FEATURES NEWS THE RISING NEPAL (DAILY)

By Ramesh Prasad Gautam

NEPAL is one of the least developed countries. Its population stands at about 23 million. The per capita income is about $190. Over 80 per cent of the people are involved in agriculture and its literacy rate is about 48 per cent.

Decline

Continuous migration from hills and mountains to the Terai has brought a vast redistribution of the population in the country. In 1952/54, the Terai housed 35 per cent of total population which increased to 47 per cent in 1991. This regional distribution of population shows that school enrolment in the hill and the mountain areas may decline in the future. Therefore, school location planning is required to avoid such a situation.

The distribution of secondary school age population (age 11-15) in 1994 was about eight per cent in the mountains. 41 per cent in the hills, 45 per cent in the Terai and six per cent in the Kathmandu Valley. Likewise, 32 per cent of the population live in the Central Development Region, followed by 25 per cent in the Eastern, 21 per cent in the Western, 13 per cent in the Midwestern and nine per cent in the Far Western Development region.Education is expected to develop human resources with high level of potentialities, skills, knowledge and creativity. Now people expect that modern education should be related to be world of work and productivity. The educated students should be competent in their areas of interest. Education tries to focus its activities on young people, especially the students who start such process from home at an early age and earn knowledge and skill at schools.Hence, the parents are the first teacher who guide their children. School is the second place where children learn meaningful knowledge such as human values and attitudinal behaviour where the teachers acts as facilitator. Education should be accessible to all either through schools or through non-formal and informal education.There is an increasing recognition that civic education is about teaching and learning the principles and practices of democratic governance and citizenship. Its interrelated components are civic knowledge, civic skills and civic virtues. In an effort to highlight the importance of civic education, we should launch a series of sensitisation programmes to develop civic awareness in our education system and promote a sense of belonging and solidarity among citizens.
In fact civic education strengthens relationships between public order and individual freedom. Civic education is based on four concepts:-learning to know, learning to live together, learning to do and learning to be. It safeguards democratisation process and helps explain democratic sociological base.
Many of us think that civic education should be taught in a particular way. This belief is sometimes taken to mean that there have to be separate courses for each of the disciplines. It is not possible to teach all the findings of all social sciences. Yet it is possible to teach civic education as an essential part of social life. It will be useful to the child in dealing with social as well as personal problems.
A few years ago, there were some differences between the theoreticians and school administrations as the recommendations of the former were rejected by the latter. Theoretically, the chief purpose of the social studies was to prepare citizens for participation in democracy. The basic teaching method is to organise classes into problem solving, democraratic groups. Courses of civic education from primary levels to higher education should be organised around the social problems. The teachers should help the students define and attack problems, teaching them democratic procedures simultaneously with content. It assumes that children are capable to understand content within their own experiences. Thus, the civic education should expand the child's horizons to his nation and the world.

Now, to talk of our country, the expansion of modern education took place from 1951. At that time only 321 primary schools were there in the country. Currently more than 25 thousand schools are in operation, and 775 higher secondary schools are offering grades 11 and 12. More than 250 campuses under different universities are providing higher education. About 3 hundred thousand students are getting higher education.On the other side, not many students have been able to acquire higher education. Only 72 per cent of primary school going-age children go to school and less than half of them complete primary level. By the time they reach completion of secondary level not even 10 per cent survive schooling.In this situation a great majority of the population remains uneducated. Thus the scale of the task before us is clear. We shall have to take up the unmet challenges of "Education for All". For this purpose, our education has to be directed towards the potentiality of the country and the national needs.

It is clear that the quality of education is still a big issue. For quality, the essential link between education, development and poverty reduction should be set up. The poor and excluded, particularly women and girls, are often deprived of civic education. The government should plan to extend its programmes so that all can have access to education.

Essential

The most important thing is that the special civic education must be included in the mainstream of education system of our country. It is essential to inculcate democratic ways of life.

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