Well, I’ve been in Bhutan for a few months now and I think
it’s time I shared my thoughts on the similarities and differences between
school life in Australia and Bhutan.
Kids
In some ways kids are the same wherever you go - playful,
easily bored, a little cheeky. There are of course many differences. As a
teacher, when I enter the school in Bhutan, I am greeted by every student I
pass. Each one bows reverently and says, “Good morning Sir.”
Frankly, I find this a little over-the-top but I do
appreciate the politeness and respect.
We have an assembly every morning. The students stand in
lines so straight a North Korean sergeant major would be impressed. Standing in
a straight line can surprisingly be a challenge for some western kids.
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| Morning Assembly |
Of course, it is not all a bed of roses here. Corporal
punishment, although officially banned is still very common. One teacher recently
smacked every child once for every question they got wrong in a test. Imagine -
anything less than perfect resulted in a smack. Even my own son Thomas did not
escape the beating. (I told him to walk out of the room if the teacher ever
tried to do the same thing again.) Justine recently took the Kindergarten class
for a library lesson and sang the alphabet song with them. It was exactly the
same as we sing it in Australia except for the last line..... Instead of
singing, “next time won’t you sing with me,” they sang, “Madam, don’t beat me
if I don’t know my ABC.”
Another down side to student behaviour in Bhutan is that
they have been conditioned into a form of group behaviour. In the West we
famously encourage the individual. This is often criticised as creating a ‘Me
Generation.’ No doubt that is partly true, but one thing that is undoubtedly
better in the West, is the students’ willingness to answer questions. In
Australia some kids are so desperate to be asked for an answer that they look
like they will explode if they aren’t chosen. In Bhutan you feel like you have
to ‘prod them with a stick’ to get a response. (I don’t really prod them with
sticks). Similarly, Australian kids are generally not afraid to ask for help if
they don’t understand. In Bhutan this hardly happens, I think the ‘chalk and
talk’ style of teaching still so prevalent, does not allow time for individual
help. Students who don’t understand must rely on friends, copy, or simply get
left behind.
Classroom
I am very lucky that I only have 19 students in my class. In
Australia, class sizes are typically close to 30. I simply couldn’t fit 30 kids
in my class and teach in any sort of meaningful way. The Year 4 class has 34
kids and they are jammed in so tightly (3 to a desk) that there is no way the
teacher can move around the room offering help to those that need it. My room
has no heating and little in the way of insulation. There are several broken
windows and so the inside temperature is essentially the same as outside –
which regularly drops below zero in the winter.
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| Broken windows and home made resources |
There is very little in the way
of resources; my room has a blackboard and chalk, desks and stools - that’s it.
I have to make resources as best I can. This can be very difficult, the school
does not provide paper and the school printer (1-2 copies only) has been
without ink for weeks. There is no photocopying and so students must spend a
great deal of time copying down questions from the board into the books they
have bought for themselves. Curiously most of my students bought blank books
and either waste time ruling lines or write in pig tails rather than straight
lines. When I point out that lined books are the same price as blank ones they
simply shrug their shoulders and give a slight (Indian style) head wobble.
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| Thomas's maths class with very little room to move |
My room has no electric power-points so there is nowhere to
plug in a music player or a laptop. It does have two electric lights but when I
arrived they weren’t working. When I asked for new bulbs I was told to ask the
students for money to buy some; I went out and bought them myself. I also
bought all my stationery, cardboard for posters, everything! Some teachers
don’t buy these things with their own money and so the children simply go
without.
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| My Class 3 |
School hours
Day students (it is also a boarding school) must report to
school by 8.15am and the school day finishes at 3.50pm. All students must clean
the school for 15 minutes (there is no school cleaner). Every morning at 8.30
we have an assembly which includes silent meditation, singing a Buddhist song,
and the National Anthem. Two students usually give a speech afterwards and this
can be in English or Dzongkha. The minute’s silence is always silent; no one
ever dares talk to a friend.
The school teaches kindergarten to year 10 and teachers move
freely between grades. This year’s kindergarten teacher taught Year 9 last
year. I am the year 3 class teacher; I teach English and Maths. I regularly
have to leave the classroom to allow the Dzongkha and the Environmental Science
teacher to come and teach. When I am not teaching my Year 3 class, I am
timetabled to teach library to other grades. Fortunately, Justine teaches my
library lessons and this leaves me free to help ‘home-school’ our kids, plan
lessons, mark or make resources. (Right now I am trying to teach my class 3D
shapes without any 3D shapes to show them. I can’t print out nets of 3D shapes
for my class to make so it’s a little challenging. I did however make a very
nice square based pyramid out of some recycled cardboard packaging.) There are
a few free periods too so the workload is much less than in Australia.
What I really hate here, is having to work on Saturdays. I
only have to teach one lesson but I still have to get up and go to school. This
really eats into the weekend and of course, it means we cannot go away for the
weekend which stops us from travelling as much as we’d like to.
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| My class blackboard |
Tissues
In Australia, every classroom has a box of tissues and
children just help themselves when necessary. There are no tissues here in
Bhutan and kids simply let snot run down their faces. I can stomach a lot, but
staring at a child with luminous green snot hanging from his nose is beyond my
abilities. At first I brought toilet rolls and handed out lengths of tissue but
I was going through so much paper that this simply became too expensive. (I no
longer have my Australian salary and a Dollar has become much more precious.)
Many items cost more than in the West so their cost becomes prohibitive. Needless
to say there is no toilet paper in the toilets (there is often no water) and so
I will leave it to your imagination to decide what goes on there.
Messages home
Given the paper shortage, all messages to parents are
conveyed verbally. I cannot see this system working too well in Australia. Here
children are given a message before 9am and they almost always respond to it
the very next day. When asked to bring in money, my whole class had brought it
in by the second day. In Australia, some kids always leave it to the very last
day and many require additional notes or a phone call home from the teacher. It
of course goes without saying that many of these Bhutanese kids are dirt-poor.
Student Supervision
There are no casual teachers in Bhutan. If a teacher is
absent, the office assigns teachers with free periods to cover the class. This
system is far from perfect and classes are regularly left alone for hours on
end. This would simply be unthinkable in Australia where students must be supervised
at all times. There are no playground duties for teachers here either. The
students are unsupervised and they tend to behave themselves very well. Not
once have I had to mediate in disputes between students over a playground
incident.
When I recently had to cover the Year 4 class (34 kids in a
room half the size of a typical Australian classroom) the kids were so grateful
to have a teacher that after the lesson, many of them came up to me and
personally thanked me for teaching them.
In Bhutan, there are constant frustrations with teacher
punctuality, absenteeism and lack of resources but the politeness and
enthusiasm of the kids somehow makes up for it. If you are a teacher reading
this, I hope the earlier paragraphs haven’t put you off coming to Bhutan to
teach. It is very easy to criticise
certain aspects of life in Bhutan and they are easily measured: litter;
death-trap pavements; poorly constructed, cold houses. What is much harder to
measure is what makes Bhutan so fascinating and pleasurable - the relaxed attitude,
the beautiful scenery and of course the incredibly friendly, helpful,
trustworthy people. I urge any teacher that can, to come to Bhutan for a year
or so, it is changing rapidly and (for good or for bad) won’t be like this for
much longer.
