Thimphu / ཐིམ་ཕུ

Thimphu - the capital 'city' of Bhutan. In the mid-eighties there were 15 000 people living here, now there are 100 000. It's starting to feel the pressures of urbanisation already, with some 'incidents' involving youth and knives. And with the relatively recent opening up of the country to television and internet without any censorship whatsoever,the pressures of consumerism are inevitably starting to be felt, especially by the teenagers.

There is no doubt whatsoever that the kind of rubbish we in the west promulgate on the airways has a deleterious effect on well-being in general, inculcating aspirations in the young and susceptible minded that areunrealistic and unattainable for the majority of viewers. It begins with valuing a pair of trainers over vital things like healthyfood or enriching things like new experiences. Consumer goods are designed with obsolescence in mind – the steady increase in thenumber of blades on a razor, Windows 1,2,3,4,5,6,7, fashion full-stop! The endless cycle of desire, disappointment and reneweddesire is inevitable. It smacks of a hypertrophic and out of control Samsara. At least being cool is gradually starting to be seen forwhat it really is nowadays - a sure sign of an absence of character. Big up the geeks, the nerds and the independent thinkers of the world.

I had a fascinating conversation with a government official today. I asked him if he was worried about the impact of these external forces, having noticed several articles in the Bhutanese newspapers that expressed concern. He was both sanguine and realistic about what was happening in the capital. Yes, there have been incidents, and yes the impact of television isbeing felt but it's foolish to stand in a river and hope to hold back the water. He was confident that the way the Buddhist values saturate the culture of Bhutan will lend the youth a greater resilience than your average floundering teenager has. Aside from spiritual ideals, they have amazing role models to aspire to as well, the Minister of Education being but one example of enlightened leadership.

The Moment You've All Been Waiting For... The Gho!

Here it is, the Gho, national dress of Bhutan, the picture you've all bee waiting to see. Yes, I will be teaching in my gho. I'm starting to settle in now and have had some time to wander the streets and get used to the place. Adorned in my flashy but sophisticated grey-blue gho I cut a fine finger as I take a turn around the city.

'My my, how handsome you look!' I know, I know.

'I thought you Bhutanese, Sir! I know, I know.

It's really quite uncanny. But seriously, I have to point out some of the defining characteristics of the gho, good and bad...


1) Getting it on...

It's a war against all things simple trying to get the accursed blighter on you a half-way decent fashion. I thought I'd done well putting it on all by myself, but then Nancy, the straight-talking leader of teachers made it quite clear to me that there was room for improvement when she said 'Oh my, you boys need some practice. Well, just don''t go outside.' Right then. Practice. Or, get the kindly hotel staff to give you some instruction.

2) The Pocket

It's the most ingeniously designed pocket that has ever existed. You're basically a marsupial with this thing on you. The pouch at the front can easily accommodate a small car without becoming unseemly, so... a wallet, camera, sunglasses, stamps, socks, couple of books, phone, spare wallet, spare phone, stray lame dog in need of temporary care, water bottle, old friend, kettle, copy of The Beano, some Lucozade tablets and a packet of biscuits is really not a problem at all. You could probably even squeeze a can of Heineken in too. Or a chicken.

For valuables or items of an unsavoury nature, there's also the option of stashing around the back. You simply place the item in the pocket and keep pushing. Before you know it the contraband that you want to smuggle through the streets is sitting pretty above your bottom where nobody in their right mind would rummage. Genius pocketage all round. And you can rest your right arm in there too.

3) Jedi Hands

You can put your right hand in the left sleeve and vice versa like a Jedi. Enough said.

Ghos for everyone please.

Video Links

I've put links to the Sir Ken Robinson videos up on the top right of the page. I've also put this video about Gross National Happiness up there as well as in the links:



And a postscript to the previous post...

Dasho Lenypo recently was a warded the Asian equivalent of the Nobel Peace Prize (the Gisa Prize) for services to education.

First Views of Bhutan - Himalayan border with Tibet in distance

It''s a big un...

I've had a remarkable morning. Before leaving for Bhutan I tried to maintain a degree of realism to offset the hopes I had for what I would discover here. I will explain the phenomena of Gross National Happiness in the next blog and keep my promise to write about Bhutan, but this morning has to be written about now. Immediately.

