Education and Society in Bhutan

Tradition and modernisation

Chelsea M. Robles

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781317297697
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Global Development Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Bhutan's education sector has attracted international attention for recent reforms driven by the national development philosophy of Gross National Happiness, which aspires to balance change with the continuity of tradition. This book traces the history of education in Bhutan and reveals that, as the country has modernised and become globally connected and further influenced by international and Western mores, tensions have emerged across the education sector. The author examines how these tensions between the curriculum and local knowledges can impact teaching and learning, and offers approaches to addressing them. Based on extensive empirical data, including in-depth interviews and classroom observations, Robles analyzes the discourses of high-level officials who were involved in the early development of the modern system of education, a range of education leaders, and teachers.

Filling a gap in the literature, this book is an invaluable resource for students and researchers interested in the formation of education policy, social and political reform in Bhutan, and South Asia Studies.

1 Introduction

DOI: 10.4324/9781315647333-1

This book explores the question of tensions between tradition and modernisation in the arena of modern education in Bhutan – a country where policy suggests that tensions exist and has long articulated a ‘pressing need to achieve a balance or synthesis between the heritage of the past and a programme of modernization’ (Aris, 1994a: 9). ‘Tensions’ are conceptualised as forces that strain in opposite directions. Some may be resolvable; others might not. This book locates and typifies tensions in two realms: (1) education policy and politics and (2) the curriculum. In Bhutan’s attempts to modernise the education system, what tensions, conflicts, and uncertainties have emerged? Do they present themselves in different ways across multiple levels of the education system? These are the questions that underpin this study.

In this book, I investigate the perceptions and experiences of political and policy officials, education leaders, and teachers in Bhutan – all of whom are charged with ‘strik[ing] a balance between progressive development and preserving the tested value system of a traditional society’ (Ministry of Health and Education, 2003: 8). It draws on a unique set of in-depth interviews and observational data gathered in 2010 and 2011, at a time when the national curriculum was being transformed to include the pillars of the Gross National Happiness policy as a means to balance change with the continuity of tradition. The overarching aim of the study is to contribute to broadening our perspective on the tensions in the discourse on the modernisation of education in Bhutan and, beyond this, to research on educational modernisation and curriculum reorientations toward the accommodation of different epistemologies.

Tradition, modernisation, and the different knowledges that interact in education

In non-Western countries, a Western model of education introduces knowledges and views of the world that might differ from those considered traditional at the local level. As Boven and Morohashi (2002: 6) point out, ‘[traditional] sets of understandings, interpretations and meanings are part of a cultural complex that encompasses language, naming and classification systems, practices for using resources, ritual, spirituality and worldview’. An example of contrasting ways of knowing is provided by Le Grange’s (2007) research in South Africa. Le Grange (2007: 588) highlights that ‘the scientific perspective that lightning is caused by discharge of electricity between clouds or from a cloud to the earth is in conflict with learners’ cultural understanding that lightning is caused by, for example, witchcraft’. Similar discontinuities may exist in any country when there are ‘alternative explanatory modes or organizing metaphors for coping with experience’ (Ogunniyi, 1988: 2). In this book, I query what actually happens at points of contact between different knowledges and worldviews in the arena of education where we might expect different ways of knowing to interact.

Some scholars suggest that educational and national modernisation has an effect at the individual level, ultimately influencing the knowledges and world-views in a particular society (Ball, 1981; Carnoy & Samoff, 1990; Fägerlind & Saha, 1989; Inglehart & Welzel, 2005; Shipman, 1971). This ‘modernising’ effect is reflected in increased literacy, social mobility, and movement away from rural areas and toward growing urban centres (Fägerlind & Saha, 1989). It can also be associated with the ideologies that underpin a Western model of mass education, which include the promotion of individualism, a view of ‘the nation as a society made up of individuals’ and a belief in ‘progress’ (Ramirez & Boli, 1987: 10). These ideologies – or ‘myths’ in Ramirez and Boli’s (1987) words – are considered to contribute to the mobilisation of national modernisation agendas, as well as support political, economic, and cultural changes. With processes of modernisation and the implementation of a Western model of mass education, children inevitably spend more time in school and, as Coe’s (2005: 4) study on Western education in Africa demonstrates, ‘they generally have less opportunity to learn local knowledges, closely tied to complex local social relations and ecologies’.

Educational and national modernisation can also influence the knowledges and worldviews that hold currency in society (Portes, 1973: 249). Literacy in school knowledge may become a compulsory entry point into the job market and higher education, and both of these may represent a pathway to a desirable life. Inglehart and Welzel (2005: 6) add that ‘as the work force shifts from the agrarian sector to the industrial sector, people’s worldviews tend to shift from an emphasis on traditional values to an emphasis on secular-rational values’. Accordingly, socioeconomic development and modern schooling can bring about changes in ‘what people believe and want out of life’ (Inglehart & Welzel, 2005: 20).

