Educating the children of Ex-Kamaiya Tharus:
An approach for implementationa

Context

Dominance was the destiny of Kamaiya Tharus. However, using the theory that social deficiency can be thrown out by collective effort, development liberationists like BASE succeeded in liberating them. Then economic hardship and the still conditioned mindset of the now ex-kamaiyas created the problem of retaining the liberated. Linear thinking under social deficiency theory had ignored the rules of power games: the rules that equal powers may tussle while unequal power relations create dominant and dominated. Education, however, can be a means to creating a new relationship between dominated and dominant. In other words, there is a need to change the education of Tharu ex-kamaiyas as dominated and non-Tharus – or even rich Tharus – as dominant persons or groups.

Nature of education

The critiques of the present education system claim that the education system of transition states or conditioned capitalist states like Nepal enslaves dominated people like ex-kamaiya Tharus. They further claim that working class people like ex-kamaiya Tharus are excluded from school because of a careful design.

This shift from a “providers’ perspective to the client perspective in education” seeks a new sociology of knowledge which stresses that education should come from within. In other words, that education for the ex-kamaiya Tharus should come from their own community. It is obvious that a centralist approach to curriculum development cannot provide the ex-kamaiyas with the opportunity of influencing on their children’s education as all books and education content are made at central level. Some critics say that even if the state provides room for the development of local curriculum, there would still be a chance of domination from an “upper crust” which can consist of outsiders as well as insiders. Thus, educating ex-kamaiya Tharus does not necessarily mean the same thing for all.

Education for ex-kamaiya Tharus

Out of experience gained from literature and field visits, intuitions generated from discussion with different stakeholders, and cross-fertilization of different ideas, I have developed a scheme for the education of ex-kamaiya Tharu children. The scheme reads as follows:

1. Food supported compulsory school

For economic and cultural reasons, ex-kamaiya Tharus often do not send their children to school. The dilemma is that if ex-kamaiya Tharu parents send their children to school, their children cannot gain food for today. But if the parents do not send them to school today, their children may not get food tomorrow. The ex-kamaiya Tharus know their problem. Nevertheless, education providers and their financial as well as technical partners are launching education awareness programs for parents and children. This mismatch helped me conclude that understanding of the ex-kamaiya Tharus has been completely ignored by education providers and financial partners for years. In order to correct their ignorance, food supported compulsory school is a must for ex-kamaiya settlements.

2. Lifelike school buildings with minimum requirements

Empirical research done in Nepal and abroad claims that children of marginalized groups do not find their “habitus” – i.e. the ways of doing and saying known from home – in school. This persistent gap between home and school culture can be bridged by remodeling the school as a developed ex-kamaiya settlement. However, the financial partners and infrastructure developers have been ignoring this. Experience also shows that schools where the children of ex-kamaiya Tharus study lack minimum requirements. This lack should be addressed to help ex-kamaiya Tharu children bridge their home culture with school-culture. At the same time, the bridging would open avenues for them to be creative for the development of their inherited culture.

3. Project work as teaching approach

In general, teachers’ approach to teaching differs from parents’ approach to socializing their children. For example, teachers teach through books. Parents, on the other hand, teach children by involving them in work such as child rearing and farming. The school instructs more, provides less chance to engage children in action, and demands more writing and reading than sharing. This makes free Kamaiya children bored in school. In order to change this scenario, there is need to create a sharing and group learning culture in school; something which among other things requires more project work as a teaching method.

4. Children to parents and teachers teaching

Experience with marginalized groups including Tharus shows that parents do not know what their children learn in school, nor do they care. The lack of linking home and school also applies to students and teachers, and as a result, there is a persisting gap between the knowledge of school and home. A carefully planned child to parents and child to teacher sharing program can bridge the gap. But none of the financial partners and education providers have made any effort to this end. This is one area where the advocators of ex-kamaiya Tharu children can work further.

5. Site-based management for teachers’ preparation

Marginalized children have their own problems associated with education. Language problems, problems of relating home and school codes, linking home culture to school culture, and difficulties with understanding concepts from different cultural perspectives are some of these problems.

