Enrolment situation and class-room facilities of journalism

The Ratna Rajya Laxmi Campus under Tribhuvan University musters 'the largest concentration of students taking journalism as one of he major elective subjects at the two year proficiency level and three-year diploma level. A total of six classes in the day and evening shifts are operated. The total number of students enrolled at present stands at 600, out of which 200 students are studying in the diploma course. Each class takes in about 75 students in average which is still very high in terms with the physical facilities available. But the percentage of students crossing the final examination is in the average of 50 % (35 students are said to have passed this year)

The other privately managed Peoples Campus operates classes in Journalism at 2-year proficiency level only. The average enrolment figure is about 30 students a year for both the classes.

At the higher secondary (10+2) level, about 5 higher secondary schools are known to prescribe the course adopted by the Board of Higher Secondary Education, Sano Thimi. In 2001, a total of 80 students are stated to have participated in the final examination. Some of the schools are known to have discontinued the course for lack of students and qualified teachers or poor yield in terms of financial returns.

The situation at the high school level is not clear except that the Curriculum Development Centre (CDC) has published a text book. The move should be welcomed as a positive step forward.

The Problem

The expansion of journalism education and training opportunities is, moreover, unbalanced and uneven in terms of mobilisation of resources and quality. Some of the major problems can be summed up as followed:

• Much of the learning opportunity is limited at two campuses in the capital city. The diploma level education is confined to one campus only out of 140 campuses spread all over the Kingdom.
• The prescription of courses at the Secondary and Higher Secondary levels has created new opportunities for learning journalism to students of outlying areas of the Kingdom. But expansion of the scope is constrained by the lack of qualified teachers and back-up resources including text books, libraries and basic learning materials.
• Journalism education as a discipline of study appears to be heading into confusion in the absence of clear national policy and resource allocation plans. This is the only development sector that is deprived of state funds and, subsequently, is obliged to look for external resources and support.
• The courses offered at the only campus in Kathrnandu lean heavily on theoretical study of print journalism due to lack of adequate funds. The lack of opportunity of studies at other campuses has led to over-crowding of classes, inadequate supervision and management.
• There are no specific criteria adopted for the selection of teachers in journalism. The criteria developed by the University for other subjects have not been applied in this case for several reasons. For the moment, the problem is not serious as the faculty is limited to one campus in Kathmandu which has, some how managed to assemble a bevy of staff of matchable standard. The issue needs to be resolved for the sake of uniformity and adoption by other campus also.

The study of Journalism is more vocational in application and hence distinct from other liberal arts subjects. Its study entails quite a substantive use of modern technology and financial resource.

Objectives

Any future plan for the promotion of the study of Journalism and Mass Communications shall have to take into account the following objectives:

• To promote the culture of free press, media pluralism and human rights through the development of standard education in journalism and mass communications at the higher education level.
• To support local initiatives in introducing study of journalism at other campuses outside the capital.
• To suggest means of meeting the scarcity of teachers in Journalism by organising condensed training courses for university teachers.
• To support initiatives for the production of well-graded text books in journalism in simple Nepali.
• To support the development of libraries and on-line networking facilities at the newly established departments.
• To promote inter-links with suitable partner institutions abroad and facilitate the exchange of teachers and students.

Journalism Education in Nepal: introduction

The rapid strides in mass media industry in recent times have opened up new opportunities of employment for young people as never before. While prospects of employment require specialized skills and knowledge, it has opened up new possibilities of launching education programmes in journalism at new universities located at various geographic locations of the Kingdom. In addition, it has also received the attention of many entrepreneurs and academics. A number of private agencies have come up with offers for post graduate/Masters programmes in Journalism or communication studies with approval from new universities or overseas institutions.

Such a free-for-all situation1though welcome is bound to suffer if proper safe-guards Land parameter of standards is not observed early stages. Unplanned and disoriented endeavours are likely to jeopardise the very dignity of the profession and the social service mission of journalism. But who is going to monitor the pit-falls or lapses in the interest of the society? While the entire gamut of education is itself in a mess as regards to the observance of ethics and standards, journalism, at best, is a neglected domain left at the niercy of market forces or pressure groups. The Fourth Estate which is supposed to keep a vigil on the mal-performance of democratic institutions and chastise them throUgh objective presentation of facts, is itself suffering from its own weaknesses and short-comings.

In the backdrop of these disturbing trends, the paper seeks to examine the relevance of journalism education in Nepal in the context of Tribhuvan University, which is by far, the oldest and largest institution of advanced education in the Kingdom.

