Tech vs Teach: Nepal Schools as Global Village

Get on the (Global) Bus!

Learning in Nepal with or without Technology: Reflecting on Implications for School Culture

What is the role of cutting edge technology in education today? Is it merely student engagement—students pay more attention to images, software, and media? Traveling back to Nepal this summer, three decades after my Peace Corps service, I observed my old village school taught in the same way, except that the headmaster’s desk now had a phone on it. I also observed a posh boarding school classroom with a PowerPoint presentation on the screen, but no devices allowed for students. The teacher told me that students read very little so it was his job to inform them about the world, and best to illustrate it with pictures.

                Me, I’m old school in lots of ways. I taught at USC, where professors assign lots of obscure texts with no pictures and no Sparks notes: Thomas Aquinas, Freud, Kierkegaard, and Joyce. What’s a non-reader, tech-oriented, 21^st-century student to do about that list? Therefore, part of the year I assign and teach how to read such texts, not videos, not PowerPoint with images and bullet points, not multimedia. Is my only motive college prep, I have to ask myself? I hear 5^th and 7^th grade teachers orienting their classes to what comes next, which seems like a treadmill toward the future. So, no, it’s not just prep, I tell myself, but I am fostering skills in reading dense informational texts that you can do something with, wield an argument, rebut one, analyze and incorporate ideas into your own point. Reading dense, primary texts is becoming a lost art—leaving impoverished vocabulary, oversimplifications of complex, worthwhile ideas, and all information clickable. I don’t advocate a steady diet of Kierkegaard and Camus, just a part of their toolkit. Inconsistent, as always, I’m also new school: my students blog every night and read on iPads.  Go figure.

Friends in the Bazaar

                My one-month observation shows Nepali schools cover the gamut from no tech to low tech to high tech, and also from few books and little reading to avid readers. It seems to me that lack of technology is not the primary problem: instead it’s expectations for students, habits of mind, and the culture of the school. I’ve watched headmasters work on school culture for years only to make a small dent in it, by, say, creating a culture of mutual respect or creating a school culture that values academics and reading over sports and popular culture. Good luck bringing in those laptops and iPads! Will they alone transform the school? Only sustained attention from top leaders and all educators can have a chance against today’s hyper-connected teen, texting, Face Booking, Instagramming—and this list is already so last week!

                In middle school kids were once hooked on Harry Potter, Twilight, and Hunger Games, only to lose interest in high school classics that I feel it my cultural obligation to cover. How do we get student engagement and even buy in without playing the banjo (I’m guilty!) or turning Tale of Two Cities into a  first-person shooter video game? (I want the patent for that app!)

                Tech has a role in engaging students and interconnecting them with information and other learners. How do we use tech to accomplish focused learning goals, rather than the general ones of 21^st-century digital literacy? Whenever we bring devices or software into class, we need to work harder to have those tools accomplish learning goals.

At Gandaki Boarding School

                And what about the global village classroom that is just a short plane ride away but has no tech at all? (Is the world really shrinking so fast if I have to come here to make an appointment to see a class?) Of course, these students can learn, and it isn’t just lack of tech that is limiting them. Educational environment, expectations, and culture are part of the role of leaders and students themselves. Inner-city American schools also have such issues. Los Angeles High use to be a path to college, but now has a 50% graduation rate.

                All over the world, in villages and cities, students are learning in different ways and with different degrees of success. Technology is just one factor, with which some of us have become enamored. Let’s never lose sight of all the different factors—including school culture—that make even more of a difference than tech, which is value added to education, not essential. And let’s never oversimplify the differences between third world schools and our western schools. Let’s try to put our feet on the ground in schools in villages, or inner-city schools, or even rural American schools and see for ourselves. Educating students is a worldwide endeavor, not an us-versus-them competition.

Local pond with Lotus Flowers

All students deserve our attention.