Yugottam Koirala /Yugeshwor Koirala

Just suppose that twenty people in a room shook hands with each other. Then how many handshakes would there be altogether?
When asked this unusually familiar question by an inquisitive relative at a family gathering, we twins glanced instinctively at each other, with full grins beaming across our faces. “A hundred and ninety”, one of us uttered after quickly completing a series of mental calculations, while the other nodded in agreement.
When we were asked to demonstrate our thinking and show how it was possible, the only idea running through our then twelve-year-old mind was the simple formula we had memorised while dealing with a similar problem: multiplying the total number of people by the number one less than itself, and dividing the outcome by 2. Otherwise, we were stumped.

No Rote Learning
Visualizing this concept into a real-life scenario was something our mind wasn’t able to undertake: and, the one-dimensional picture of the problem that we almost instantly solved suddenly metamorphosed into this perplexing puzzle whose pieces we just couldn’t put together.
To this very day, amid the modernisation of the twenty-first century, the problem of rote learning ironically still lingers on, and to an extent that is much greater, affecting almost 7.5 million around the nation. The harsh compulsion to memorise a bunch of formulae and definitions from bulky course books, merely for the sake of rewriting them into lined test sheets is what has stultified the learning process.
The sole retention of these conventional precepts and definitions that fetch “good” grades in exams will eventually prove to be deceitful as students move out of schools and place them in the scene of the larger world. 
The need to establish a foolproof learning method that fully engages students instead of making them glance at clocks between classes, is exceedingly desperate. But what is more pressing is the difficulty students are facing to maintain a general consistency in all subjects they are required to study. The way schools are handling the differences in the academic and extracurricular abilities of students is disappointing, to say the least.
The fact that each individual student carries a distinctive ability and can excel in it only if circumstances allow, appears to be indigestible to school authorities, who instead limit them to what the national curriculum requires.
The idea of creating a base which all students can commonly enjoy up to a level, and then granting them the freedom to delve deep into whichever domain they show aptitude in is rejected outright by schools. Students who fail to display academic capabilities and do not wish to pursue a scholarly profession are simply denied to even place a toe out of the parameters of academics and those who do, are restrained from immersing themselves further into the subject matter. 

Serious Threat
Taking a step out of this seemingly ungoverned spectrum of schooling, the status of education only continues to appear worse. What poses a more serious threat to the learning process is the brutal reality that the attitude of most Nepali parents towards the education of their children is practically unresponsive, and to a greater extent toxic. 
The unnecessary need for guardians to draw a line of comparison between their children and children with different academic capabilities etches an indelible imprint on children's minds. Besides forcing them to exhaust their abilities and potentials on something they cannot viably achieve, this bigoted practice shoves young minds towards placing doubts on themselves.
Ceaselessly comparing their children's accomplishments with the troubles that they had faced to pursue an education in their old times pushes the children towards feeling unworthy of the privileges they have. Parents; blinded by exceeding expectations from their kids, rebuke them with reiterated reminders of the investments that have been made for their education, but poorly fail to attend to their emotional needs. 
Shifting towards higher education after high school is also not a particularly inspiriting moment for students, due to the predefined limits that parents set regarding what their children should study and what they envision a successful profession to be.
The pursuit of forcing kids to adopt wrong dreams, in the belief that it will keep them away from social stigma; and urging them to follow highly academic professions, irrespective of their ability and interests is a malignant disease that has affected both parents and the school authorities. Students are falling into the pit created by this widening parallel between the attitudes of parents and the school system.
Especially, during the startling sweep of the pandemic, policymakers are confronting a quandary between keeping educational institutions closed to minimize the risk of the scourge, and resuming these institutions to ensure an undisturbed academic session.
COVID 19 has painted a vivid picture of what the future of education looks like, and with schools and colleges migrating into cyberspace, it is high time to reconsider the patterns of Nepali education. The myopic attitude of the government towards education in local regions along with the entire rural education system requires a revamp to provide a more conceptual, media-based knowledge, meanwhile showering unprivileged students with opportunities that they can use to independently uplift their educational status.
Reimagining a more robust and more equitable education system, public education should be made an inclusive process where the government in its all forms, shapes, and levels, supports and provides rather than constraining local originality.
What remains behind the silhouette of this crisis is a much greater dilemma whose extent these people are failing to comprehend. We have discerned a world that is crashing, with the economy shattering into rubles. Humankind has been exposed to a predicament unforeseen in the history of its evolution, and what is more concerning is how the youth; with extraneous, outdated knowledge, can cope up with challenges in the real, competitive world. The greater concern here should be the restructuring of our education, including subject matters that develop critical thinking, entrepreneurial and fundamental technical skills, so that every apprentice can aspire to sustain a life, should such circumstances keep recurring. 
With changed times, reversed sentiments and shifted priorities, the new normal we are drifting towards is heavily uncertain, implying that emphasis on educational objectives should be made on a comprehensive scale and should be directed towards achieving a more competitive education.

Tactful Use of Information
In a world where making tactful use of information merits more than just having a vast reservoir of knowledge, schools should strive to facilitate a technical, skill-based learning process that prepares its pupils for the future, enabling them to apply these skills, irrespective of the boundaries of ‘how’, ‘where’, and ‘when’. This comes along with the necessity of parents to act as facilitators, but not the decision-makers of their children, attempting to tend to their emotional and physical needs, but all within a specified limit. 
Only when the youth are able to move towards a brighter future, with no hindrances to impede them from applying themselves in the real world, will it mean that our education has really shone. If such is the case, then we students, triumphing with degrees of ingenuity, can learn to perceive life as a colossal, complex puzzle, whose pieces we can put together by a simple twist in orientation.

(The writers are test-tube twins, aged 15 and Grade 10 students at Kaasthamandap Bidhyalaya)