Study of Journalism in the formal educational set up was introduced in Ratna Rajya Laxmi Campus, Kathmandu in 1976 as a two-year optional subject at the proficiency certificate level (equivalent to 10+2 standard) under Tribhuvan University. Senior journalists in principal media organisations were inducted to work as part-time lecturers at the newly opened faculty of journalism. In 1986, the faculty was extended to cover education at the two-year diploma level (equivalent to Bachelor level, now rendered into a three-year course). From 1986, Peoples' Campus, a private campus, in Kathmandu, introduced the course at the certificate level.

From 1997, the Higher Secondary Education Board, HMG (HSEB) has introduced courses in Journalism and Mass Communication as optional subjects at Grade Xl and Xli. Still later; starting from the year 2001, the Board of Secondary Education, HMG, has prescribed Journalism for Grade IX and X as an optional subject.

Training in Journalism in the non-formal sector was launched in Nepal from 1984 by Nepal Press Institute. By now, a host of training organisations of various genres are in the business of imparting training in journalism to diverse clientele groups. Nepal Press Institute provided professional expertise in the development of curriculum and operative guidelines at the Secondary and Higher Secondary levels.

Journalism Education In Nepal

Nepalese journalists have a major responsibility - working on democracy’s free press to inform citizens and officials about local, national and world events as well as providing a measure of public accountability for all institutions and their members. Globalisation imposes on journalists the increasing burden of making sense of interlocking or interdependent histories, economies, laws, cultures and conflicts in a "news cycle" now spinning at Internet speed.
The Information Revolution - with journalists at the front and centre of this revolution - makes it enormously easier for journalists to obtain information, but not correspondingly easier for them to separate the chaff from the wheat, subjectivity from objectivity, opinion from fact, private interests from public interests, manipulation from influence and corruption from "spin."
The Information Revolution, globalisation and media industry trends - including corporate consolidations, ever-present commercialism and "infotainment" - make it more and more difficult for journalists to cover the news and provide sophisticated analysis, synthesis and context. Even leaving aside the corporate issues, it is clear that the complexities of modern society, global development and the Information Revolution place unprecedented demands on the profession of journalism. But it is not so clear whether our graduate and undergraduate programmes in journalism provide adequate intellectual and technical preparation to meet these challenges.
Nepalese journalism practice should now turn to understanding what a good journalist does. The old paradigm was that any good reporter can do a good job of covering any subject, regardless of how complicated it was. The new paradigm says: ‘Wouldn’t it be good if people really knew what they were writing about?’"
Journalism, after all, has to help us cope with the info-glut. The total amount of collected information is said to double every two or three years, and yet we are told that we’re unable to use 90 to 95 per cent of the information on hand.
The importance of ensuring journalism’s success in meeting today’s challenges - finding knowledge in information - cannot be overstated, for failure leaves our democracy open to massive manipulation, distortion and denial of citizens’ ability to make real choices as autonomous beings.
As a close society, however, general Nepalese people do not put a lot of trust in journalism, ranking journalists just below the "rich people" and just above "government officials". Indeed our ambivalence about journalists is comparable to our ambivalence about teachers and librarians. While many people pay lip service to the need for a free press, public education and libraries - saying they are essential sources of information and knowledge and, thus, essential to the security and health of our democracy - most journalists in Nepal rarely pay any attention to the needs of these idealised professions.
Nearly four out of five journalists say they are not well prepared to cover the most important issues facing the country. One in five journalists are dissatisfied with professional development opportunities at work, and this complaint is more common than ones about pay, benefits, promotion or even job security. Most journalists say they need training in work skills, content areas and ethics, values and legal issues, but few news staffers say they receive training in these areas. Four out of six news executives agree about the desirability of better training, but they say financial and time constraints severely limit training opportunities.
Most Nepalese media industries spend one per cent or less of their news budget on training and 10 per cent of the media houses spend nothing on training. Three in five editors responsible for international news say their newspaper’s coverage is fair or poor and say television networks’ foreign coverage was worse. These editors also said their own news organisations do a fair or poor job of satisfying readers’ interest in international news.
Of particular interest to the current debate is whether our journalism education programmes are preparing "reporters" who are skilled in gathering and packaging information, or "journalists" who have additional abilities for investigation, analysis, synthesis, perspective and narration. Because of the journalists’ importance to our society, media educators should believe that the level of their education, the level of their sophistication and the level of their knowledge about the issues that they report on must be high in order to prevent them from being marginalised, sidelined or manipulated.
We need, as much as possible, unshakable, untouchable independence and integrity from journalists because, as a society, we are dependent on them not only for information but for the context about the information they bring us and for expanding how we think about and analyse the life of our nation, our relationships with our allies and enemies, and events taking place in the most far-flung corners of the world.
The value of a good liberal arts education, moreover, is its ability to enhance a journalist’s powers of rational analysis, intellectual precision, independent judgment and mental adaptability - a characteristic sorely needed, especially now in an era of rapid change. A liberal education also will help journalism students to become familiar with the best our culture has taught, said and done. It may help young journalists to know and understand the sweep of our culture, the complex nature of our society, the achievements, the problems, the solutions and the failures that mark our history.

