School

 Part of my involvement with the orphanage here in Phutung involves teaching at a local school. The children here attend one of two nearby ‘private’ schools, so I initially began at one of those – Mahalaxmi English High School.

  I had seen a glossy calendar from the school on the study-room wall and immediately wondered how far away the school was – I certainly hadn’t seen anything in the village that  even remotely resembled the pristine white-washed building depicted in the calendar. My first visit to the school soon cleared up that little mystery.

 

Mahalaxmi English High School, as depicted in a calendar and brochure put out by the school…

 

 … and in reality. They obviously have a first class computer-aided design department. The brochure describes the school as providing,”well-ventilated” classrooms, ha ha.

 I was accompanied to the school by Ramesh, who came to introduce me to the principal. We arrived at the locked gate and while waiting to be admitted I eyed the barbed-wire fence and wondered if these measures were to keep undesirables out, or the pupils in. We ended up being shown to an office which – according to the desk plaques – housed both the school accountant and the ‘president’. Both men bore the same surname, which was also that of the principal, and while this is not uncommon in Nepal, it immediately made me mildly suspicious. The school was obviously anything but well-resourced and had about 400 pupils. Why would they need an accountant and a president, both apparently full-time posts?

 A huge billboard on one of the classrooms bore the photographs of a group of students and the caption, “Heartful Congratulation to SLC Achievers!”. The SLC exam is the equivalent of bursary and is taken by children in year 10 (16/17 years). It is a requirement for admittance to college and every school erects banners and posters, ostensibly congratulating their students but also advertising the school’s success rate. There seems to be fierce competition between schools and I suspect that private education is a fairly lucrative business. Education is certainly highly valued. Ramesh and Sarala are very proud that all the children attend private schools. 

 Having taught at both private and government schools, I can attest to the private schools being better resourced, but I’m not entirely convinced that true value for money is being obtained from these institutions. The brochures tend to hyperbole and all seem to boast of non-existant facilities and standards. Here’s a bit from Mahalaxmi’s brochure (verbatim):

Mahalaxmi English High School is a private an English Medium, co-educational school, full of educational environment and physical facilities, established in 2050 B.S. [1994] on the pious dedication and appreciable efforts of social server and educational personalities Lecturer Mr. Sanak Man Maharjan (founder) and Miss Punya Devi Maharjan (Principal). The school is formally and registered at District Education Office, Kathmandu. It has passed 13^th years with the difficulties and conspires. Now, it is going forward against the repulsive efforts of some jealous, dissipative, blandisher and bruiter.

 I’ve heard PTA meetings in NZ can get a bit heated, but this level of conspiracy and intrigue was a new one to me. I wondered if I would be enlisted in some sort of on-going battle with those ‘jealous, dissipative, blandisher and bruiter’ elements mentioned. 

 Bear in mind, too, that these schools pride themselves on their English language instruction. Mahalaxmi even boasts of a rule that only English is spoken in the school grounds, and I have seen students taking down the names of others who were observed speaking Nepali at school, for reporting. Despite this, the level of english is poor. The principal was unable to  converse with me and although other teachers were described as possessing MAs in English,  they, too, struggled to make every-day conversation.

 Now, I am mindful of sounding like a real snob here. I am well aware of the cultural gulf that separates a place like this from good ol’ NZ and I am certainly not trying to knock them in a boorish attempt to amuse. It’s easy to take the mickey out of mis-spelt signs and brochures, (and I will), but there is a deeper issue here, whereby people like Ramesh and Sarala pay money for what they believe is a top-class education for their kids. I suppose that all these schools are much of a muchness, but I do get annoyed at the thought of unsuspecting folk being taken for a bit of a ride. And a full-time accountant, ‘president’ and non-teaching principal at a private school of 400 smacks of nepotism, to me. Fire the accountant and buy some books, I say.

 Anyway, the principal seemed a bit indifferent to my offer to help out. I wasn’t expecting her to turn cartwheels, but I thought the free services of a native English-speaker for a couple of months might have appealed. In the end I got offered a class of year 7s to play with, which was fine by me. I was shown to a classroom of giggling kids and given an English text-book and a piece of chalk. No, wait – I got given the text-book; I had to send a kid to find me some chalk. And my teaching career in Nepal had begun.

 In the end I only spent a couple of weeks at Mahalaxmi before Ramesh agreed with me that I would be of more use at the Government school, which was very civic-minded of him, considering none of the orphanage kids go there. I certainly felt more inclined to work at the state school. This was Shree Phutung Secondary School, and if I thought the private school was under-resourced, this was to be, perhaps predictably, even worse.

 

Shree Phutung High School.

  

Classes often seem to be without a teacher. Luckily the well-disciplined children manage to supervise themselves.

My year 4 class, Gor’ bless ‘em.

 I was greeted with a bit more enthusiasm at Shree Phutung and they apparently have the occasional foreign teacher put in a spell with them. In fact, on my first day I met a departing Danish teacher. He was a prospective student teacher and had been in Phutung for 6 weeks. He told me that his stint had not endeared him in any way to teaching as a profession, but that he loved Nepal and would be coming back. 