The teachers are trained and prepared in a setting which is very different from that of the children they teach. During their training, teachers get knowledge, but they fail to apply it in the classroom. To remedy this unfortunate situation, there is a need of site-based teacher preparation programs where each and every teacher can emerge as a teacher-researcher and reflective practitioner. The education providers, however, are continuously preparing teachers as their ponies to deliver the goods: the curriculum. Even financial and technical partners are joining hands in this “pony preparation business”. This business has to a large extent killed innovative ideas among teachers and made training an academic exercise. At the same time, it has taken teachers out of the classroom. This mistaken notion of training teachers to be academic and of taking them out of classrooms calls for site-based teacher management programs. The content for the preparation of teachers can only be drawn from the everyday problems of teachers, parents and students, and not from academic disciplines.

6. Parents’ and civil society’s curriculum for students

Ideally, the teacher contextualizes national curriculum in order to address local needs. S/he also links local knowledge with the national and global knowledge. But Nepali teachers are guided to teach the prescribed curriculum and text very stringently. Therefore, the use of local curriculum is required to make learning lifelike for the children. In other words, there is a need of locally developed curriculum to let ex-kamaiya Tharu children preserve their identities in school and outside with pride. Currently, the Department of Education/MOES Nepal has made a provision which allows local curriculum to weigh 10 percent of the total curriculum, while centrally designed curriculum is to account for 90 percent. This provision can be harnessed for developing an ex-kamaiya Tharu local curriculum to be used in the concerned areas. Parents, teachers and members of civil society can join hands to make such curriculum at ex-kamaiya settlements. However, at present, the education providers and their financial as well as technical partners are not shouldering their responsibility to use the local potentiality.

7. Language management for inward- and outward-looking

Currently, “language activists” on the side hand and “unificationists” on the other are raising their voices concerning which language teach in. Should all schools be teaching in Nepali, or should indigenous peoples get the possibility of having their children receive education in their own mother tongue? For an analytical purpose, the activists can be labeled as inward-looking and the unificationists as outward-looking. Until now, the two stances have been opposing each other. But there is room for developing inward- and outward-looking groups simultaneously. This room is yet to be sought at the local and national level as it has so far not been sought by teachers, members of civil societies, state, education providers or their financial or technical partners. Following this mid-way approach, non-mainstreamed language groups can be made inward-looking by organizing language preservation sessions at school and the community. At the same time, they can be made outward-looking by introducing an early language transfer policy in school.

Conclusion

The faces of oppression changed. So did the sociology of education. With this changed understanding, ex-kamaiya Tharus should today be understood from different perspectives and interpretations. This new understanding also provides room to figure out a new social relationship of the ex-kamaiya Tharus with others. And education should be geared to that end.

The second conclusion is that the association with global and local stakeholders of education has changed conventional notions of stakeholders. This change requires a hybrid face of ex-kamaiya Tharu education for the future. This situation seeks assertive people at the local level to bargain with the national and international stakeholders of education for their improved socio-cultural identities.

The third conclusion that I could draw from this article is that a good opportunity has been created that allows state and civil society to work together for the social good of the ex-kamaiya Tharus.

The last conclusion is that the ex-kamaiya Tharus have had external pressure for their change and development. Education providers, financial partners and technical supporters should continue to exert pressure for the creation of literate culture in marginalized communities like the ex-kamaiya Tharu.

Dr. Bidya Nath Koirala is an education researcher/activist

References

Applebaum, Barbara (2001). Raising awareness of dominance: does recognizing dominance mean one has to dismiss the values of the dominant group? Journal of moral education. vol. 30.No. 1.
Carnoy, Martin (1984). The state and political theory. New Jersey. Princeton University Press.

Tese, R. (1994). Reproduction theory. In Torsten Husen and T. Neville P. New York. Pargamon.

Young, I. M. (1990). Five faces of oppression. In justice and politics of difference. pp.39-65. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 

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