Importance of Human Rights Education

World is so beautiful. Human beings is the great and strongest animal in the world. With the help of thing capacity he became a powerful person in the world. Every one has right to live and right to speak.
Now we are living in the modern world. Human beings developed in all the fields. But there is a lot of difference among the countries in the world. Co-operation and co-ordination are necessary among these countries. It is necessary and important to educate every one in the world. It is very important to know what is Human Rights.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) was drafted by the United Nations Commission on Human Rights chaired by, then first lady, Eleanor Roosevelt. The UDHR was adopted by the 56 member nations of the United Nations General Assembly on December 10, 1948. December 10th is now celebrated around the world as International Human Rights Day.There are now 188 member states in United Nations
Everyone has the right to education... Education shall be directed to the full development of human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace.
The concept underpinning human rights education is that education should not only aim at forming trained, professional workers, but also at contributing to the development of individuals who possess the skills to interact in a society. Human rights education, human rights into education aim at providing pupils and students with the abilities to accompany and produce societal changes. Education is seen as a way to empower people, improve their quality of life and increase their capacity to participate in the decision-making processes leading to social, cultural and economic policies.
Human rights education cannot be reduced to the simple introduction of human rights content in already overburdened curricula. It brings about a profound reform of education, which touches upon curriculum in-service and pre-service training, textbooks, methodology, classroom management, and the organization of the education system at all levels.
Human rights education implies the learning and practice of human rights. A holistic approach to human rights education means that human rights are implemented at all levels of the education system, and that they are taught through both content transmission and experiences.
Education for human rights helps people feel the importance of human rights, internalize human rights values and integrate them into the way they live. Education for human rights also gives people a sense of responsibility for respecting and defending human rights and empowers them, through learned skills, to take appropriate action.
Why Human Rights Education?
1. Produces changes in values and attitudes
2. Produces changes in behaviour
3. Produces empowerment for social justice
4. Develops attitudes of solidarity across issues and nations
5. Develops knowledge and analytical skills 6. Produces participatory education
So give human rights education to every one and save the world.

Education and Globalization.

Between the XV and XIX century’s, the scientific knowledge and the technical inventions produced a

great transformation in the way of thinking and performing, basically oriented to mercantilism and based,

at the same time, to the Adam Smith postulates, with the theorem “let-do it”, “let-pass it”. But in the past

century, the advances evolve much quicker. In the education context, the technology advances had complement

with the global capitalism notion, but for many authors’ this knowledge seems to decompose in

most harmful ways than the positive ones.

The globalization impact in education has been a worrying process, precisely by the fast way that it

changes. But the analysis goes beyond the realities that generates. The experiences in the most industrialized

countries show that the economical development and growing had been thanks, to the education.

However, when only a few power groups (political and economic) are the beneficiaries of the global

education, we can not be cheerful in the concept of a world designed in this scheme

With the creation of market blocks, free commerce and the “neoliberal” economic model, the globalization

has imposed and established rules, which only benefit a few persons. The economic power is

concentrated in the financial elite, represented by big multinational corporations, which has generated

inequity and poverty as never before.

Under this point of view, there’s a great concern for the fast growing of poverty, so the suggestion is

that globalization must tend to be a “globalized profit” and not only of wretchedness

Since capitalism was born, it reveals as a “process of wide proportions that go beyond geographical,

historical, cultural and social frontiers, which have influence cities, nations and nationalities”i. For this

reason, globalization, as a simultaneous, social and economic process, specially sways in the education

systems, and with that in the social, public and private life.

The important of the human values in education gets lost in globalization, because it only stimulates

the educational system by the economic point of view and there’s no other reference. The educational

relationships are guide only by the mayor power of insensible and irrational use and abuse of human

kind.

The critic to the actual education system is located, principally, in the social unconcern in the ignorance

of the social function as a generator, guidance and formatter of the human values

On the other hand, analysis that pretends to cover the concept of education in the globalize environment

must concede the primacy to persons, above things. Such study won’t obtain any results, when we

turn people into things.

