Simplifying Science

Science as a subject of choice is still taken as a hardest and students still go for it with their aim to become a doctor, or an engineer. These professions are something like a trademark for many students who would like to study science. Even though there are other promising subjects to be chosen in science, discussion about them is not an objective of this article. Opting for any subjects should be more based not on grades or marks scored in your high school. Science, even though, is taken as very hard subject, it can be learned in a very simple and and beautiful way if we know how it works. The main reason of this write up is to assist science aspirants on simplified and more beautiful way of learning science.

Play with nature, ask questions and get answers

As our learning techniques, we are so much into books that we often forget the beauty of nature. Science is more to do with understanding nature. For example, right from primary to high school level, we draw picture of flowers and its different parts like petals, sepals, ovary, stigma, anther etc. However, as I recall, I never looked into those flowers around my house. Later I realized, it is so much easy to understand the structure of flowers when we actually pluck a flower from few trees and compare them up. It may also be about structure of leaves, roots, and stems. We would also appreciate that many lessons we are taught in schools from primary to higher secondary schools are based on nature, natural processes and phenomena such as pollination and fertilization in flowers, rocks, physical characteristics of plants and animals (plant and animal kingdom lessons). It would simply be so easy to come out of the classrooms and observe them up. It applies to rocks, types of soils, mountains, plateau, rivers, stones, and landslides too. We could also observe land, water and pond ecosystem, probably observing nearby ponds from school. It would probably be a bit of fun as well.  We could observe life cycle of mushroom, gymnosperms, fern etc. by ourselves as well looking at our own kitchen gardens or in our own farms, which many students find it difficult to learn. We can apply these simple observations to types of soil, adaptational features, ecosystems, germination, vegetative propagation, fertilization, chemicals, etc. We probably wouldn’t forget the biology and science behind what we learn in school when we carry our live study on them.

Experiment with local resources

Many government schools of Nepal are in poor conditions. Building a good science laboratory still seems a distant dream to a greater extent for many schools. We still have a large number of high schools where no science experiments are conducted. However, practical marks (25 marks out of full marks 100) are granted without any experiments conducted in schools. There are many possibilities of using local resources for carrying out some important experiments based on our course of studies up to high school levels. For examples, we can produce soap using vegetable oil, which do need an alkali. We can experiment PH of soil using normal PH test using litmus paper, which actually is not expensive. We can still buy a magnesium ribbon (that would cost few rupees) and show how oxygen reacts with magnesium showing bright flames. In my high school, we read this reaction but never got a chance to observe it. Later I realized, it was such a nominal activity probably few students could collect their range of pocket money to do this fun-filled experiment.  Similarly, we can see a beautiful volcanic eruption at no cost involved using baking soda, detergent and vinegar. We could also make plastic using 1 teaspoon of laundry borax and a tablespoon of white glue (food colour could be used to give it colour). All these above-mentioned experiments are part of the high school course in Nepal and can be carried out using our own local resources.

Doing a bit complex experiments at no cost

This probably will be good at least to high school students. I actually learnt concept of DNA extraction practically while doing my masters level. Now, I understand, we could do the similar experiments at no cost in school. What we need is any plant to extract DNA (such as ripened kiwi or strawberry), alcohol, detergent (soap) and salt. We could also extract DNA from other plants such as onions, broccoli, green peas etc. There are simply four simple steps: smash them, mix them with soap and salt, filter the mixture and mix with alcohol. The beautiful strands of DNA will be floated.  This method of extraction could be a very good experiment in undergraduate biology classes in Nepal. Similarly, we could use onion or garlic to study cell division in plants. Cell division, is one of the hardest chapter, I found as a student myself and as a teacher to make student understand. However, this experiment needs Hydrochloric acids, toluidine blue, microscope, and beakers, thermometer and some microscopic slides. It is a bit more complex than extracting DNA but can be easily carried out in the laboratory with hardly any cost provided that these few things mentioned are available already.

Easy way of building theoretical concepts in science

In a country like Nepal, where we still put more focus on theory and our evaluation system is more based on written examinations, we need to memorise a large chunk of lectures notes, and books’ paragraphs. One way of remembering those notes is to carry out vertical and horizontal comparisons of what we have learnt before. We often tend to forget and even escape from what we have learnt in previous years. If we see our course, we have seen the similarity in lessons right from primary level, lets say grade 3 to high school level. For example, we learnt name of the planets, including the largest, smallest, nearest and farthest planets in grade three. These also forms a part of SLC examination questions. Surprisingly, there are still students making mistakes on these simple concepts. The reason is that we keep on neglecting what we have learnt in previous years. Vertical comparison is to compare what we learnt in previous years to what we are learning at present. In science, almost all the chapters are evolved from previous year’s lessons. For example, various human-body systems astronomy, simple machines, work energy and power, electricity and magnetism and many other lessons are taught right from lower secondary school to high school level. Only one difference is that these lessons get more complex as we move to a higher level. Recalling what we learnt in previous year before related to the chapter we are about to learn in higher year make things far easier and helps us to make our concept more clear. Similarly, there are many related lessons in the same sand different subjects. Health Population and Environment (HPE) have few common subtopics related to science. While learning those topics from HPE, it makes a good sense to compare them to science and vice versa will be highly beneficial. This is called a horizontal comparison. Similarly, in physics, we learn about nuclear fusion and nuclear fission as a part of nuclear energy, which is a part of another chapter on thermonuclear reaction on sun. This concept of fission and fusion is similar on biology while learning types of vegetative propagation when we learn fission in protozoa as an example. Structure of ethene in organic compound will help us to understand structure of polythene while learning plastics. There are other dozens of examples where vertical and horizontal comparisons of what we have learnt before would help us to learn related topics more easily.

