How Should We Judge a Living Revolution?
Posted by Mike E on September 21, 2009
by Mike Ely
Kasama has been sharing a series of accounts from a group of revolutionaries traveling through Nepal — associated with the World Peoples Resistance Movement of Britain and Ireland. Yesterday we posted a report from a model Maoist school — that discussed new forms of education that are being developed in areas of revolutionary strength. In response, Fritz raised a number of sharp questions, starting with his own recent experience (in Rukum and Rolpa):
“Does anybody know when this article was written? I was just in Nepal and visited the model school in Rolpa (the Maoists’ stronghold where their military bases are) and only found out, after I had gotten there, that the model schools had all been shut down, as part of the peace process.
“I didn’t get to see the schools in action, but did talk to several of the teachers, as well as got their textbook (which I need translated, if anybody knows anybody who knows Nepali). I was pretty disappointed in the lack of change that the Maoists brought about in the field of education.”
I think Fritz is raising some extremely important questions, that I hope we can engage.
First of all, there is a long history of revolutionary travelers to socialist countries or liberated zones who come back with highly romanticized views of what they have seen. Sometimes well-known accounts were more “public relations” for a revolution, than they were penetrating and materialist analysis. (I’ll leave some of those commentators unnamed for the moment.)
We have no reason to assume this kind of romantization and myth-making defined the various accounts we have gotten from Nepal (which includes the Nepali Maoists’ own accounts, Ben Peterson, Stephen Mauldin, and now the WPRM team).
But Fritz’s remarks are a reminder that we should approach all accounts with critical thinking, and not lightly dismiss reports that don’t rubberstamp our own assumptions and hopes.
Knowing What Has Not Yet Been Made Clear
Second: I too am curious to understand better which of the revolutionary ‘new things” are still in operation, and which have been shut down.And also know which of these institutions may now be undergoing fresh renovation and development (as the contradictions in Nepal as a whole are intensifying, and new revolutionary winds are blowing again).
There are a number of extremely important institutions developed during the peoples war — and it is hard to know whether they have been flourishing underground, or whether they were shut down as part of the “peace process”, or whether (perhaps) in some rural areas they simply withered as the Maoist guerillas were moved to cantonments and many cadre were sent into the cities.
There were also different reports on whether the land seized during agrarian revolution had been returned to the landowners. There were some people (pursuing their fetish of the written word) who simply remarked that the negotiated agreement called for some return of such land — and who assumed that this meant (a) that the Maoists intended to return such land, and (b) that they had even (in fact) returned such land. For some people, there is no distance from the printed word to the material fact — and so no real investigation is needed beyond textual analysis. (See the recent article “Maoists not to return seized land.”)
Here on Kasama we posted a sharp piece entitled “Compare and Contrast on Nepal” where we contrasted the RCP’s crude assumption about reversal of revolution, with the statements of observers on the ground who revealed the opposite.
There as also a controversy in the Terai, where some dissident forces breaking from the Nepali maoists instigated a land occupation movement on land owned by one of the reactionary politicians in the new government — in other words, they were attempting to use an incident around land seizure to disrupt the temporary agreements involved in that government, and were trying to put themselves on the map as the true defenders of revolutionary land reform.
And (again) some people took this incident as a sign that lands seized from feudal forces had, in the main, been returned.
Uneven Development from Region to Region
On the question of revolutionary institutions it has been hard for all of us (including me, certainly) to get an overall picture of what is happening on the ground in remote rural areas.
These important institutions include: the peoples communes, the organs of peoples power in the political base areas, the functioning of party committees in rural villages, model schools (of the kind we are discussing), and the various Maoist militia (that formed an important part of the peoples war.)
It has been hard to know how robust, generalized and consolidated such things were even during the peoples war. Clearly such developments must have been highly uneven — given the nature of a revolutionary war, the nature of line questions within a revolutionary movement, and the general laws of uneven development (in all things).
I suspect that there were developed revolutionary institutions in some areas, and that in other areas they were taken as models, and attempts were made to implement something similar. And I assume that in some areas such things took root, and in some areas the main institutions were still largely the party itself and its armed forces.
The Key Issue of the Peoples Liberation Army — Ready or Dissolved?