The actual education must confront with success the misery, poverty and inequity problems, but overall,

it has necessarily to make a deep emphasis in human values, where it recognize person as an individual

and gain the harmonic and respectful integration of the bases of justice, solidarity and subsidiary. By

this way, education will be oriented in an upright humanist thought, which will be for the benefit of all

society, because it will make it stronger and lasting.

The Human Values in Education.

The great defiance in the education in this millennium is, without doubt, to give special emphasis in

man’s, dignity and values, with a special vision that conceives him as creator who doesn’t limit only to

watch the established order, by the contrary, he dynamically participates in the changes that benefits the

human race.

In the years of history, man’s dignity has occupied a preponderant place, but actually we observe a

deplorable decadency and crisis in the fundamental values, so we have to recover the course of our own

humanity existence before that is forgotten in history route.

Today we have a society that the only practices are profits, earns, commerce and the great shares in

which man is only and object, not a subject, so disposable as the same products that we make for only

one use. For this reason, is that education development must essentiality contribute to the knowledge and

significance of man as a person, and by no way allowed its mutilation, or worst, it’s own reduction as a

thing of learning.

The actual education necessarily must understand human trajectory including it’s: dreams, knowledge’s

ignorance’s, doubts, fears, certainties, hates, loves, hopes, disillusions, health’s ideology, illness,

death, his own image, and the interaction with the world. The education must never forget the person as a

“living being” and with many suffers, because he has his own personal values, that are irreplaceable and

inalienable and which he must demand for himself and the others. As Seneca mentions “Man is sacred

thing for man”

Now is the moment to finish the barbarian that prevails in our education systems, we have to return to

our origins by a renovation process that allowed us to recover human values. We must see the man who

posses glow, a divine liveliness that directs his routes toward things by it’s own restlessness or intention,

meanwhile he gains superior faculties, intellect and will, producing links and commands in the size of his

abilities and aspirations. This faculties conferred to the human race have a special particularity from

other ones, because it possess a relevant value only found beneath God, intelligence.

The education system must contemplate that human being is not only created, but also creator, is not a

living being that acts in a passive form, he makes freedom and reasoned choices to be in harmony and

unity with his own environment for a particular purpose, reflecting his rationality and will.

The most pure and perfect relation between human beings is, without doubt, love for your neighbor,

because man is treasured by the assistance that he gives to the other ones, it doesn’t matter the social

condition or corporal beauty, to be or act must correspond to each other mutually, because the one who

doesn’t act according to his nature dies in essence.

This freedom and equity between men are the basic principles of a humanistic education formed in

values:

Situation of Education in Nepal

Education is an important means of improving social status, bringing down gender barriers and breaking out of the vicious cycle of poverty by offering prospects of gainful employment. Education also provides an alternative to premature work. In 2005, the literacy rate was estimated at 47 percent of the adult population in Nepal, with a large gap between male and female literacy rates. Only 30 percent of the female population was literate compared to 65 percent of the males. Primary school begins at the age of 6 and lasts until age 10. Secondary education that follows lasts until the age of 15.
Secondary school enrollment included only 45 percent (50 percent of the boys of that age group and 39 percent of the girls) in 2002-2003. Formal schooling in Nepal is constrained by economic and cultural factors such as a bias against educating girls and a need for children to work at home or in the fields.
Urban areas have higher literacy rates than rural areas.
Education expenditure as a share of gross national product (GNP) is 3.4 percent (2002-2003).
Number of years of compulsory schooling is 5 years.
Number of students per teacher in primary schools is 36 students per teacher.
The present student teacher ratio is 1:50, 1:45, and 1:40 in the Terai/valley, hills, and mountain districts respectively.
Only 2% of dalits and only 10% of disabled are literate.
The on-going armed conflict in the country instigated in Feb 1996 had made a great impact on education in the country. This year (January- September 2006) it has been reported that around 3840 schools were affected by armed conflict. It was recorded that 3735 schools were closed from time to time. Bunkers were built in at least 56 schools and some of the schools that were closed remained permanently closed.
Likewise, 32 schools were affected by bomb explosions and at least 8 schools were destroyed by setting fire and 3 schools were affected in crossfire between conflicting parties. Around 8 Schools were used by security forces and 3 schools were affected by CPN-Maoists training program in school with arms.
Similarly, 1531 teachers were directly affected by armed conflict, among which 7 male teachers lost their lives.