Beyond the Sky and the Earth_ A Journey Into Bhutan - Jamie Zeppa [59]
I remind myself that this is not my country, not my education system. I remember fragments from our orientation session, a lecture about the monastic system, harsh punishments meted out by the guru to the student as a way to achieve total submission. The goal in the monastery is not submission for its own sake but the breaking of the ego, liberation from a false sense of self, leading to enlightenment. But it is very hard to see how this applies to class III students who do not understand multiplication. The final goal in school is knowledge, understanding, and a stick will not help. Another part of me argues: it is part of a bigger cultural system, it involves different values. You can only judge it from your perspective, from your own cultural background and upbringing, and even if you are right, what can you do about it? Back and forth I argue, right-wrong, east-west, judgment is possible-impossible. It reminds me of arguments in a first-year university philosophy class, the impossibility of ever saying anything, one way or another.
One afternoon, from across the playing field, I watch Mr. Rinzin slap Karma Dorji across the face and I go running across the grass, heart swollen with rage, how dare he, how dare he? “What seems to be the problem?” I ask Mr. Rinzin. My voice is shaking but he does not seem to notice. “Nothing, nothing. There’s no problem,” he says, smiling, and walks away.
“What happened, Karma?” I ask.
“He is calling me to come, but I am coming there too slowly.” He shrugs and plods off to join his friends, and I burst into tears.
I go to talk to the headmaster. He listens sympathetically as I explain. I say that hitting a child for disobedience is one thing, maybe, but children are being hit all the time, for everything, even for things they have no control over. They are hit when they don’t understand and become afraid to ask questions. How can they learn if they cannot ask questions? Learning and fear are not compatible, and, as for discipline, there are other methods. The headmaster nods. He has heard this before. He says that he agrees in principle with me, but that students in Bhutan are used to the stick, and perhaps they will not behave without it. He says that if he stopped using the stick, the students might think he had no authority over them. “But all the students are so well behaved,” I say.
“Yes,” he agrees, “they are, but why? Because they’ve been brought up so strictly, isn’t it?” I feel my throat tighten, and I command myself not to cry. The headmaster does not speak for a while, and then he says that I can use whatever method I choose in my own classroom, and that maybe I will be an example to the others. I nod because I still cannot speak. He asks me if I have heard of NAPE, the New Approach to Primary Education, which the government is introducing. Under the NAPE system, he says, there will be no hitting. But it will take some time for people to get used to the new ways, he says.
These things take time, it is true, I want to say, but what about Mr. Iyya? Time is not going to help Mr. Iyya. There is a big difference between Mr. Iyya’s beatings and everyone else’s. A few days ago, I stopped outside class I B, my heart in my throat at the sound of weeping. Inside, the entire class was lined up in front of the Dzongkha lopen who was seated at the front of the room with a bucket of water and a handful of stinging nettles. He dipped the nettles into the water and struck each student across the palm. He did not look angry or happy or not happy to be punishing the students for whatever infraction they had jointly committed or their simple failure to learn. He just looked tired. But Mr. Iyya is different. I have heard him shout himself gleefully into a black twisted rage over a misspelled word. The senior girls tell me that he slaps them in class and says nasty things to them. “What kind of nasty things?” I ask, but they are too shy to tell me. His methodology for teaching