Since 2006, it has been alleged that the revolutionary popular institutions have simply been shut down “as part of the peace process.” Just as it has been alleged that the Peoples Liberation Army has been disarmed, demobilized (and demoralized) by that peace process.
Increasingly we have gotten first hand reports that clarify (from at least some cantonments) that the PLA soldiers have quite high levels of morale and readiness — that hey have weapons to be used in daily training etc. — and that the time in cantonment has been used in many ways to raise the professionalism and political consciousness of the people’s soldiers (and commanders). It is still not possible to know if this is true in all cantonments (and so it is hard to tell about the PLA overall). But certainly a number of reports have suggested that it was very premature to assume (and then declare!) that the peace process and the cantonments meant the “disarming” and ultimate dissolution of the PLA.
The Question of the Peoples Communes
The situation is less clear about the conditions in the former liberated areas — for example the heartland of revolution like Rukum and Rolpa.
Earlier this year, there was an extremely important report from these areas that announced:
“During the period of the People’s War, the communes were established in the central base areas of the western Nepal. They were/are the models of the People’s Communes. They are the embryo of socialism and communism. These communes are still surviving in a live condition. The policy and the programmes declared by the republican government are helping them. These communes are the best achievements of a decade long People’s War. They are the protection, experiment and the development of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism and Prachanda Path.” Juni People’s Commune, Ajammari People’s Commune, Jaljala People’s Commune and Balidan People’s Commune are the model communes developed in the central base area.”
I encourage everyone to re-read that article (since its significance was generally not appreciated at the time we reprinted it.) And whatever else this report reveals — it makes it clear that extremely powerful forces (high within the Maoist party) are urging renewed attention to the agrarian revolution, and the question of socialist property forms in society.
Exploring Fritz’s Experience
Now I’d like to turn to Fritz’s remarks. Because he says that during his visit to Rukum and Rolpa, he was told that the model schools were shut down. This is an important piece of information. And I have no reason to doubt Fritz’s report.
I would like Fritz to elaborate a bit more: Were these teachers he met still teaching? Were there in fact schools, but just no longer Maoist model schools? What is the possibility (or likelihood) that such revolutionary institutions were still going on, but that (because of compromises involved the peace process) the revolutionaries did not want to have foreigners report on them?
I have a general sense that the negotiated developments after 2006 involved the movement of key communist cadre from the rural base areas (either into cantonments or the urban capital Kathmandu) and that this inevitably had an effect on some of the vitality of revolutionary activity in former base areas.
But I also have heard accounts of consolidation of revolutionary advances in some areas — including, for example, the developments of the Martyr’s Road that will profoundly change life for people in very remote areas.
There are reasons to believe that some of these institutions (especially the peoples power) continued to operate, despite the peace process, and that what would be needed to “reinstitute them” would mainly be to put their public signs back up.
And, again, this might be quite uneven — in different areas — for all kinds of reasons (including the previous strength of new institutions, and perhaps different lines on how to implement the negotiated agreements of the recent period.)
The report we have just published on Model schools is not from Rukum or Rolpa, but from the region near Mount Everest (in Dolkha District in eastern Nepal, where the main ethnicity is the numerically small Jiril people). And where the school discussed is not a continuation of something created during the peoples war — but something new created in the last year.
This suggests that there has been a conscious effort to expand Maoist model institutions in areas of political strength — preparation for a leap to a new society (through a revolutionary leap to a form of People’s Democracy).
In general, I think we should watch reports closely and critically — and work to get a real sense of what is happening, and what new developments are emerging.
How do We Evaluate Revolutionary New Things
Perhaps the most provocative part of Fritz’s commentary is his expression of disappointment in the kind of education that the Maoists considered revolutionary.
“I was pretty disappointed in the lack of change that the Maoists brought about in the field of education. Not a single Maoist I met (from low level cadre, to members of the Politoboro) had even heard of Lev Vygotsky and Paulo Freire, the great communist educational scientists. Instead of a new, uplifting, critical-thinking based education, they practiced the same old oppressive form of education that everyone else does: memorization of slogans, and the imposition of strict hierarchal, militaristic social structures. They did, however, seem to be less alienated from their immediate surroundings, and used examples that were relevant to the students’ lives (at another school I visited in Gorka, which was run by Maoists, but was not a model school, the gym teacher was teaching the students how to play basketball, using a textbook, even though the school had no hoop, court or ball).
