Education Conference and Ministry of Education.

1. Shortening Winter School Break to 45 days and increasing Summer Breaks to 31days. Only those who experience physically the severity of Winter harshness will feel how wrong and inconvenient the recent decision is. A nation cannot heat up the whole winter weather can it ( talking of providing heaters in schools is humorous.It will never be done. And also how about icy weatger outside classrooms and hostels).

Reading at length what is said in social media and the articles in main stream media confirms that there was no such thing as " endorsement of this decision from the hearts". It was a dictum issued at the conference by the Ministry of Education.

Apparently the Ministry of Education is of the view that the young citizens of Bhutan required to be frozen for two additional winter weeks to inculcate in them the  respect and dedication for historic occassions. The logic is terrible and sadly unnecessary indoctrination of very little value. As I wrote earlier, national historic days must be celebrated by all citizens young and old. People need not be civil servants, soldiers or students to participate and celebrate Royal Birthdays, Coronation Days and National Days. I understand organisers need participants. But respective Dzongkhags and their Education Offices have the capacity to invite participants including students on school break to celebrate by organising March Pasts and other Events. The Dzongkhags only need the fund which should be provided in their annual budget.

2. The initiative to provide sanitary pads to girl students.

As I wrote earlier, this initiative is most laudable and it is " a game changer for girl student comfort and convenience". I thank the Education Ministry for this out of box initiative of mass service.

There is a query about how costly the machine is and it's sturdiness and maintenance sustainability.  And apart from 9 machines donated, how is Education Ministry going to provide for all schools? It is possible that the social approach may have a commercial goal. But that is alright as long as ultimately  the sanitary pads are affordable by poor students and the quality proves to be good when put to use.

Dzongkhag to be main subject.

I thought Dzongkhag was always a main subject along with English. How did it get diluted half the way? Any way for Bhutanese, I feel that a student should be required to achieve  minimum pass marks to get promoted to the next grade. Thank you to those Educators  who pointed out that learning Dzongkhag was not the only problem. They pointed out that there is inherent teaching problem in schools including lack of qualified teachers at primary level and the need to promote  active teaching instead of sermon type teaching.  

All in all I do pray and hope that future  Education Ministers from  any Political Parties would stop fooling around with school academic sessions and holidays. May someone sensible and less self preserving education leader someday come at the helm of Education Ministry and do away with this decision to freeze students in icy cold weather at ill-equipped schools.