SOURCE: http://www.nepalnews.com.np/ntimes/issue261/nation.htm



A class of their own
The Maoist Grade 1-3 curriculum includes military science
SATISH JUNG SHAHI in SALYAN


KUMAR SHRESTHA
The night sky is patched with dark pre-monsoon clouds and the porch of a straw-thatched mud house glows with bluish LED lamps lighting a makeshift stage. As the audience sit on straw mats, a peculiar music breaks the silence?a fusion of madal and battery powered keyboards.

Performers take turns singing revolutionary songs and dances. Two of them ridicule King Gyanendra and former prime minister Sher Bahadur Deuba. The performers are teachers who have just finished a training program on the Maoists? new curriculum for Grades 1-3 in this remote village on the border of Salyan and Rolpa.

?Education is not only rote reading like in the old regime, our teachers have to be trained,? announces Bhesh Raj Bhusal (alias Dhruba) secretary of the Maoist-affiliated All Nepal Teachers? Association.

?The old education is fatalistic, it glorifies the kings and the knowledge it provides is just good enough to become clerks,? says Rajan Rokka, 36, one of the 25 trainee teachers, from the Basu Memorial Model School in Rukum.

The Maoists say they are running at least three ?model? schools each in Rolpa, Rukum and Salyan and that their curriculum is now taught in 34 other schools in these districts. Students are mostly children of rebels killed in action, sons and daughters of current fighters or the underprivileged. Many teachers joined the Maoists because they were hassled by security forces for being rebel sympathisers.

That experience may explain why the teacher trainees seemed to ignore the militarism of the Maoist curriculum and that, like government texts that feature the royal family, Maoist Teachings include biographies of rebel chieftain Prachanda and other Maoist ?martyrs? like Suresh Wagle and Krishna Sen.

The curriculum is divided into five subjects: languages, social science including philosophy, politics, history, economics and culture science; health and environment under which military science falls, mathematics; and arts.

From class one children are taught military science by guerrillas. Youngsters are instructed to act normal when the ?satru? come to their schools and to note their weapons so they can pass on the information. During a mathematics session on teaching graphs, Comrade Anup, dressed in combat fatigues, displays a pie chart showing how many weapons the Maoists captured in their Beni attacks.

In the Nepali language book chha stands for chhapamaar (guerrilla), ma for masal (torch) and ha for hasia (sickle) like the one shown on the Maoist flag. The songs the teachers learn glorify battles like the one in Khara, which is described as the first time the Maoists engaged in conventional warfare against the RNA. The Maoists suffered heavy losses during that attack but this is not mentioned.

Another song is about the cradle of the Maoist revolution, Thabang in Rolpa and describes communes and the ?martyrs highway?.

?We have to move on with the demand of the current situation,? says Tufan Singh, secretary of the Maoist education department. ?You have to also look at the brighter side of the curriculum that is more practical and involves students getting closer to the community.?

The Maoists? Naya Janabadi Sikshya emphasises vocational training like agriculture and carpentry and also deals with the hazards of smoking, the need to help the poor and the underprivileged, and etiquette.

But don?t the teachers see a contradiction between such community-based education and the violence practised by the Maoists? we ask.

?We are not Maoists nor are we terrorists. We are teachers who went underground because the government didn?t pay any heed to our demands for fair education,? explains Bhusal. ?If the Maoist party ignores us we could even turn against them.?

This is exactly how Nazis taught and brainwashed people since their childhood to hate Jews and perceive them as enemies?
This is how the society learns to accept violence as a norm. In our culture where violence is an everyday ritual, where youths are easily angered, where does this kind of practice lead to?

That's a bullshhit !!! Fu*ck* the Maoists... and those who are instructing Maoists.... I know it's not only the Maoists underground.. there are other powers who are backing up Maoists and instructing Maoists to act like this.

FU888Bck Girija too... and all the first generation Leaders of Nepal.. they have not done a single good thing for Nepal. Fu*ck them all.

Prem Dai,

F*u*c*k yourself and stop complaining,
"some guys have all the luck, some guys have all the pains, some guys have nothing but complains"

What you fail to understand is that nepal is transforming, without Nazi German, or Yamamoto's Japan, they would not be the nations they are, there are hard lessons to be learnt. No one accepts, unless he/she experiences it.

Nepalis people are learning it the hard way. Girija is right in his own ways, Maoists are right in their own ways, and the king is right in his own ways

In Nepal, only the people are wrong, everyone else is right, I hope you think you are right too

No Wonder you support Nazi !!! Yo ta atti bho ba ba. Why the f*ck* you think nazi typr of path is so important (is it a must?) for German to develop???? Fuc***K you YOU buig Ass*hole.

Jasle jalai jai gare pani cap chahin use gara hai.. Natra aids lagla pheri.

if the king can have his and royal family's picture in text books once again (just like panchayat days), why can't maoists? You bigger A*ss hole

Hey looks like you are not getting point here. ha ha..... Tell me one thing.. don't you support Nazi?

Will you put me into the gas chamber if I don't support your views?

NO I wont, have maoists put anyone in gas chambers ? Have you really lived in rural nepal at this time, or are you just another intellectual in sajha, relying on whatever you read

Why the fu**ck you are showing as if you didn't understand? "have maoists put anyone in gas chambers" re? Ke bhaneko? Now, Don't say that Maoists are not blood thirsty.

I had heard somewhere that the Maoists threatened to kill if people didn't join them.
How is that different from being put in a gas chamber for not having the same belief?
atti bho atti bho, atti bho atti bho.

Mula, Maoist ko recommedation ma Belgium wa Norway tira padhna gayeko jasto chha.

have they killed anyone for not joining them? Provide an evidence, I would be curious, threatening is one thing, killing is another

OK I give up.. nasikine bho. It's my mistake to argue with Maoists pacifiers.

Oie Prem Dai,

Maoists ko recommendation ma padhna jaane, haha tyo pani ma, timi jasto hoina, buddi ko kura garna sakena ani anek nihu

intellectual bankruptcy

prem_dai,
tyo mukh chhadera hoina ki, logic lagaayera kura garau na. But I understand, not all people are the same way!

Paakhey, the maoists supporter talking about logic?
Na hasauna na testo bhanya.

Hurray,
Do you know that, Baburam Bhattrai is a PHD, unlike your whoever leader...(Girija, I.A. and so on), Prachanda used to be the highschool teacher, and so on...Maoist is run by group of intellectuals, not buddhhu people who are running the country now?

More education does not mean wisdom.
Just the paragraph abovewhere you stated that PHD would mean whatever Baburam does is good shows how illogical and brainwashed you are. You have a brain, the least you can do is use it, and I ask you to do so.
Don't get me wrong; I do not support Girija nor the King; and I also do not support the terrorists.
I have already told you that you and I believe in the same thing in terms of the changes that Nepal needs. The only difference is you believe the Maoists, terrorists will do so, and I differ. The people in the begining were made to belive the same thing as you are still believing right now, by the Maoists. But due to their actions, crimes, internal bickering, torture, killings of the poor people they claimed to be fighting for whereas all the corrupt political leaders that they were fighting againts still roam freely, and their belief in a failed idealogy, I have like many other people opened our eyes and have come to realize what these bunch of losers really are. But you seemed to have failed to do so.