“But back to the model school… The content had been changed, but only in the sense that it taught the children to worship Communist idols, instead of Hindu ones. Neither the children, nor most of the cadre I met, knew what these idols had achieved, nor did they seem to have much of a sense of what communism meant. The Politiboro member I met, as well as the head of the YCL, were both very knowledgeable, and very politically savvy, which was nice. But I think one of the main reasons revolutionary governments have lost their radical nature, from one generation to the next, is because of their oppressive forms of education.
“I’m not trying to blame the Maoists though. Like I said, nobody I met had even heard of Vygotsky or Freire; and they didn’t have access to the internet, or libraries. They also didn’t have the time and resources that are needed to radically transform education; almost all of their time and resources were directed towards the war effort, including the educational practices (the children no longer learned that G is for God. They learned that G is for Gun). I am trying to say though, that the educational practices going on in Nepal are only slightly radical in their contenet and not at all in their methods. There is much more radical education in America than there is in Nepal.”
I think this goes to the heart of how to evaluate revolutionary processes — especially in a distant country. Fritz and I have had extensive discussion (and debate) about this over the last year, and perhaps we should explore it a bit more publicly.
In short, here is how the controversy looks to me: Should we evaluate revolutionary progress by some universal standards (that we establish and pronounce)? Or should we evaluate revolutionary progress according to context and particular conditions?
I think that elements of both apply, but that quite often people use the first method: Their standards on matters of sexuality, or education, or processes of political power have been developed under the condition of the United States (and its left), and then a movement in another country gets measured against what has become accepted as verdicts in those circles.
In Nepal, it is quite radical to even have education in rural areas. It is quite radical to educate girls at all. It is radical to promote education for the children of the poor — in a country where illiteracy has been almost universal among the rural peasants. It is certainly radical to have a secular education — and to overthrow centuries of Hindu indoctination and royalist traditions.
So I believe it is possible to have a truly remarkable series of revolutionary break-throughs in Nepali education (mindboggling new models of teaching and learning) and yet STILL not engage issues that Fritz thinks are basic and necessary for revolutionaries.
Is it disappointing that Maoist teachers and leaders in Nepal have not heard of Lev Vigotsky and Pablo Freire? I think it isn’t. First, however important the early Soviet psychological pioneer Vigotsky may be (and we have tried to popularize him on this site) it is not surprising that he is unknown in rural nepal, or in its Maoist party. And even Pablo Freire (who is more widely known in the U.S.) — his influence has to do with (in part) the influence of Latin American leftism on many of us, and the particular developments in radical educational movements within the U.S. left. Can we really judge the Nepalese model schools by whether they are familiar with a theorist who we have found valuable?
Thinking about this, I was struck by the fact that (thanks precisely to the Maoist revolution) rural educators in Nepal are being introduced to traveling revolutionaries from other countries — and through them works and theories of people like Vigotsky and Freire are becoming known. Isn’t that too part of the accomplishments of the revolutionary process so far?
Mainly, I want to argue against measuring an early revolution in an impoverished third world country — by the standards and issues of your own imperialist one. Often this comes up around sexuality: In Maoist China, public displays of sexuality were not considered appropriate, and many revolutionaries arriving from the roaring 60s found that very odd (because for them overt sexuality and revolutionary politics were closely entwined). What were the roots of these differences: Cultural differences between the countries? The recent emergence of China from feudal conditions? Line differences among communists over sexuality and women’s liberation? I think it is all of those things.
But I think it would be very mechanical (and frankly a bit chauvinist) to take the assumptions of your particular revolutionary circles in the U.S. — and use them as a rigid measuring stick for developments in some other revolutionary process.
I was particularly struck by Fritz’s phrase:
“I am trying to say though, that the educational practices going on in Nepal are only slightly radical in their contenet and not at all in their methods. There is much more radical education in America than there is in Nepal.”
