Nepal is ranked 151 on an international list of literacy. Consequently, it lacks the most vital infrastructure for social progress, and more than half the population lives a hand-to-mouth existence.
In reply stands the Mount Gauri Shankar School in central Kathmandu, its principal a well-known science textbook author and educator dedicated to improving the quality of education in his country.
Searching for the answer to the seeming inability of his students to study and learn, the educator discovered Applied Scholastics International and L. Ron Hubbard’s Study Technology.
He immediately underwent training on the fundamentals of Study Technology, and using those basics, initiated a pilot program with a cross-section of students in his school. He first presented the three barriers to study to eighth and ninth graders, then to primary through middle-school students, and then to high school mathematics and chemistry classes. The results were conclusive: Passing rates previously hovering at around 30 percent soared to well over 80 percent of all students across all grade levels.
Based on the success of that pilot program, which used only the fundamentals of Study Technology, the Kathmandu school principal enrolled at the Applied Scholastics International campus in Missouri for the full lineup of Applied Scholastics teacher training. The program included Advanced Communication Skills, Advanced Fundamentals of Instruction, and the Applied Scholastics Curriculum Course.
Upon returning to Nepal, he first put it all into operation in his own school. He then set out to deliver Study Technology classes to all teachers in one of the deep poverty zones of the country. He held workshops for instructors in remote rural communities, including on a hilltop 350 kilometers from Kathmandu where he instructed teachers of 500 students from rice-farming villages.
The Nepalese results demonstrate the potential for educational renewal with Study Technology. That one educator has built a network of 1,600 Study Technology educators who are in turn transforming education in their classrooms. He has also established a permanent Applied Scholastics Training Center in Nepal, inaugurated by the Ministry of Education.