Ramesh Shrestha

“ Home Science should not comprise the total teaching or training content but should just be a part of the total program which should include agriculture and social and political education. If home science should comprise a section, there it should not consist of teaching about scientific dogmas (such as vitamins, calcium, and phosphorous which have no real values from the perspectives of the illiterate women) as the present curriculum seems to do, but it should be based on home-based truth of food and bygine. ”

“ Such questions as why the country needs literacy, what good it will serve to the recipients or the givers, what level in the formal schooling system such literacy program should reach, what the areas are, occupational, ethnic or otherwise, that need literacy, what the cultural, economic, or political goals are, what the linguistic goals are, and what the priorities are, are all neglected. What we have is a bold quantitative objective: to make a certain number of people literate. ”

“ The weaknesses of the FAEP are not very different from those of the traditional literacy program. The FAEP fails to identify the problems, collective and individuals’ objectives are not defined in terms of specific learning and teaching goals. The instruction in reading and writing is completely non-existent and the training component (knowledge and skill, perhaps) exists as a whole isolated chunk. The vocational skills and knowledge that participants may receive are not usable most of the time, so they turn out to be a gamut of unrealizable learning experiences acquired dogmatically. ”

“ It should be borne in mind that it is considered necessary for an adult to reach the level of knowledge of a pupil who has completed 4 to 6 grades in a modern school before he can be considered truly literate11. Since the objective of our primary schooling is to achieve literacy and since it only continues to grade 3 we could assume that the formal equivalence of adult literacy is no more that grade 3. This, in ideal circumstances of the present program, is inadequate and capable of producing only substandard literates at best. ”

“ With such an inadequate supply of teaching-learning materials, no regular training of teachers, one or two supervisors’ workshop, and one or two seminar on the theory of adult education, the AES seems to have satisfied itself by supplying an administrative input to the program only. Even here, it is surprising to note that in its so many years of involvement in manpower, the Ministry of Education has produced and retained in its AES such an inadequate number of trained people. ”

“ The past twenty years’ experience of national adult education in Nepal has amply demonstrated the error of these assumptions, for if they had been correct there would have been enough motivation on the part of the illiterate adults to join literacy centers which, however, is precisely what has not happened. In other words, ‘they’ do not feel the need of learning as naturally as we would like to believe that they do. Moreover, the illiterate adults’ need in respect of learning may not necessarily be the same as ours. ”

“ It cannot be proved ‘scientifically’ but it can be estimated that instead of making a positive impact on the grass root level of the program, the program has added to the moral depravity of the nation, of the people involved in it by choice and of the people dragged into it as an innocent party of the former, that is, of the people whose names are used in the register of the teacher, supervisor, and DEO as literacy-recipients. ”

“ Instead of mere primary teachers, the program then needs to mobilize all these experts, volunteer organizations, army, religious Guthis, Panchayhat organizations, students, children, etc. Then a better picture of adult literacy emerges, not of a mere self-defeating fairly mechanistic system, but of a system which can be a true medium for ‘intellectual, sentimental and psychological chain reactions, which arise when relations are established between one human being and another2.’
The lack of a follow-up program has made the investment in literacy produce no returns. ”

“ In the second place, one also notices in the above extract that some sort of a dichotomous group between the giver and receiver, the definer and defined is being established. The giver is a body of educated-elite, the government, or democracy, which thinks that literacy, as something that they have themselves acquired and profited from, is a highly desirable commodity and that is should be given to those who have not had the privilege of obtaining it, to those who are ‘ignorant’, ‘degraded’, and who do not fulfill ‘their duties and responsibilities and enlightened citizens of democracy’. ”

“ If the present faults are not redressed and if they continue in the very extensive measure as now, soon the whole adult literacy program may have generated and accumulated such an amount of stigma (call it defeatism, negativism or whatever) in the people’s mind that it will be increasingly hard to create any suitable atmosphere for the program to continue and soon a remedial re-education of the people’s attitude towards adult literacy may be required. ”

“ When no reliable figures are available on the number, degree, and type of bilingualism that exist in the country, it is still harder to do so. However even though this involves stupendous problems of expertise and money, bilingual literacy is a viable concept to be used at least in some parts of the country among some groups of people. It may contribute to the enhancement of adult education. The use of minority languages may help to secure motivation for these language speakers to join the program. ”

“ One of the ways of securing the attachment of the people of different groups to the nation is to promote their language and follow it up by concurrent changes in their social status31. Thus, the use of vernacular in literacy work may be an element which would help mobilize the ethnic attachment of the people to the national attachment. Secondly, the use of the national language in the bridge materials would extend the use of that language. This would facilitate the government propaganda to reach the people and the people to participate in the national system. ”

“ The new work then will have to be seen in the light of all the recent innovations in literacy work, in its concepts and theories, as dynamic and complex undertaking involving several interdisciplinary areas such as sociology, anthropology, culture, language, education, etc. The organizational part of the work needs to be seen not just as an administrative bureaucracy, but as a composition of several units, of policy makers, material production and distribution, supervision, evaluation, training, illustration, audio-visual, radio program, press and printing, publicity, etc. ”

“ The system has thus defeated itself proving itself the major constraint of adult literacy. However, the national fight against illiteracy should continue and adult education will have to be given a high priority. Out of the current literacy figure, reported as nearly 20% of the population about half of this number is contributed through adult education3. Even if only a part of the statistics is true, the number of illiterates is growing in the country at an alarming rate, two hundred thousand per year as some statistics show. ”