Really? And how do you measure that? Is self study in a a liberal/progressive American school “more radical” than breaking down the caste system in Nepal? Is a loose equality of student and teacher (in some experimental schools in the U.S.) “more radical” than having girls go to school in Nepal? Is the critique of rote learning within U.S. education inherently “more radical” than uprooting religious education in Nepal, and replacing it with the extremely radical philosophies embodied in communist theory?
For Fritz, autonomous self-determination and radical democratic power structures are the key determinant of revolutionary progress. And so, applying that yardstick to a classroom in Nepal, he doesn’t see much difference. (They took out the hindu king, and now teach about Marx, Lenin, Mao and Prachanda. For Fritz this is really not that different.)
But i think we should step back, and see what is happening in Nepal — what is being broken with, what is being dared, what is being overthrown, and what is being proposed in its place.
Is this still a revolution that is in its very very early stages? Yes. It is likely that there will be later leaps to make (including around questions of rote learning, or the authority of elders and teachers, and so on) — of course. Certainly that was true in China during the cultural revolution — when it was still very radical to disagree with a teacher, or refuse to take tests, or challenge the survival of feudal thinking in the curriculum.
One example: One of the key issues in the sexual revolution in Nepal is the right of youth to pick their own boy friends, girl friends and future marriage partners. This is extremely controversial — and kids can get killed for defying traditions of arranged marriage (especially if they cross caste lines). Now if you go to a U.S. high school or college, and say “Nepali kids are joining the revolution because they want the right to date, and marry whoever they choose,” many U.S. kids will say “that doesn’t sound so radical.” And they might even say “These kids just want what we already have in the U.S.”
But in fact, the demand for “Love Matches” is extremely radical — it is a demand that tears away at the very foundation of traditional Nepali patriarchy (which in turn is connected to the monarchy and religion by many threads). It is a huge change, and an unstoppable ferment. And its most sharp expression is in the new forms of courtship and love emerging in the Peoples Liberation Army.
We do have universal values and should. Our values are connected to a global process of communist revolution and that are expressed in our own views toward education, power and all the other aspects of social change. But there is a mechanical view that takes our own particular current beliefs and the revolutionary demarcation lines that emerged within our immediate experience — and assumes they should be universal — and that we can judge a distant revolution by them.
Vivid Visionary said
I think one of Fritz’ main points which you missed, Mike, was around educational methods under socialism or under regions undergoing such transformation. Whether Fritz’ account is accurate or not is beside the point because I think he addresses a crucial question. For a people attempting to build socialism, the revolutionary development of the youth is a central concern if this transformation is to have continuity. And the capitalist methods of education, what Freire calls the “banking method” objectively services to pacify and domesticate people, rather than liberate and develop.
I haven’t read much into the educational methods used under the Soviet Union and China (which I imagine was a complex and contradictory thing), but I strongly believe that the creation of a new liberatory pedagogy under socialism is necessary if socialism is to remain (or become) a dynamic and radical society on the path to final human liberation. Revolutionary education must strive to center students as subjects undergoing change but also as agents of broader social change, rather than passive actors in a static reality.
Mike E said
Vivid Visionary writes:
I tend to agree. This is certainly part of the continuing revolution, and the kinds of things that it confronts.
But do you really imagine that creating new revolutionary schools in rural Nepali districts, training peasant children in literacy, secular thinking and communist theory is not a major (historic!) step toward having those students be “agents of broader social change”? Including in the very revolutionary storms these very students are probably about to lead and unleash?
Does anyone imagine that this revolutionary movement in Nepal is unfamiliar with the idea of unleashing students to storm heaven and think for themselves? This is a MAOIST movement which became a Maoist movement precisely because of the influence of the Chinese Cultural Revolution and the Red Guards. These may still be controversial ideas in rural districts of semi-feudal nepal — but do we imagine that we will need to lecture this movement and party from afar on the importance of having students critique old ideas and authorities?
Isn’t there something a bit doctrinaire and formalist about assuming that ONLY your specific preferred pedagogical methods can (independent of time, place and context) represent major leaps toward making students be active agents in the people’s emancipation?
Do we really have any evidence that these schools will train kids to be “passive actors in a static reality”? And if not, what possible basis is there for the seeming inclination toward dismissal of early creations of a living revolution.