In addition to influencing ways of knowing in a particular society, modernisation agendas can disrupt the locations where traditional knowledges are situated, taught, and learned. Traditional ways of learning might occur outside of the classroom when young people engage experientially as they observe and interact with their communities (Bates, Chiba, Kube & Nakashima, 2009; Gutiérrez & Rogoff, 2003). As Bates and Nakashima (2009: 6) point out:

Changes to the social environment, generally brought on by the introduction of new technologies, lifestyles and market economies through colonisation and modernisation, undermine the transmission of ‘indigenous’ or ‘traditional’ knowledge. This process is often accompanied by the transformation of the natural milieu, for example when rainforests are converted to pasture-lands, or valleys are flooded to become reservoirs, radically altering the arenas in which indigenous knowledge would be acquired and passed on.

However, this does not necessarily mean that traditional knowledges and culture deteriorate. In their work on a revised conceptualisation of modernisation theory, of which national systems of education are part, Inglehart and Welzel (2005: ix) see modernisation as a humanistic process that is ‘shaped by an interaction between the forces of socioeconomic development and persisting cultural traditions’. It resists the linear thrust away from tradition implied by some modernisation theorists of the 1960s and 1970s and accommodates the possibility of confluence (or irreducible division) of traditional and modern epistemologies. Thus, this book explores if tensions emerge at the juncture of traditional and modern knowledges, ways of life, and views of the world when they interact in national education in Bhutan.

Over the past decade, there has been a surge of literature that recognises the affordances for learning that ‘local wisdom’ offers to modern school curricula (e.g. Aikenhead, 2001; Ares, 2006; Gutiérrez & Rogoff, 2003; Jungck & Kajorsin, 2003; Lauer & Aswani, 2009; Le Grange, 2007; McGovern, 1999, 2000; Saran-gapani, 2003; Semali & Stambach, 1997; Shizha, 2007; Thaman, 1993). Culturally based pedagogic approaches are acknowledged for their relevance toward helping students generate connections between ideas in school texts and locally constructed knowledges (Ares, 2006). Enabling learners to understand and assess different knowledges in relation to concepts learned in modern schools may also facilitate new information becoming part of a learner’s long-term memory (Le Grange, 2007). Attaining a degree of literacy or fluency both in the ‘texts’ of modern schools and those considered traditional enables learners to move with dexterity between the communities in which particular knowledges and worldviews are part (Aikenhead, 2001; Gutiérrez & Rogoff, 2003). Further, the ability to draw on different reservoirs of knowledge allows teachers and learners to ‘choose the one that better fulfils their goals at any given moment’ (Aikenhead, 2001: 350).

Volumes have been compiled that demonstrate the value of traditional epistemologies, particularly in communities where ways of life and ways of knowing are largely traditional. Bates and Nakashima (2009: 6) point out that:

acquiring indigenous knowledge of how to navigate and survive on the land, and how to use local resources to feed, clothe and provide for one’s family, may be of much greater relevance for the contexts in which many indigenous groups continue to live today.

The ‘wisdom of the past’ may hold equal (or greater) utility than the modern knowledges taught in schools.

Nevertheless, even when a foundation is arranged to support the inclusion of traditional knowledges and worldviews into the school setting, achieving a balance within a modern school curriculum may be tenuous. Localised school materials and methods may remain predominantly embedded with Western ideas and images, potentially giving rise to tensions for teachers and students who have alternative explanations and views of the world. One might also speculate that a curriculum too heavily saturated with traditional content may hinder students from engaging in ways of living that are changing due to modernisation and global connectivity. For example, a ‘too traditional’ curriculum may leave students insufficiently prepared to make a smooth transition into a modern job market (e.g. white-collar work) or tertiary education. Attempts to bring different knowledges into a national curriculum may be further complicated in countries with diverse ethnic, linguistic, and culturally and geographically isolated minority populations; ideas about what tradition means may be varied, uncodified, and preclude formalised teachable concepts (Bates & Nakashima, 2009). Underpinning this study is the question of whether or not it is possible for a modern curriculum to embody traditional knowledges and ways of understanding the world and ameliorate extant tensions.

