Formal education system puts much trust on teachers as carriers and deliverers of knowledge. Almost all formal classes are run by a set of teachers who traditionally are knowledgeable about their subject matter. They think they are the experts, and the management too considers them experts unless a complaint is registered by the students and/or parents. In most of our traditional school and college settings, students and/or parents hardly register any complaint. This has made the teachers the ultimate authority and decision makers on what they teach and should teach in the classroom. Lack of monitoring and supervision system has only encouraged them more. While parents are not worried about what their children get in the guise of knowledge, most of the students are not even aware about the general applicability of most of classroom knowledge.

So are the teachers not even aware about what they should teach and in what way? Are they teaching what was expected of them as real educators? Or are they simply going through the motions? These are crucial questions in a situation where the students produced by most educational institutions are found deficient in the fields they are supposed to possess their expertise in.

One can find many books in Nepali market that at best give nuggets of information on how to clear the exams. What if the teacher uses those same books rather the books that offer true knowledge? For example, guess papers and guide books starting from as early as grade 4 abound in the Nepali market. Similarly, the college-level prescribed books are offered only in the forms of keys and guess papers.

Many teachers are now preparing textbooks in a way that a labourer produces bricks in kilns. Then they make it mandatory for their students to buy the same books as genuine textbooks for their classes. In some instances the teachers, having links with the office of the controller of examinations, prepare questions based on their own books to show students the so-called value of their books and earn undue profits at the expense of students’ future.

In real terms, nobody has yet assessed whether the books available in the market offer adequate knowledge as required by the curriculum. This has helped produce students with half-baked knowledge in concerned subject areas. This is the reason they hesitate to participate in the jobs related to their specialisation area even after obtaining certificates or degrees from the concerned school and/or university.

In colleges, the teachers are happy to offer second grade knowledge. Whether written individually or in groups, almost every textbook available is prepared by domestic writers. But the textbooks on same course material written by different writers often differ. Many times the students are confused about which teacher and book they should trust. This has also discomfited them at the time of examinations. This second grade knowledge has made our generation so weak that qualified human resources are lacking everywhere. Neither are the students getting good jobs outside nor are the offices at home satisfied with their skills and expertise. The most disadvantaged are the higher secondary and undergraduate students. Slowly this trend is being witnessed in graduate level courses too.

Most of the higher secondary and undergraduate teachers are what I would like to call “helmet-teachers”, finishing one lecture in one college in a hurry in order to attend another lecture at another college in their motorbikes. They deliver the same notes year after year without considering the changes in knowledge base.

How can we minimise the gap in knowledge-gap then? Should there be any mechanism to control the quality? Who should be made responsible for this? All these questions need to be answered to assist our students gain proper knowledge in the areas they chose to study. There are two parts to the solution. One, the universities must control the quality through its Curriculum Development Centres (CDCs). The same is expected of the government in controlling the school level education quality through its CDCs.

Parents should be cautious about the quality of knowledge their children are getting. Schools and colleges are also responsible for monitoring the kind of knowledge their students are receiving. Two, teachers should study the real books rather than “books culled mercilessly from other good books” in order to enrich their own knowledge before deciding to impart knowledge to the students in class. Since teachers are the only guide for students in many parts of the country, they should be very cautious about their job. This also demands “teacher support system” in each school and college which would prepare teachers for real knowledge. Students, if made aware of the kind of knowledge they will receive at the beginning of the school or college session, the knowledge-gap can be minimised to some extent.

Dr. Wagley is an educationist