Education and Peace

A school is a place where young children can study, play and enjoy themselves freely, with nothing standing in their way. It does not belong to one person or one family. It is the common property of the whole community, and parents trust it with the future of their sons and daughters. Because of that trust, a school is also called a centre of the community's faith.

At school, children receive a proper education, pick up skills, practise what they learn until they are good at it, and work towards becoming successful people. But a school is not an island. Whether the community is at peace, whether the system of government gives people their rights, and whether every child is treated equally all reach straight into the classroom. So education has to be understood together with three things that lie outside the school gate: peace, democracy and social justice.

A school is a sacred place for gaining knowledge, so its surroundings must be calm and pleasant. Picture a school beside a road where fights, slogan shouting or strikes happen almost every day. The students' minds drift from the lesson to the noise outside, and on some days the gates do not open at all. However hard the teacher works, learning cannot move forward in such a place, because without a peaceful environment the learning process itself is blocked.

Keeping the school peaceful at all times is the job of the school management and the school administration. The things that can disturb a school come from two directions. Internal causes arise inside the school, such as quarrels between students or disputes within the school itself. External causes come from outside, such as a strike on the road or a conflict in the community. Whenever either kind looks likely to affect the school, a solution must be put in place straight away.

Unrest also harms children's minds and feelings, which is called child psychology. A child who is frightened, worried or confused cannot concentrate on a lesson, and that harm to the mind turns into harm to learning. For this reason a school must be able to teach in a completely peaceful environment.

The first duty of both the school and the community is to make sure that children of every class and every region can go to school peacefully and learn. A child from the mountains, the hills or the plains, from a village or a city, from a rich or a poor home, must be able to reach school without fear. Whatever is happening in the wider community should not spill into the school.

Some actions in society spread unrest in society itself, and their effect travels straight to the school. These actions are:

• Social discrimination: treating people differently because of their status or background.
• Caste discrimination: looking down on people of a particular caste or keeping them apart.
• Gender discrimination: giving boys and girls unequal chances.
• Denying a class or a community the rights it is owed.

Actions like these hit the school directly and do serious damage to children's education. When a community is denied its rights, for example, anger grows, protests and clashes begin, and that community's children may have to stop their studies halfway.

To keep peace in a school, these steps are needed:

• Spot the chance of unrest early and try to control it before it spreads.
• Inform the local government, the province and the central government.
• Prepare effective policies and rules for keeping peace in schools.
• Study the campaigns run around the world to declare schools complete zones of peace, and put into practice the ones that suit our situation.
• Allow no individual, group or party to bring its influence into the school.

The word for democracy in Nepali is built on a word meaning the people, so democracy is rule by the people and by those they choose. Democracy is an important foundation for the growth of education. Only in a country with full democracy is education treated as a fundamental right, which is a basic right that the constitution guarantees to every citizen. In a democratic country, receiving an education is written down as one of those fundamental rights.

In Nepal, the road to education for everyone opened step by step as democracy grew. The years below use Bikram Sambat (BS), Nepal's official calendar.

• Before 2007 BS: ordinary people had no chance to get an education.
• 2007 BS: democracy came to Nepal.
• The democratic period that followed: schools opened up, yet not every child received an equal education.
• 2062/063 BS: the Second People's Movement was completed. As its result Nepal was established as a federal republic and became a fully democratic state.

In a democracy, the sons and daughters of ordinary people can be elected to every level, from the highest body in the country down to the most local one. Because they come from the people, they work to make sure no child in their country is left without schooling. They do this by:

• making education policy,
• setting aside a budget for education,
• building the physical facilities of schools, such as buildings, classrooms and toilets.

Democracy also lets every citizen carry the educational needs of their own area all the way to the centre of the country. Suppose a remote village has no science teacher. Parents there can raise the problem with their elected ward representative, and the demand can travel up to the province and the central government. Only a democratic system of government creates this kind of voice.

Education is the main foundation on which a person's personality is built. Keeping a child out of school closes that road for them. So no child should be kept from education, or treated unfairly in it, because of social prejudice, caste, gender, class or any other reason. Sending a son to school while keeping a daughter at home for housework is unjust. So is making children of one caste sit apart in the classroom. When anything like this is seen in a school, society must step in and put an end to it.

Our society is full of variety. People differ in:

• caste and ethnic group
• religion
• colour
• customs and rituals
• gender
• dress
• the geography of the place they live
• the social values and beliefs that go with all of these

Because of these differences and the values attached to them, children of certain classes or communities may be treated unfairly in education. Society's influence reaches the school both directly and indirectly, so unfairness in the community can show up in the classroom too. When that happens, society must make sure that every single child has a fair chance to be educated.

The laws of the country alone are not enough to build social justice. Help must also come from campaigns that are active around the world, and they must be put into everyday practice in a positive way. They include:

• Human rights: every person respected and given opportunity simply for being human.
• Child rights: every child's right to learn, play and be safe.
• Workers' rights: fair pay and dignity for people who work.
• Women's rights: the same opportunities for women and girls as for men and boys.