 One teacher was particularly keen on my helping out. He taught English and explained that they only rarely had a native English speaker to assist them, and that he felt this was preferable to European and Asian volunteers who spoke English as a second language attempting to teach it as a subject. I agreed and he immediately enlisted me to assist with his class. Subsequently, for a period each afternoon, I would read aloud to his class the passage they were currently studying, to demonstrate correct pronunciation and so they could hear how English is spoken amongst us whities. (The teacher would then give a  synopsis in Nepali, so that the class could actully comprehend what had been said). I would wander around the room, loudly proclaiming lengthy tales about such heroes of english folklore as St Francis of Assisi (Italian), William Tell (Swiss), and Joan of Arc (French), ever mindful of tone, rhythm and diction, and fancying myself becoming a popular voice-over artist. I could be the James Earl Jones of Nepal.

 In addition to my English class I was asked to teach ‘computers’ to a class of older students. I was initially a little hesitant – not considering myself much of a computer expert – but I needn’t have worried. Only one of about 20 students had ever touched a computer before, so I must’ve seemed like Bill Gates himself. Unfortunately the school only has one computer, an aging beast with a broken CD drive and an antiquated version of Windows, so the principal suggested I start with a theory lesson. Um…  Sure. 40 minutes later I had a whiteboard covered with terms like ‘Operating System’ and ‘CPU’ and 20 Nepali kids, who had diligently copied everything down, wondering why the hell we hadn’t turned the computer on. 

 After that I dispensed with the computer science theory and got them playing with the keyboard and mouse. Lessons basically consist of students taking turns to open a program, painstakingly type out their names or draw a picture, save and close. I started bringing in my little notebook to add another computer and reduce the waiting time, but the first time I did the other teachers were so fascinated by it I spent most of the lesson demonstrating it and answering questions such as how many US dollars it cost, does it play CDs and can I buy it in Nepal?

 

Advanced Computer Science class with ‘Bhon Sir’.

  

 The school dogs. And goat. One of the neighbours regularly grazes his cow in the playground. She makes quite a good ‘elastics’ partner, apparently.  

 Just how bad the lack of resources is was brought home to me when, for about the third class in a row, I had dished out lines to a couple of kids who didn’t have their English books, and I finally realised they had never had an English book. Whoops. Sorry kids. I made up for it by stealing them a couple of text books from the staff room. (I would’ve asked first, but I fully expected an answer in the negative. There are several piles of books on the staffroom floor, and I suspect they are all earmarked for future classes). Other annoyances have included power cuts during computer classes (“Ahem. Right. Just bring me that whiteboard would you, Raj?”), and teachers ‘borrowing’ the school’s one multiboard, which is used for the computer. 

 I have to admit, my classes can be a little shambolic and must attract a degree of attention. Twice I’ve had teachers come and sit in on a class, to observe. The first one ended up by filming me on his cell-phone (I’m confident there was nothing on the blackboard that could be used in any subsequent hearing. Not in any evidential way, at least), and the second offered me a friendly teaching tip. This second guy had sat at the back of the class while I had them all copying out ‘The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog’. The class ranges in both age and ability, but none of them can read or write worth a damn, so I normally try to encourage them to do both. For instance, they couldn’t copy out a sentence like that above without spelling and transcription errors, and they certainly couldn’t read it aloud. (They are most comfortable with ‘copying’. I would set them homework involving answering some simple questions from the textbook and I would invariably find that they would copy out the questions – unanswered – and the passage, including any diagrams, but have no clue as to what was being asked). 

 Now, you may have spotted my deliberate error (ha ha), in that I wrote ‘jumped’ instead of ‘jumps’ over the lazy dog. The teacher wandered up from the back of the class and smilingly pointed out my error. Fair enough. Ta, mate. He then went on to offer me some advice. I was expecting some handy tips on dealing with rambunctious Nepali children, but what he had to say surprised me. He advised me to change ‘jumped’ to ‘jumps’ and explain to the class that I had altered the tense of the sentence from past to present. I gently tried to explain that we were not having a grammer lesson but were practising the alphabet, because approximately half the children could not write it out correctly, and that I might as well throw in subjunctive clauses and relative pronouns while I was at it, for all the good it would do, but he didn’t seem to get my point and again advised me to change the tense of the sentence. What planet are you on, mate? Not one of these kids could stand up and read that sentence from the board, let alone discuss the tense. 

 Such differences in pedagogical ideology aside, teaching at Shree Phutung has been fun. I’ve had plenty of laughs – mostly at myself – and moments of absurdity.  Not the least of which occurred when, as I was leaving after computer class one evening, I heard a scurry of footsteps on the stairs above me – someone obviously disturbed by my entrance into the stairwell. All the students had left and I thought I was pretty much alone, so I expected a truant student who had been hiding on the roof (not unheard of); or perhaps someone more nefarious, maybe a thief! I turned and ascended in a couple of energetic bounds, leaping around the final flight to confront…

… a goat, nervously chewing his cud and looking as sheepish self-conscious as his satyric features would allow. We both backed away, embarrassed, mumbling/bleating our respective apologies and agreed to not speak of the incident again.