“ We came across one DEO who did not even find it necessary to keep and account of how the adult education money was spent. The DEO is usually unaware of which areas under his jurisdiction need most attention, how much is already invested in one particular area and usually has no idea of the teacher-recipient’s background.
The person, who applies for a quota, in several cases a number of quotas, is usually not interested in making anyone literate. ”

“ If Rs. 34/- a month can attract so many teachers and supervisors, it can easily be inferred that more money may attract more people, and thus, given the present state of affairs, our program could turn out to be a hotter bed of corruption.
The objectives of adult education cannot be realized by teachers of elementary and secondary schools alone, teachers who have no training, no motivation, and no sense of attachment to the job. The need for training the available primary teachers and the formation of a competent and dedicated army of teachers can hardly be overemphasized. ”

“ Our LEP is what may be called a traditional literacy program, where reading, writing, and elementary arithmetic are taken as ends in themselves, where literacy work is not made to measure, that is, where it is not differentiated according to the environment and specific economic and social objectives, where it is standardized and laid down on centralized basis, where there is no variability and flexibility so as to take into account the diversity of immediate objectives and individual situations8. ”

“ There is an immediate need to organize massive follow-up program before a big number of what is claimed as new literates through not only adult education but also through elementary education relapse into absolute illiteracy. The follow-up program should lead the new iterates to a continuing informal self educating system. Village and mobile libraries need to be established and, before that, books in simple language be written for them. The big national daily newspaper Gorkhapatra could contribute by devoting a section of the paper as materials for the new literates. ”

“ The most motivated for learning are these people, and one of the good things about adult education is that it has adjusted these people to the classes. However, there are some natural frustations, mainly because the curriculum is not designed for them. In order to help these people, some teachers are found to have taken their own initiative in teaching them to learn to write the Roman script because they want to learn it. If the majority of participants in our LEP comes from this group, the curriculum needs to be changed, not to talk of methods. ”

“ One of the vocational secondary schools which teaches the same subject as is available for a quota (agriculture or home science) is thrust upon the job.
As a result these centers too do not run very regularly. It is difficult for the teacher to find enough interested farmers and, even when he does, the course, which is officially required to run for ten months, is too long. It cuts right through the season when the farmer-students mostly go to the fields to work. ”

“ The theory and methods of adult literacy work has changed enormously over the past few years with the experience of a great deal of experimentation, trial and error. The Nepali adult educationists would naturally like to keep themselves up-to-date with the innovations. Although a poor country like Nepal, however, can not afford risky experiments, cheap and effective methods of adult education are being envolved, and benefits to Nepal must be accrued from them. ”

“ Nothing could take you further from the realities of adult education than the teachers themselves. Next in order were usually the village Pradhan Panchas and secretaries, for they know what was going on, or not going on, and they naturally wanted to protect the teacher. ”

“ There have been no definite strategies ever evolved for securing the subjects’ maximum participation in the program. Our attempts at adult education in Nepal, where the tradition of literacy and of a literate atmosphere is so recent and in many areas largely non existent even now, will succeed only when some definite areas of motivation are clearly identified and then sold to the consumers. ”

“ The LEP is functioning in a vacuum and is, therefore, capable of producing, at best, only adults between absolute illiterate and functionally literate, perhaps just a semi-literate. It could not even theoretically, produce adults qualified to participate in the literacy activities of the society. For example, the literates this program produces are not able to read government propagandas, let alone Gorkhapatra, with understanding although they may be able to recognize the letters. ”

“ It was decided that the most useful and revealing information would be obtained by doing field work in two districts intimately known by the researchers, namely Bhojpur and Dhankuta. All ideas of obtaining ‘scientific data’ from the field work were abandoned. Instead, the researchers went into the field with the simple aim of trying to find some sign of adult literacy, both in the terms of new literates of the past year or two years, or in the form of current literacy classes. ”

“ However, it is not necessary to do, for the Sikshya Ain, 2028 tatha Shikshya Niyamabali, 2028 in 1970 reorganized the adult education program of the country and divided it into two programs: a Literacy Extension Programme (LEP) and Functional Adult Education Programme (FAEP) .
Since then any systematic attempt at the definition of the term ‘literacy’ and its objectives seems to have been largely avoided. The term goes undefined in the Ain itself. ”

“ An illustrator worked for three months before the illustrations were finally printed. The curriculum itself was integrated into the total IHDP program in the area so that when these programs reached the people they would already have some concept about the program, and so that the project would serve as a follow-up program.
The experiment gives an impression of a well-organized and well-conceived project. The creation of a ‘literate environment’ is an innovative and useful concept. It helps motivate the adults to desire literacy and gives practice to those who are already literate. ”

“ They see no difference between ‘black letters and black water buffalos’: both have the same value. To them ploughing their field is more important for their livelihood than reading. They ask literally if education brings light in the eyes. ”

“ As noted earlier, the textbook construction does not fulfill any other conditions usually used in writing textbooks for functional literacy19. No field work seems to have been undertaken in order to identify the actual problems the farmers have been facing. No analysis of the work now performed by the illiterates has been done to see how much the potential learners already know so that the boredom of repeating the same thing is avoided. The teaching materials do not look as if they had ever been evaluated. ”