The Meaning of Education

I begin this section with this quote because it captures the majority of the themes young people addressed when I asked them what their education meant to them. An instructor at Thakur Ram Campus in Birganj explained to me during a group discussion:

Education is a medium of securing our life.

It also guides us throughout our life. Education is not only meant for obtaining jobs. It provides us guidelines on how to spend our life. Education makes us committed to work for the sake of the country and it makes us aware of how to be a good citizen. Education is not meant just for jobs. If we really have sound education we can pursue life no matter wherever we go. If we are well educated, we can perform our job on our own and we can create our own job even if we obtain no employment. This is the importance of education. Next, education not only makes us good citizens, it also helps our socialization. There is a saying that goes like this: ‘Education is nothing but formation of habit’. Education can guide us on which path to follow. It develops our thinking power and we can decide right from wrong. When there were fewer people educated in the society, uneducated people would go to the educated ones to receive guidance. But this situation no longer exists; many have become educated and it allows them to make their own decisions. See, these days, people don’t have to depend on others to fill out an application form. Thus, education serves as light that helps us to remove darkness. An uneducated person is like a dark room. Education serves as a lit candle. Thus, education serves as light in human life. (23-September-2013)

This quote demonstrates how education becomes associated with specific social positions or identities in the way people imagine social difference. These young people are actively quantifying educational value through their explanations.

Many of them are first-generation educated; so this is a new form of cultural capital that has not been acquired by generations before them. I understand their explanations as “efforts at cultural production shaped by available symbolic resources and their structural position within society” (Jeffrey et al. 2004, p. 963). They may be experimenting with new iterations of distinction, but nonetheless, their inventions are informed by the traditional ideological resources of caste, class, as well as regional hierarchies of rural (periphery) and urban (center) and Kathmandu Valley and hinterland that have been propagated by the nationalizing project Nepal has actively undergone since the 1960s. For these young people in particular, it involves the historical marginalization of growing up in the Tarai of Madhesi or Tharu origin.

The main thing that people said their education gave them was prestige (ijat); they have become known in their community for being educated. One young ethnically Tharu woman explained to me at Thakur Ram Girls Hostel in Birganj that educated people were more respected than uneducated. In fact she has noticed that her ability to command her fellow villagers’ attention has increased as her educational attainment has increased. She explained that she used to be ignored but now people see her as someone who’s studied her bachelors in Birganj and seek out her opinion. She is pleased because the respect she receives translates to her father’s name, and this makes his investment in her worth it (29-January-2014). The articulation of earning prestige has its roots in traditional cultural values that dictate one’s worth based on parameters of caste, class, gender, and community stature. However, unlike traditional assessments of prestige, which are dictated primarily by inherited relations within the caste hierarchy, educational prestige represents a seemingly more egalitarian form of social mobility that is defined by individual action.

Educational prestige is not inherent; it is cultivated.

One of the acquired skills that people cited as most important was “learning to speak.” Three quarters of my interviewees’ mother tongue is Bhojpuri not Nepali, the national language until 2007 and still dominant in official situations. Their claim of “learning to speak” is meant both literally and metaphorically. They draw distinctions between themselves and their less-educated peers, claiming that their education allows them to “speak” on behalf of others. They can competently interact outside their local sphere, at government offices and with people from outside, including foreigners. In this regard, their education is allowing them to navigate civil society as Amartya Sen promotes (1999). This ability allows them to be self-sufficient but also puts them in a position in which others may rely on them for their linguistic acumen. This replicates a familiar patronage dynamic of reliance. However, this iteration takes on new form in which the provider and the recipient may not necessarily map onto traditional social hierarchies.

On a metaphorical level, being able to speak is about the art of communication. As one young man who was a YSEF recipient from Bagwana explained to me, even animals have ways of communicating their needs but an educated person has the language and comportment to speak meaningfully and with confidence. He said:

What I have heard is common people can tell the matter of their heart/mind (man) only when then they are drunk and not in other times. At other times, people hesitate to be open...But me, I can speak well even when I am not drunk. I don’t need to drink liquor to open up my heart/mind to you. (13-July-2013)

He explained that educated persons are more able to identify their feelings and thoughts and articulate them in effective ways. For this reason they have an unfettered confidence to speak out, which makes them more effective community members.

