are engulfed in rapid economic and social change. The current state of education in Nepal, provides an opportunity for us to rethink how we can tackle an issue that is essential to the development of the nation, rather than seeing it as a restrain to Nepal growth and ability to be a contender on a global platform. Looking at current education systems in the country as we discussed with our young leaders along with some of academic staff and faculty about ways in which education in Nepal can be more Nepal-Centric and more inclusive of the respective Nepalese societies in order to enable us to be more impactful on the country. As we speak more about national educational mission, rethinking education is intentionally about what the institutions try to do and the types of citizens they should be trying to create.

Author: Mr. Rajesh Bhandari

Program Director: Brixton College, BBA Program, Mahendranagar

President: PVP Nepal Province No. 7, Nepal

Cell: 9805422784

Mail: tfabodoc@gmail.com