These articles are the very first reports I have gotten from these Maoist schools. They are sketchy, and not very detailed. They are taking from one or two schools and may not be representative. They are by authors who I don’t know well, and whose political filters I am not familiar with. So I am not rushing to proclaim or denounce — but am mainly looking forward to learning more.
But (in the context of the initial responses from Fritz and Vivid Visionary) i feel forced to point out these are very radical developments — that can potentially play a key role in developing new trained revolutionary activists for this ongoing revolution.
And the emergence of these new Maoist schools (over this last year of controversy and struggle) seems to reflect (in that area at least) an important determination among the revolutionaries to continue to create NEW institutions, with new ideology — rather than simply reform or adapt to the old ways of doing things.
I suspect I have a great deal of sympathy for the approaches and methods you find valuable. I am not a fan of rote education, or treating kids as “vessels” for filling up. And here at Kasama, we have certainly polemicized a lot against the dogmatic political methods of “fire your ideas, hire ours’.”
But in the context of still-feudal Nepal, a series of model schools (rising organically from their society and their revolutionary movement) may have something to teach us. Don’t you suspect?
I constantly encounter people very quick to judge (based on very little knowledge or insight into the particular process) and very reluctant to approach our investigations of this new revolution as a learning experience.
In your comment, Vivid Visionary, you say you have not investigated the education experiences of the Soviet Union or china, and that you don’t even think the accuracy of Fritz’s account is important one way or another. What is important is your assertion that your particular approach to education is “necessary” for socialism — and so (by implication) the absence of those methods (in a very early model school, in one district of Nepal) implies troubling things about their project.
Can you see why that method (with very fixed beliefs but little investigation or context) can lead us to take unjustified distance from a real revolution unfolding in real time?
And to be quite candid: I feel like the problem is that some people have never really encountered a real revolution before, and are quite unfamiliar with how to act. Or at least seem to be gripped by a rather doctrinaire determination to “hold these people to account by our own high standards.”
I’m sure we all have a lot invested in our own particular theories of education and liberation. But perhaps a little open-minded modesty and materialist investigation is in order — and a little more deserved respect for very radical people pressing forward a revolution in and extremely backward place with great courage and creativity.
Tell No Lies said
This is a fascinating discussion. My own research on the origins of the Zapatistas and my own observations of their efforts to develop their own educational system has made me acutely aware of these pedagogical questions, but also of the considerable slippage that always exists between theory and reality, especially in a context in which well educated teachers trained in the preferred pedagogical methods are not neccesarily in great supply. Freirean pedagogy has certainly made its mark on the indigenous communities’ that are the Zapatistas main bases of support, chiefly because of its influence on the Catholic Church. But frankly there has been a lot of educational work done using every imaginable method, including in my view quite oppressive ones, that has taught a lot of people how to read who otherwise wouldn’t have learned how, and that fact more than anything has transformed the power dynamics. One of the great ironies of the history of Chiapas is that without the literacy training work of rabidly anti-communist Right-wing American evangelical Christian missionaries it is doubtful that the Zapatistas would even exist. People can be taught to read in truly hateful ways, but once they know how it becomes much much harder to control the ideas they get exposed to or how they think, no matter how much their teachers may think otherwise. The evangelical missionaries produced dictionaries in indigenous languages that deliberately excluded “subversive” concepts like exploitation and revolution. And still the Zapatistas translated the Communist Manifesto into Tzotzil. And hell, the translation of the Book of Exodus into Tzeltal gave the predominantly Tzeltal communities of the Lacandon Jungle a whole conceptual apparatus for analyzing their own oppression that proved profoundly subversive. Does the “banking method” really “objectively” pacify people? Or are things more complicated than that. How, for example, was Paolo Freire himself taught to read? Was he “objectively pacified” by the use of non-Freirean methods?
Vivid Visionary said
I think you kinda missed what I was trying to get across.
To begin with, I have never condemned the Maoist practices in Nepal.I didn’t accuse them of using oppressive educational methods. Like you, I enjoy reading these accounts in hopes of learning more from this revolution.
As a self-criticism, I do realize I should have stepped back a bit an appreciate the enormous challenges facing the Nepali people in their struggle. To divorce my critique from these realities does carry the danger of falling into dogmatism.
