Educational Injustice as a model of Post Modernism

As many of you know, my research is located in rural Nepal. I work with the lowest caste or Dalit community in many rural areas almost 6 hours outside of Kathmandu. The difficulties here circumvent one large obstacle which is access. The rural location in a nation with one of the most difficult terrains in the world provides a challenge that is almost expected. However upon deeper investigation there are historical and cultural implications that have facilitated the settlement of the low caste community in the rural and harshest areas of the nation.

These cultural determinants contribute to the underlying problems in many of the structural systems in place in Nepal; namely the Education system. The most interesting thing about the cultural determinants of Nepal is that they are multi-faceted. The caste system, for example, has not only endless amount of levels to its intricacies but a host of opinions and perspectives. Taking the education system as a structure in place for this argument one can look at the caste system in effect within the classroom.

Just to preface the disparity in the educational system in Nepal lies between the public and private schooling, much as it does here. This disparity is much deeper than simply the difference between socio economic classes but how each socio economic class came to be made up of the individuals it is. The lowest caste takes up, per capita, the greatest majority of the lowest socio economic class. This places low caste children in the poorest, lowest quality educational settings. This perpetuates low educational achievement and literacy rates in the low caste communities. This makes an interesting point in the case of post-modernism. After my time in Nepal, I learned that from either side of the classroom there is a cultural division. The high caste individuals have their own separate culture that highlights the achievement of their ancestors. The low caste individuals tell a very different story that details a history of their oppression in many facets, especially education.

The presence of cultures within one assumed culture is important in post-modernism because it is indicative of no universal truths. Culture is meant to be dynamic but there is room for application here because all assume one cultural identity but within that identity they tell different versions. This applies to a Foucoultian take on post modernism in which there is one assumed provisional knowledge but it is entirely situational from caste to caste. The provisional knowledge exists as the system of education and the situational knowledge exists as a manifestation of each sub culture within the caste system. Everything is supposed to be objective from within the system and together it is, however from the individual it is almost solely subjective.

Finally, there is one major tenet of post-modernism being that there is power implicated through knowledge. This is evidenced in different aspects of Nepalese culture but mostly in the education system. As stated previously, there is plenty of correlation in how apply post modernism to the Nepalese education system, specifically caste within education. Power is directly implied through the relationships within the classroom. There are embedded in the dynamics between not only the administration and the student body but within the student body but between the public and private schools. The caste divide that has a high determination to which socio economic class the student belongs to also determines whether they have the opportunity to attend public or private school. One way to understand these relationships is not as a solution to a historic problem of caste vs. caste but as a way to apply post modernism to structural systems that exist.