The group has just had an audience with the Minister for Education, Lyonpo Thakur S Powdyel. We were greeted very kindly and he took a little time to talk with us about our placements. He proceeded to outline the Bhutanese vision for education. He seemed a little hesitant at first and I was wondering if he was really in the room with us or elsewhere. Then he became animated and embarked upon the most compelling half hour discourse I have ever had the privilege to hear. For those you who have listened and been inspired by Sir Ken Robinson's clarion call for a sea-change in the way we educate children in the west, imagine yourself in the room with me and try to imagine how this man made me feel.

He spoke about how education should be about opening minds and creating better thinking and feeling humans, that education is about enlightenment and not about outfitting students as viable units for an economy. Education is not primarily about jobs, it is primarily about empowering people to live lives of value, to think in enriched and rewarding ways, to outfit the custodians of Bhutan's future with the respect, integrity and honour that will ensure they appreciate what is good in life – the natural environment, relationships with other people, intellectual depth and greater feeling. When he mentioned the development of an aesthetic sensibility he spoke about the ability to differentiate between things of beauty and things that merely have the appearance of beauty (the things fill our shopping malls and offer empty promises of happiness).

He asked us all to challenge the teachers and the students that we meet in our placements. Challenge the teachers? To think about why they are teaching their subject. What is the value of physics to a person in this world? How will it make this person a better person, for themselves, for their family, for the country the society they live in? Do not teach a textbook because there is an exam – teach because the more our students learn, the richer their lives become and the better equipped they are to improve the lives of those around them.

His words echoed the sentiments that Sir Ken aspires to but the breadth and reach of the ideas went way beyond anything I've heard before, and, quite miraculously for me... they were not merely theoretical in their scope but practical in the context of the experiment in education that is happening in Bhutan.

When the previous king crystallised his ideas about the aspirations of a good government into the statement 'Gross National Happiness is more important than Gross National Product', the world largely ignored it as untenable quirkiness. Bhutan was a small country. They stuck to their principled approach and established the 4 pillars of GNH. In Lyonpo's words, it would have been easy for Bhutan to double or quadruple GNP overnight by exploiting the vast resources of the country, but the short-termism and lack of respect for the environment does not correspond with the principles of GNH. Economic progress must not be attained at the cost of the environment or the well-being of the people. Years later the enlightened governance of this tiny country is making an impact on the world. This July the Bhutanese will be expected to show intellectual leadership in a conference about development in New York attended by leading economists and statesmen. The UN member-states have all signed up to a pledge to develop the Bhutanese ideas of GNH in their policies of governance. The world is listening. Now Bhutan is trying to make a new way of education, a way of education that puts real values at the heart of everything that is done in the classroom, just as GNH put those same values at the heart of governance.

Back home I secretly despaired of the parameters that teachers have to operate within – the 'system' of education. Creativity is silenced. The curriculum is not relevant. Standardised testing promotes lack of self-esteem. The mind is not opened. Square pegs are thrashed into round holes. The desperate need to satisfy the dreaded inspectorate leads to wasted time and meaningless initiatives that are costly to children's development. In Bhutan, 'the inspectorate' recently underwent a name-change because they felt the inspections intimidated the schools when they were supposed to supporting them. They hope to phase out inspections as we know them altogether once the developing schools are up to speed. Let me reiterate – this is an aspiration to have no inspections. Whether it's possible or not, it should be strived for because inspections interfere with the education of the students. Does anyone in Chepstow disagree?

My first inspiration to teach came from reading Herman Hesse's Glass Bead Game as a teenager, the example of Joseph Knecht's pedagogy being one of enrichment, enlightenment, liberalisation and the opening up of the mind to the wonderful world of intellect, feeling and knowledge. This is idealist education, but Lyonpo expressed it to me today as a realist. It is happening in Bhutan, a place where the leaders clearly inspire those who follow.

Tonight I struck up a conversation in a bar with an ex-army man who just got out of prison for 3 years for drugs offences. I thought to myself... uh-oh. But before I could scamper away, he extolled the virtues of his leaders and told me how he admired them for their insight and clarity of thought. They were further along the path to enlightened thinking than he was. Can you imagine anybody talking about a British Parliamentarian in those terms? Especially after they'd just got out of prison.