But, whether Fritz’ particular account of his experience in that Nepali school is completely accurate or not, he raised a very important question that you still haven’t addressed, namely that of liberatory education. This isn’t about MY particular version of what revolutionary education should look like, it’s about what is completely vital and necessary under socialism. I think it’s a problem when people assert that new and radical education methods under socialism AREN’T central to socialist transformation, that similar bureaucratic and indoctrinating methods can be used under a new society. I do realize, thanks to studying articles on Kasama, the achievements and successes of the Maoist revolution in Nepal, but I believe Fritz’ question is very valuable. Appreciating and learning from revolutionary experiences under Nepal’s adverse conditions doesn’t negate that educational methods must radically change if socialism is to be dynamic and real. I can’t imagine living under a society calling itself radical, revolutionary, liberatory, yet where my school classes reflect the same industrial capitalist model developed so long ago that mainly serves to teach us what to think, not HOW to think. The environment is so alienating and un-inspirational (something education and learning should never be!. Can a cultural revolution seeking to overthrow the old be possible if students aren’t trained to see themselves as subjects capable of transforming their reality in the service of radical change?
observer said
The revolution has not yet been successful in Nepal. The proletariat does NOT have state power. How in the world does anyone really think that ther party could thoroughly revolutionize the education system, or even hae much time to think about it, before first addressing that?
The very fact of teaching peopke in the rural areas simply to read is a revolutionary step forward.
The Soviet Union and China were struggling over revolutionizing the education system decades after achieving state power. It would be a real genuine shock if the comrades in Nepal could somehow leap ahead on this front even before achieving victory!
There are manycontroversial things about what is going on in Nepal and a lot of room for debate. I personally am very skeptical of Kasama’s general approach to Nepal. But I think being verly critical about the failure t as yet utilize the best methods of education would be somewhat unfairand unrealistic.
Vivid Visionary said
In addition:
I’m not asking that the Nepali revolutionaries begin studying Paulo Freire and changing their educational methods. I’m trying to highlight one of Fritz’ main points (or MAIN point) and make it into a broader theoretical question facing revolutionaries.
TNL,
In a broad sense, do you think the same oppressive educational methods used under this system can be used under socialism in any general way? Would it be ok, since, after it, it teaches people how read and other basic skills that can then be used by the people themselves to enact change? Or do we really need to take a look at how this educational system really does dehumanize and pacify youth? Of course, many do see beyond these methods and rebel against them and/or develop alternative pedagogical theories, but, generally, I can’t conceive of a socialism disconnected from the goal of humanization, education for liberation being a central part of that. In a general sense, when speaking of millions, institutionalized educational methods play a profound and complicated role in its (oppressive or liberating) formation of human beings.
Li Kui said
Comrades,
I’m glad our report on the Maoist school has already been the subject of much debate on this site. I don’t have much time to contribute a lot at the moment, but we will soon have more important information coming out.
I can say on the situation in Rolpa that we did not have much time there and did not get to visit Thawang, but our article http://www.britainwprm.org/wp/?p=761#more-761 tried to provide some information. According to a regional bureau member and the district vice-secretary, the communes in Thawang and Jailwang VDCs are still operating as before, as are the model schools in both of those villages. I was surprised to hear Fritz writing that the school had apparently shut down, because a friend spent one month there in Thawang last summer and it was still operating as a model school.
Anyway, that is all, to some extent, speculation. In Jiri we discovered that as well as those two schools in Rolpa, five new schools had been opened in 2009, one in each of the main regions of the country.
Certainly we do not want to romanticise our experience here, though it of course feels a great privilege to have seen many things and met many people while out here. However, we feel one of the main problems of discussion over the Nepali revolution is the subjective attitude adopted by many people, which Mike alluded to, judging the conditions in this semi-feudal semi-colonial country by standards of an imperialist country.
The UCPN(M) is still in the stage of strategic offensive, attempting now to push forward to New Democratic Revolution. The main aspect in the People’s War and still today was the destruction of the old semi-feudal semi-colonial state. Only secondarily could the party construct a new state, which it did to a high degree, though with obviously much further to go. Therefore these examples of a new state can only be judged by seeing them as part of a process of continual revolution.