Adopting Agrawal’s (1995) neo-indigenismo stance, I consider that indigenous or traditional knowledges and ways of viewing the world have something of value to offer. From this perspective, an ideal situation would be one in which traditional knowledges and worldviews are not forsaken, but rather are brought together with modern knowledges and views of the world, with each benefiting from the other, that is, a ‘middle way’ as suggested in Bhutanese education policy (Ministry of Education, 2009, 2012). Following this line of reasoning, a less ideal situation would be one where traditional knowledges and worldviews are forsaken in favour of those considered modern. The same would be true if people clung solely to traditional knowledges and worldviews. As Sillitoe (1998: 227) cautions, ‘we need to guard against any romantic tendency to idealise [traditional knowledge]. It may be inadequate, especially in situations of rapid change’. What I am interested in, essentially, is if these knowledge ‘flows’ (Appadurai, 1996) can be mediated and brought together in school curriculum.

In order to explore the role of education stakeholders as mediators between different knowledges and worldviews, I adopted a sociocultural conceptualisation of knowledges as situated among people and communities, largely influenced by Lave and Wenger (1991) and Rogoff (2003). This view recognises that particular ways of knowing are generated as people participate in different cultural communities that are not static but continually change. This theoretical grounding is tied to a constructivist understanding that knowledge is socially constructed and in every society there exists multiple socially constructed ways of knowing (Robson, 2002: 27).

Adapting education policies and practices

With the potential tensions noted earlier in mind, in this book I query how stake-holders across Bhutan’s education sector attempt to navigate particular understandings inherent in educational materials and techniques from the West in the context of globalisation, where education and society is increasingly influenced by outside ideas. Scholars on policy borrowing draw attention to the local processes through which exogenous educational policies and methods become appropriated (e.g., Steiner-Khamsi, 2004). These processes are complex and, in some cases, it may take a considerable amount of time before new education ideas take hold and become entrenched in the school setting. In other cases, borrowed educational ideas and techniques may never become incorporated. Educators and the school community may eschew foreign-inspired curriculum reforms. As Chapter 2 will discuss, education stakeholders in Bhutan are involved in educational changes. However, some policies, methods, approaches, and the modern education system itself were brought about or influenced by external sources. As I learned in Bhutan in 2010 and 2011, recent reform initiatives have not sought to bring in external educational policies and practices on a large scale – thereby replacing what is ‘Bhutanese’ or traditional – but rather have attempted to gently navigate and adapt particular educational ideas from the West. What emerges here is an educational landscape in which competing ideologies are deeply entrenched yet driven toward a balanced relationship, at least on the surface.

Scholarship in comparative education recognises the importance of local actors as agents who ‘transform the official models they are handed’ (Anderson-Levitt, 2005: 4). Adaptations can occur when education reforms are implemented at the national level. For example, Cowen (1996: 158) purports that some have allowed for ‘old structures to work in new ways (West Germany with its retention of stratified secondary education) or new structures to work in old ways (Japan with its combination of an American school structure and Japanese examining practices)’.

Adaptations may also occur at the individual level. Some scholars argue that local actors impose their own meaning on adopted educational materials and methods and transform them to align with the local culture (e.g., Flinn, 1992). However, even though Western educational forms may be reinterpreted in local ways, the global spread of Western education models, ideas, and practices engender, in some nations, a renewal of ‘localisation’ or ‘indigenisation’ efforts. That is, counter-discourses might emerge. Such a response may be evidenced not only at the policy level, but also, for example, among teachers who reject educational innovations brought in from abroad due to perceived discontinuities with traditional epistemologies. For example, Le Fanu’s (2013: 144) study on the Western curriculum employed in state schools in Papua New Guinea evidenced that there were teachers who were ‘instinctively opposed to the democratic ethos’ of the Western curriculum. These teachers favoured an older authoritarian teaching style and insisted their students follow ‘tightly structured and narrowly focused exercises in language lessons’ (2013: 144). In the case of Bhutan’s national system of education, we might expect that ideas about international standards of education might generate top-down demands for child-centred pedagogy where the teacher acts as a facilitator. At the same time local ideologies of ‘teaching’ and ‘authority’ may place pressure on teachers to resume an authoritative role and renew the use of rote-style teaching and learning.

Tradition, modernisation, and education in Bhutan

My work as a teacher at a professional training school in Thimphu during the 2005–2006 academic year and subsequent study on ed...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Editor Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of tables
• Acknowledgements
• List of abbreviations
• 1 Introduction
• 2 The development of modern education in Bhutan
• 3 Competing ideas at the political and policy levels
• 4 The translation of policy into the living and designed curriculum
• 5 At the juncture of change: teachers as mediators of traditional and modern knowledges in state education
• 6 Looking across three levels of Bhutan’s education sector
• 7 Implications for present and future developments in education
• Bibliography
• Index