Lyinpo closed the proceeding by reminding us that teaching is the most important of jobs because its ongoing mission is to improve the world. When you teach, you make the world a better place instantly. He thanked us for having the hearts to teach and he thanked us for choosing Bhutan as a place to do it.

I am thankful that at that moment I was able to raise my hand and thank him in turn for what he had said to us. I later found out that I spoke for everybody in the room when I told him that we appreciated him expressing his gratitude to us for sharing the knowledge we have of our 'advanced systems', but, coming from education regimes like those described so well by Sir Ken, to hear somebody in his position talk in such an enlightened, critical and inspiring way about education was both refreshing and inspiring to us all. In all likeliness it would be us who learnt the most from this exposure to Bhutan's value-driven approach and our schools back home that would benefit the most from us being a part of such enlightened methods of education. And of course, I recommended Sir Ken to him and told him he could find him on YouTube. To my surprise he had never heard of him!

I didn't record the most inspirational talk I've ever had the privilege to hear, so I can't share it and I can't revisit it. I can't recall it all and I certainly can't convey the impact it had on me with these clunky words. I can only recommend Sir Ken to you all as I did to Lyonpo, even if it does seem quite ordinary now by comparison.

My long-held ambition to come to Bhutan became a conviction a year ago and I stuck to my guns and got here. Now I can say with absolute certainty that I have made the right the decision. I have optimism in me. And some hope. Perhaps the happy-vouchers are kicking in? I am in the right place.

Oh, and I bought a guitar. Happy days.

Living the Dream...

Well, here we are. In cyberspace. Although not quite true. This is Koa Yai Noi, an island between Phuket and Krabi where there's a surprising lack of them pesky tourist-folk, given the location and the generally delightful nature of the place. So this is the end of the 2 weeks of living the dream before I head off to Bhutan to live another one. I've sea kayaked around karst towers, gone night-swimming with phosphorescence, gone flying in the subaquatic and successfully obtained my PADI open water (really enjoyed the multiple choice exam, bit weird), and I've climbed some hot limestone in the inimitable Ton Sai. I've also sat around a lot being lazy. And what trip to Thailand would be incomplete if it didn't include some bombing around the islands on mopeds at outrageous speeds after a few beers at 2 in the morning when there's nothing on the roads? I've definitely done that. It's really hard not to have fun here. Except in the afternoon, when its too painfully hot to do anything sensible with your time. Browsing the air-conditioned aisles of the 7-11 is good. Or getting a massage. Or pretending to be a cat.

This is precisely the sort of place a soon-to-be teacher of science in Bhutan should go to ease the transition from one paradigm to an altogether different one. Buffer Island, it should be called. I will be back after the Bhutanese adventure for another bit of buffering.

Meanwhile, back in Chepstow School, ESTYN are scouring the files and stalking the corridors and halls in their pursuit of judgements. Such a pleasant word to choose for the inspection process – 'judgements'. I generally consider judgemental people to be shallow thinkers not particularly worth listening to. In my room the kids I taught are getting on with their lessons. The teacher who replaced me is standing at the front and writing on my board and it is his room now, just like it was Mr Heap's before me. The good ship 9T has another helmsman to gleefully wind up and be nice to. All things change and it doesn't do any good to go clinging to changing circumstances when life whistles by in so many moments, but I'll miss that place and wish the years back on occasion. And the staff room.

So. To business. To Bhutan. Why? Why not? is a laudible answer, but hardly sufficient for most. Certainly not for my mother, especially when she found out how much I was being paid. Certainly not for a lot of people for whom the abandonment of a decent permanent job with good prospects and a supposedly gilt-edged pension to boot in a time of global economic meltdown is tantamount to lunacy. When people ask you why you are doing something, the natural tendency is to resort to motives and explain them. I'm doing this because I... It's all about the 'I's. In this instance its far more useful to focus on Bhutan. In my next blog I shall endeavour to do that. Perhaps I'll call it... A few good reasons to abandon all of the above to live in Bhutan...