Sometimes my interlocutors emphasized the inferiority of uneducated people to underscore their own educational superiority.

These negative distinctions were framed in a rhetoric of modernization. However, they borrowed tropes from traditional power structures. One young man said, “These days, it is even said that an uneducated person is no better than a beast” (Napadheko manchhe pasu saraha hunchha bhanchhan aajkal) (13-July-2013). This reference was common. Most people explained that the behavior and mind-set of educated and uneducated were different. An educated person can change if it is necessary, but uneducated people continue their traditions and habits even if they aren’t useful. One young man segued from the comparison of uneducated people relying on tradition the way animals rely on instinct to the assertion that the Dalit community in his village does not recognize the importance of education and therefore does not change their lives for the better. In other words, an educated person has the ability to evolve. Another young woman explained that uneducated people are likened to animals because they need to be taken care of and looked after. Through these articulations, my interlocutors are socially indexing their educational distinction among other familiar registers, in a way that collapses new and old forms of difference and inequality, while reproducing the modernizing ideology of backwardness and progress.

Another distinction that emerged from their social indexing was an attained moral sensibility. While many of my respondents emphasized that education inculcates a sense of right and wrong, my female respondents tended to personalize the moralistic components of education. Every one of my female respondents explained that their education helped them delineate right from wrong, to be honest and responsible, and to identify the correct path in order to fulfill their duty. Others explained that education taught them humility. One young woman from Jauwaguthi village explained, “Education has taught us how to treat people. Everyone recognizes that we must respect our seniors but what about our juniors or those who are seen as lower? Education has helped us recognize and respect them too, even if they are backwards” (18-December-2013).

Her assertion demonstrates she is not only educated but also modern because she eschews caste-based discrimination. Modern democratic values and empowerment rhetoric taught in schools inculcate students with notions of social and political equality to counter “backward practices.” This young woman has affectively embraced these values in her everyday interactions in her community, which distinguishes her from both the uneducated and older generations.

There is indeed something implicit in education that infers moral guidance because a number of my male informants noted their parents invested in their education so they would not be “led astray.” Their parents view the education environment not only as a place where discipline, manners, and respect are cultivated but also one that is safe from bad influences. Udaya, a recovering drug addict, recalled the meeting he had with the president of the private college he had been attending. He was requesting permission to be reenrolled. The president was hesitant. He said to Udaya, “We wrote temple of learning on the school’s entryway because we want all students to enter pure in heart/mind (man). You can’t return if you defile us” (4-December-2013). All of the young men I interviewed at a Birganj rehabilitation center explained to me that studying allowed them to mask their bad habits. Their parents did not worry about them and what they did during their downtime because they were studying and maintaining their grades. Even among their communities, they were given an exception. One young man recalled that some people in his bazaar started calling him spoiled (bigreko) but others retorted saying not to worry because he was top of the class. Another young man said “I always maintained a good image because I am well educated even when I was a drug addict. It only faltered when I could no longer hold my job. But since then I’ve gotten chances. My image is more determined by my education than my previous bad habits” (16-December-2013).

Wrapped up in these young people’s explanations is an articulation of themselves as dignified, upstanding citizens. Their education is a social marker that they choose to emphasize because it is a sign of both personal and communal achievement. As one young man explained, “I may stray or I may not always be employed, but I will always be educated. Nobody can take that from me, not even myself” (7-December-

2013). But there was also an air of inevitability to their understandings of education. Many people described education as illumination; the purpose of becoming educated is to go from darkness to light. Anyone who wants to make an impact must take this journey. As one man from Bagwana explained, “In this age, no one can dream of making progress without obtaining education” (2-September-2013).

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Source: Harker C., Horschelmann K. (Eds.). Conflict, Violence and Peace. Springer,2017. — 456 p.. 2017

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