To the Royal Education Council
Hello, for
those that I have not yet met, my name is Julian. I came to Bhutan as an Intern
for the REC with the goal of creating an internship exchange program between
the US and Bhutan. I was fortunate enough to be able to travel Bhutan and stay
in different schools and so I would like to share with you my thoughts and
reflections on this experience. At the very end I would be very happy to try to
answer any specific question you may have.
Before
this internship in Bhutan, I had only seen this type of geographical beauty in
photographs and films that portrayed lands that seemed both intangibly foreign
and belonging to some fictional fantasy universe. This is why when I flew
narrowly through the mountains surrounding Paro, it felt as though I was on the
inside of a dome screen and the mountains I saw in the distance were nothing
more than still images. The large billboard, advertising the marriage of the
king and queen that greeted me as I walked out of the Drukair Plane clarified
that I was no longer in America. Having been in my hometown of Weston
Connecticut only three days before my arrival, seeing the villages that lay
nested in the valleys and mountains was a drastic, eye opening change from the
more crowded and built up towns I am used to seeing back home. The United
States of America is unusual in that it does not have a state sanctioned
religion the way Bhutan does and the vast majority of the American people do
not have exposure to this type of national identity. Weston is an example of a
place that has many resources yet, like many other towns and cities in the US,
seems to be isolated from much of the outside world. These same characteristics
also appear to be prevalent in Bhutan as well, even in its more urban and
modern capital, Thimphu. It was this perceived common theme of lack of exposure
to the outside world that sparked the idea to build the basis of a student
exchange program between Bhutan and the US. The first weekend was spent
traveling all they the way to Buhntang and visiting monasteries and other
amazing landmarks. It was this trip, which felt like it had been weeks long
that brought the Bhutanese culture to life for me. Coming to Bhutan was my
first time ever being in Asia so I had never seen what a Buddhist temple or
monk looked like. Here is a small sample of the many pictures we took on
this trip…. After returning back to Thimphu, I was fortunate enough to be able
to tag along to meetings with my father for the next few weeks, which gave me
the incredible opportunity to meet political officials and teachers, learning
about the concept of GNH, the Bhutanese political system, and what exactly an
exchange program with Bhutan might consist of in the process. One observation I
had regarding the politics in Bhutan is that all the politicians I had the
pleasure to meet seemed to genuinely care about the Bhutanese people in a very
passionate fashion that is often not found in western politics. Soon after my
father left Bhutan I went to Tashdingkha Boarding School in Phunaka, which
turned out to be a life changing experience. The school itself did not have
much. All of the students I interviewed said that they did not like the food,
classes or rooms they stayed in. When asked if they liked the school overall
however, every student was quick to answer a very certain “yes”. At first I
wondered why this was the case because the two answers seemed to contradict one
another. In only a matter of days however, it was clear to me why these
students thought the way they did. Tashidingkha had a certain unique charm to
it, a certain type of unity or bond that the students seemed to share. It was
unlike anything I had ever seen and in the single week I stayed there I found
it very difficult to keep myself from being absorbed by their school and its
students. In retrospect I do believe that the education program there did have
its issues. Teachers in subjects such as history, English, and the sciences
would have to teach material that was not always covered by their textbooks, as
a result many the teachers simply guessed statistics or definitions because
there was no way for them to look them up on the internet in a more remote
place like Phunaka. Often these definitions would be incorrect, it is this
experience that really helped me understand the educational value of the
Internet and the importance of it to be more widely distributed throughout
Bhutan. I also saw some of the negative effects of the Internet in my trip to
Pelkhil School in Thimphu that would follow. Some of these students were so
heavily influenced by western culture through the Internet that it seemed to
compromise their fundamental Bhutanese values that I saw were so essential in
Phunaka. In addition many of these students were more aggressive towards one
another than in Tashidingkha and the education curriculum was also lacking
despite much greater access to the Internet. After my brief stay in Pelkhil, I
went to YHSS for a few days. Most of the students there seemed to closer resemble
the type of people I had met in Phunaka more than the students in Pelkhil,
which is something I had not expected because I thought that Thimphu was just
characteristically different from the more rural parts of Bhutan. While this is
partially true because Thimphu does seem to have more exposure to the cultures
of the outside world than the rest of Bhutan, there were major educational
quality disparities between the students in Pelkhil and YHSS. It was this
realization that leads me to really appreciate the importance of education and
believe that the quality of education in a school has a direct baring on how
well behaved the school’s students are and how well they will be able to serve
their country as a productive member of society. Tashidingkha was an exception
to this because it was a closed boarding school that had almost no exposure to
Thimphu and its evolving attitude, no less to western culture. The days I spent
in these schools immensely helped me understand the possible benefits of having
an exchange program with the US. As my time in Bhutan comes to a close for this
summer, I feel that this exchange program has been more clearly defined and its
goals more precise. As a first step in what I hope will be a multi town, multi
state exchange program, five American high school level students from Weston
Connecticut will come to Bhutan in late June and stay for a month, absorbing
Bhutanese culture and spending times in the schools here. At the end of that
month, ideally five Bhutanese high school level students will travel to the US
with the five American students and they will stay there until late August. The
benefit of beginning this exchange program in Weston is that I have a direct
connection to Weston High School and the first selectman and we have already
seen a large amount enthusiasm from many families there. Students who apply
from Weston will have to be academically successful and exhibit a genuine
interest in learning about and experiencing Bhutanese culture. On the other
side, we plan to send students from different areas of Bhutan who are not only
fluent in English, but also have a deep connection to their own culture and
understand the principles of GNH. The ideas of GNH are of major interest to
many people in the US because it is a very unique way of measuring wealth that
does not rely entirely on economic growth. I feel that while the Bhutanese
students who travel to the US will indefinitely learn more about the American
people and understand the positives and the negatives of western culture, they
may also learn more about themselves and how unique and still largely untouched
their culture is. They may come back to Bhutan, having viewed America with
their own eyes and not the tampered ones that popular media often lends, with a
higher appreciation of their heritage and an even greater desire to preserve
it. I truly feel that to a certain extent, the best way to prevent western
influence from dismantling the culture of a country, like Bhutan, into a hollow
shell is to actually expose its people to the west with a realistic and
critical viewpoint. If I could give one word of advice to the peers I spent
this last month with, it would be this. While the west has a lot to share, and
this cannot be disregarded, I think it is very important for a country like
Bhutan that its people have the ability to critically understand and filter
what aspects of the west they choose to take in to their country and daily
lives because the west also has immense social flaws and not everything is
worth absorbing. I think education can be a way of mediating this influence.
Thank You
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