August 20, 2007
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Think going to school in the US was bad?
Yesterday morning as I was checking my email before heading to church, I received an email from Mike that highlighted a current problem going on in Nepal. The entire school system, at least the government based schools, has been shut down by Maoist students in protest to the arrest of almost 40 of their comrades a couple of days ago. These students and generally the Maoist party is demanding that these 40 students, who participated in an attack on a coalition of government-loyal students be released!
You most likely won’t find this issued highlighted on the bigger news websites, but a simple news search of google news will yield several results. One such article is this one.
This was very disturbing and sad for me as I read up on this yesterday. Our Nepal team taught at a local government school for a week. We taught students of various grade levels English, Health, and Music. The quality of teaching and resources are severely lacking, but it is at least something! It’s at least giving these students some basic skills that they can use later in life when they grow up, but now this indefinite school strike is adding insult to an already weakened system! What’s worst is that this strike is coming at a time when the students are preparing to take their exit-school exams.
While we were in Kathmandu, we were preparing to go out and do some business, but the family told us to stay inside because a group of Maoists had come, apparently to ask for donations. Prakash and Sunil went outside to talk with them while we stayed inside, wondering what the heck was going to happen. Later they came back and told us that the Maoists were actually there to conduct opinion surveys of local residents in Kathmandu.
One of the questions they asked Prakash revolved around why does he think the general public seem to have a negative opinion about their party / what can the Maoists do to improve the situation in Nepal. He simply told them that they need to “stop doing bad things!” Maybe one of the reasons why they have a bad PR image is because every time they’re reported in the news, it’s always revolves around them doing something questionable legal or just plain BAD!
I can not imagine how shutting down the school system is going to improve their reputation, nor do I think they honestly care! The peace in Nepal may be in effect on a military standpoint, but this incident and others similar to this just highlight the fact that their civil war hasn’t truly ended. Instead of fighting with guns and knives, now it’s coming down to battles on the political, educational, and social fronts. The victims in the end are the common civilians who are always the ones caught up in this messy crossfire.
