Goals of Education: Protecting and Promoting Divergence and Sustainability

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3126/jer.v4i1.10709 Journal of Education and Research, March 2014, Vol. 4, No. 1, pp. 1-

Cultural Gap in Education: Making Education Unresponsive to the Local Needs

Nepal’s School Sector Reform Program (SSRP) that guided the education development initiatives in the country during the period 2009-15 envisioned that by 2015 “a student has basic life skills to co-exist in the competitive contemporary, global society” (Ministry of Education and Sports, 2008, p. 17).  Going further, the Program also noted that its goals are built on “EFA Framework of Action” (p. 18).  The global orientation of the reform program was thus very clear.  Envisioning to prepare the children for global society and following an EFA framework emphasize the global orientation of Nepali education.  The SSRP was not the only plan with global orientation; the first Nepali education development plan prepared in 1955 also had the same orientation.  The plan had written “we have become a part of the world, whether we like it or not.  We can no longer remain isolated; the world has come to us.  How can we meet this world without education?” (Pandey, K. C., & Wood, 1956, p. 83).  The global orientation was thus not a new phenomenon in Nepali education and the dream towards becoming international has been there in Nepali education consistently.  Continuing with the same dream, SSRP presented the strategy of competitive and contemporary global education for Nepal and Nepalis

Valuing People’s Learnings and Literacies

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3126/jer.v3i0.7848 Journal of Education and Research March 2013, Vol. 3, No. 1, pp. 1-

Local Values in Governance: Legacy of Choho in Forest and School Management in a Tamang Community in Nepal

The political modernization in Nepal accelerated since 1951 when the country changed its course owing to a popular movement that was acclaimed as the beginning of democracy in the country. However, the governments continued cultural and political homogenization.  This has been so in the case of local governance practices as well. Modern governing structures/institutions are guided by the state formed policies and elite-based power structures despite the fact that different ethnic groups in Nepal have their own traditional self-governance systems. In this context, this article unfolds the inheritance of traditional practices of the Tamang community (one of the major ethnic groups of Nepal), in a village, in the district adjoining Kathmandu valley, within the modern structures of governance of forest and school management systems. The paper argues that there is a legacy of the traditional institution, the Choho, though the system of Choho itself has now largely disappeared. This paper, based on ethnographic fieldwork, presents the accounts of Choho and examples of how the particular norms, values, beliefs, and practices are still in practice challenging and denying the modern/state formed mechanisms of governing the forests and schools in the village. The paper further argues that given the modern governance system, the traditional souvenir exchange practice that was rooted in the notion of honour and respect has now shifted towards the practice of giving and receiving gifts based upon the principle of reciprocal benefits that could be described as a bribe

Impact of opioid-free analgesia on pain severity and patient satisfaction after discharge from surgery: multispecialty, prospective cohort study in 25 countries

Background: Balancing opioid stewardship and the need for adequate analgesia following discharge after surgery is challenging. This study aimed to compare the outcomes for patients discharged with opioid versus opioid-free analgesia after common surgical procedures.Methods: This international, multicentre, prospective cohort study collected data from patients undergoing common acute and elective general surgical, urological, gynaecological, and orthopaedic procedures. The primary outcomes were patient-reported time in severe pain measured on a numerical analogue scale from 0 to 100% and patient-reported satisfaction with pain relief during the first week following discharge. Data were collected by in-hospital chart review and patient telephone interview 1 week after discharge.Results: The study recruited 4273 patients from 144 centres in 25 countries; 1311 patients (30.7%) were prescribed opioid analgesia at discharge. Patients reported being in severe pain for 10 (i.q.r. 1-30)% of the first week after discharge and rated satisfaction with analgesia as 90 (i.q.r. 80-100) of 100. After adjustment for confounders, opioid analgesia on discharge was independently associated with increased pain severity (risk ratio 1.52, 95% c.i. 1.31 to 1.76; P < 0.001) and re-presentation to healthcare providers owing to side-effects of medication (OR 2.38, 95% c.i. 1.36 to 4.17; P = 0.004), but not with satisfaction with analgesia (beta coefficient 0.92, 95% c.i. -1.52 to 3.36; P = 0.468) compared with opioid-free analgesia. Although opioid prescribing varied greatly between high-income and low- and middle-income countries, patient-reported outcomes did not.Conclusion: Opioid analgesia prescription on surgical discharge is associated with a higher risk of re-presentation owing to side-effects of medication and increased patient-reported pain, but not with changes in patient-reported satisfaction. Opioid-free discharge analgesia should be adopted routinely

Schooling: The Way People See It

In this paper, I discuss how people perceive and give meaning to schooling or education. Based largely on field-data, I organize this discussion on four key themes social status and employment, everyday skills and knowledge, gender and caste, and social relationships. While making these discussions I argue that powerful contradicting forces are operating in educational arena, one, local pressures from below for educational opportunities and improvement and the other, from above, resistance to maintain hierarchy. I show how powerful forces at the local level deny access to schooling to women, low castes and the poor. It is true that the access to schooling to these deprived groups has been improved recently. Nevertheless, the discriminatory forces are still powerful illustrating the tension between the agency of these actors and societal structures. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3126/jer.v1i0.794

Realizing the Existence of Multiple Forms of Knowledge: A Strategy Towards Seeing Education for Rural Transformation

Education in Nepal is very structured and focused towards enhancing cognitiveknowledge of students. Though Nepali policy documents often emphasizeeducation as a means for development and social transformation, this paperargues that Nepali education has not given any direct consideration to this aspect.Some attempts are of course made towards seeing education as a means for ruraltransformation but it is a surprising reality that despite success of those pioneer andmodel building efforts, they could not be placed in government policy and practice.Deriving from those and other research and field experiences, the paper tries toexplain this reality. Further, based on such Nepali experience, the paper argues onthe need for identifying local practices of knowing and educating as accepted modesof knowing and educating. Such recognition would contribute to see the knowingbeyond the formal and non-formal schooling process. This would help us realizethat forms of knowledge are not one but multiple. In today’s globalized context,it is of course important that people have knowledge that could link them with theworld beyond their everyday living. At the same time, it is also equally importantthat we value their knowing and educating practices and recognize all forms ofknowledge as important and end the binary and derogatory practice of labelingpeople as illiterate as we have given to the large mass of people