Finally, studying science is more than a fun and will be no longer harder if right approach of teaching and learning is applied. 

Going abroad for higher studies

Article published in The Himalayan Times on 24th January 2013.

Aren’t you going abroad?” This is the question most of the students asked me in the colleges I was associated with three years ago. It might have been a suitable and obvious question from young minds of teenage years studying in higher secondary level of Nepal, but it pained my heart when many of them advised me, “Never make the mistake of coming back to this country once you go abroad.” From the data of the past few years, more than 50 per cent of the students go abroad immediately or within a few months after they clear plus two exams, especially from reputed colleges of Kathmandu. The same was true when I was associated as a head of science in a reputed plus two college in Kathmandu. Among the other 50 per cent left, majority of them enrolled in foreign universities a year after plus-two graduation. 

Undergraduate students have their aspiration about going abroad too. In one of the colleges I was associated as a Biology faculty member for the third year’s students (four year course), the number of students was half the total intake on completion of the first year. The reason was a credit transfer to foreign universities. That was the case without any formal credit-transfer relationships of that college with any foreign universities. The rate of undergraduates going abroad would be much higher if the institution had any collaboration or credit transfer facilities with foreign universities. There are again large number of students applying or flying abroad for master’s degree after completing undergraduate level in Nepal.

What strikes my mind is that among those thousands of students going abroad, do we have even hundreds coming back to our country when they finish their studies? The straightforward answer, according to a few dozen Nepali students abroad is “No” at this moment. Still, a positive aspect is to find many of them willing to return to Nepal if the political situation of the country gets better. But, they don’t generally do so unless they find that there is a safe working environment in the country or at least the political turmoil over. It has been three years since I left Nepal for my higher education. When I told my friends that I was leaving Nepal and would definitely return to the country as soon as I finished my studies, I was straightway told that there were many youths who say so but the majority of them haven’t returned. I was further challenged that they would love to hear the same sentiments of returning to Nepal after staying a few months abroad. After staying a year, I realized, they were probably right. I thought, it would be quite difficult to return, but as time passed, I am losing the fancy of staying abroad. I would rather return back to Nepal and live a life in my own society. The small thing we do for Nepal would make a better impact than in these developed countries. I would be happy to do small things and make a better impact on the Nepali society rather than doing comparatively a bigger thing and making hardly any impact here.

In these three years, I am still confused as to what makes many Nepalis stay forever in a foreign land. Is it just money here, or a life style? When it comes to life style, I wouldn’t agree. Even though, I am not sure of the level of life style of Nepalis in many other countries, a vast majority of Nepalis in England don’t have their life style matching the people here. They all still love Nepali food (Dal, bhat and tarkari), live in below average house, hardly have any night life, they are not generally regular in going out for dinner or expensive cinema like the western people do. I haven’t seen many Nepalis travelling to other countries or even local areas to explore the culture, see the places or to entertain themselves. Then, is it just saving money that fancies them? If this is the case, my opinion is that life is more than just earning money when you have a level of materialistic satisfaction. I am not convinced by the fact that life abroad is better than in Nepal. Life is far more blissful in our own country because after you have earned enough to live in a decent house, and live a relaxed, healthy life and educate your children.

When I stayed in Nepal for seven-weeks last April-May for a holiday, I probably surprised my friends saying I would like to return to my country as soon as I finished my PhD, even though I may have options staying back and have possibilities of getting well-paid jobs. I was advised to think pragmatically in a sense that hollow-patriotism wouldn’t do any good. I was guided that my monetary contribution or other assistance to the deprived in Nepal would be better than my mere physical presence either as NRNs who are contributing to Nepal in different areas. I thought, it is pretty much a good thought, however, living in our country with our countrymen, contributing as much as we can to your soil, and if possible, making differences to those who don’t have privilege to go to even a school would make us the happiest, and I guess, our physical presence makes things far more easier than living abroad. Lastly,

I have passed the phase of being asked, “When are you going abroad?” I am now eager to hear from my friends, family and relatives “When are you returning to Nepal?” I am sure; with changing Nepali youths those days are not far.