We have been trying to investigate examples of the construction of the new state. Model schools was only one aspect, another is the practice of the YCL which is engaging in activities which should formally be the duty of the state, but which, because of the state’s weakness in this transitional period, it is unable to carry out. Info on this is also on our website. Apart from the YCL, the PLA remains a further important example and we will have info on this coming out next week.
Another point to remember about these schools is that there has been a fundamental need for the UCPN(M) to provide for the children of martyrs of the PW, as the state will not provide for them, and as education in rural Nepal is still a privilege for many, especially girls, the party has stepped up to this reponsibility.
Lastly, it seems that there are certain criticisms of the content of the education system. This is definitely a matter that needs much research and lively debate. But one important piece of information we tried to provide was how the school is teaching the children about Cultural Revolution, the need to smash the old feudal culture and construct a New Democratic culture, and as various party members keep telling us, this is a continual process of revolution. It does not stop at the overthrow of the monarchy, nor the NDR, nor socialism. This seems very far removed from my experience in the British education system in general, even as it does leave some small room for radicalisation. Anyway, seeing how the practice of education in Nepal is transformed along with the development of Nepali socio-economic conditions will be worth detailed investigation.
Mike S. said
Very interesting discussion. My wife and I visited Venezuela briefly in 2004 and since both of us have strong backgrounds in education we went out of our way to visit a Bolivarian School, which is the supposedly radical educational model promoted by Chavez. We spent half a day at one school, so it is entirely possible that what we experienced was not representative, but our experience was similar to that conveyed by Fritz. The content of the textbooks had changed — lots more about Bolivar, a little bit about Marx, etc. — but the methods were highly rote. Much of the instruction was actually done via video-taped lectures, and classwork seemed to consist of nothing other than traditional workbooks (fill-in-the-blank, true and false, etc.). The emphasis appeared to be on memorization and recitation, rather than on open-ended exploration, creativity, critical thinking and problem solving.
Venezuela is clearly different from Nepal (or Chiapas), at least insofar as providing education per se is not particularly radical; the Bolivarian Schools were a replacement for the previous educational system, not for most participants the first opportunity for schooling that they had ever had. And I see TNL’s point as well about the possible outcomes of a wide range of educational methods (hell, I survived twelve years of Catholic school!), but I think movements that really aim at revolution need to consider the razor thin margins that make all the difference between sucess and failure in a whole range of contexts. One of those is education, and it makes sense from a revolutionary perspective to focus significant efforts on structuring an educational system that has the best chance of producing the greatest number of conscious, reflective and active people, from youth to old age. I don’t know whether Nepal’s Maoists, or the Zapatistas, or the Chavistas would agree. But it’s clearly a discussion worth having.
Fritz said
Hey guys, glad to see there’s a discussion.
First off, I’d like to say that, having spent 3 months in Nepal, I can and will never make broad statements of the revolutionaryness of the revolution. The enormity of everything involved in the affairs of a nation really made me appreciate the complexity of human society. I’ll try to be as specific as possible.
I reached Thabang around June 20th, 2009, and was informed that all the model schools had been closed, due to the peace process; this may or may not be true. When I told this to a member of the Politoboro member in Kathmandu, he was surprised to hear it. The level of communication in Nepal (or lack of it, as well as the pace of it) is a very weird thing for someone coming from the US, and was very hard to get used to. This is true for India too, where I spent 8 months.
There were still martyr’s families living at the model school, but they were all attending the government school that had existed before; as far as I could tell, there seemed to be a government school in every village, serving both boys and girls, although maybe this was a new development that the King created in response to the Maoist revolution. The Maoist schools were definitely reformations of the existing school system. The content was, without a doubt, very radical, in the context of Nepal. Their methods, however, were still the methods of old. I just want to people to know this before they decide to visit these schools in search of radical methods of education that can be transported to the rest of the world; these places are very out of the way, and are dangerous to visit, if one is not very well prepared for the challenges brought about by nature. Visiting these areas of rural Nepal will provide a wonderful (and as well as awful) cultural experience, and many valuable lessons; but visiting these schools is not necessary if you’re looking for creative educational methods.
The following should help clear up why I think educational methods are fundamentally important to a revolution.
The teachers from the Thabang model school are now teaching in the government school; the government schools are also radically transforming social norms, though in an even more oppressive, capitalistic way. I saw the new textbooks, and they were literally teaching the children that the man is the head of the household, the woman stays at home and cooks and cleans and raises the children, and the children are obedient towards their parents. The most radical thing though, was that the children were learning that aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents should not live in the home, that it is easier to care for the nuclear family. This is a blatant attack on feudal family structures, and an imposition a superstructure that better fits a capitalist economy. It was doubly weird because the Thabang commune (which is still going strong) was the most well off “household” in the area, and was inhabited by over a hundred people of all ages. I can’t say though, whether this was due the productivity brought about by cooperation, or the fact that the commune was funded, in part, by the UCPN(M), who collected taxes from everyone else in the area.
So, how can the teachers of the Maoist school now be teaching in the fully capitalist government school? The average American, as well as most anarchists I know, would say that this proves that power makes people corrupt. I think it is way more complex than that, and has broader implications, concerning every communist movement that has turned revisionist, and finally capitalist.
Nepal is not like Kasama, where people (who have studied different ideologies and have recognized the historical neccessity of the communist movement) convene voluntarily. Maoism in Nepal was a social-political movement in a feudal area. When the leaders of a village pledged allegience to the Maoists, the rest of the village tended to do the same. I even heard from somebody (who taught English to the PLA commanders) that often, when the Maoists would take over a village, they would “draft” one male teenager from every family into the army; although the line between drafting and volunteering is very thin; most teenage boys in Nepal are probably dying to get out of their village; and I didn’t meet a single person in Nepal who had a single good thing to say about the King.
I think that this method of building a party is important in understanding how a party can fall into an ideological rut. It was, in fact, the (now, obviously revisionist) UML that was the radical communist party waging an armed struggle against a dictatorship back in the 1950′s. I hope that the Maoists aren’t one day thought of as obviously revisionist, but I fear that that is the direction they are headed in, as of their current standing in the parlaimentary system. If the Maoists’ popular base comes from political alliences, not ideological solidarity, then it is up to the educational process to provide the ideology. The current Maoist education is teaching children what is right and what is wrong (often correctly) but is not teaching the children why, nor is giving them the critical thinking skills to figure this out on their own; the children there also don’t have access to internet and libraries, so can’t find out for themselves. The educational system also teaches children to obey the authority of Prachanda, the party, their teachers, and their parents. This kind of education hijacks popular movements into ones that are totally subservient to leaders; and when the leaders go wrong, so does the movement. There are many examples of this, from Russia to China. Here’s another example…
In the Maoist, non-model school I visited in Gorka, I went into the 4th grade classroom and found all the boys on one side of the classroom, and the girls on the other. The boys sat on benches, in rows, and had high benches serving as tables. The girls sat on benches, but had no tables, and were forced to write on their laps. When I asked the Maoist teacher why, he said it was because they were very poor. When I asked him if it rotated every day, and sometimes the girls had no tables, and sometimes the boys had no tables, he told me again, no, but that this was not a 1st world country, and they didn’t have enough tables for everyone. I said, well isn’t that sexist? and he said no, everything is equal. When I brought this up with the Maoist principle, he also assured me that everything was equal.
Only an educational system that alienates people from their surroundings could create teachers who say one thing, yet do another: who know what Marx, Lenin, Mao and Prachanda would say, but don’t know how to put the ideas into action.
I’ll finish on a happier note. In Kathmandu, I spoke to the General Secretary of the All Nepal Women’s Committee. She fought in the war. She said that all of the male soldiers “believed” that women were equal (at least in conversation), but still, at the beginning of the war, treated the women as though they were not. However, the PLA was structurally different from the Royal Nepal Army, in that it had a women’s batallion, which gave women the opportunity to prove themselves. And they did. It was only through this process, only after the men had seen, for themselves, just what their female comrades were truly capable of, did they truly know what equality meant; and only then did their attitudes and actions towards the women correspond to their ideas.
Education and revolution can not be about imposing any one view of the world on others: that is oppression, no matter how correct the view. Education is about helping people synthesize their experiences into an understanding of the different layers of complexity of world around them. Revolution is about changing the world around people, so that they don’t just believe, but know that a radically different way of life is possible.