The Teaching Shepherd Boy

In the Himalayan Mountains, life starts very early in the morning. Before the sun rises, shepherds bring their flocks to graze while the women stay home to work the gardens and to feed and care for their families. Chung was used to this life from the day he was born. He knew every hill, gorge, and source of water without ever having held a map. He learned every landmark and peak surrounding his village, how to read the sky, the plants, and every kind of animal… sometimes the hard way! All of these were etched in his soul through stories, songs, and even the village dances. He knew about every god-type creature presiding over these many mountains and how not to offend them or when to appease them.

It was not easy for his parents to send Chung to school, but they knew that a coveted college degree would benefit the whole family. His parents barely finished elementary school and could only dream for higher education. NO one had that kind of money. No one was that smart here in the mountains. Their “smartness” was tied to the earth and to each other – not books. They knew how to read and write but struggled to understand what they read – it was not in the language they spoke! Reading and writing was only needed to fill in government forms, read the posters plastered to walls by politicians, and occasionally to read a letter. Chung was a smart boy and full of promise, but his father needed Chung’s help with the herds. He struggled to study at night, often falling asleep with his books and he was frequently absent from school. Chung excelled in reading and writing but other than the schoolbooks he had nothing else to read and his reading comprehension was poor because of all the strange words no one in his village used. He preferred to learn by listening to stories from other shepherds especially at night as they gathered around the fire. It was so much easier than the reading and writing of his assignments.

Still, as the years went by, Chung drove himself to excel in school. His whole village rested their hopes on his success. He studied extra hard and earned a slot in college. He was only able to qualify because his government started a program that allowed poor rural students to get into college with lower qualifications. Along with this program, the government also provided a scholarship that paid for Chung’s tuition.

Chung’s parents did their best to provide for him by sending money for housing and food. Chung knew that it was a big sacrifice. Living alone in a bustling city often prompted his mind to drift off and imagine what was happening in his mountain village that he could see in the far distance when the sky was clear. He longed to be there for the rituals and festivals, the singing of their songs and dancing out their rich traditions. And the stories! He could almost hear the voice of his grandfather. He survived on the quick cheap street food and often thought about how his mother took a long time to prepare delicious food from fresh vegetables and savory meat from their own flock. In Chung’s village, the slaughtering of animals needed to be done in the early morning before sunrise and in absolute silence. This way, the spirit of the animal would not be awakened and scared causing it to leave the animal. People in Chung’s village believed that this meat gave the people extra strength. Strength that Chung needed badly.

Sometimes, during seasonal school breaks, Chung would visit his family in the mountains and enjoy the simplicity of life. He hid his Nikes in his school bag, slipped on his sandals, and headed out to join his father in bringing in the sheep. For a few weeks he would work at the farm and with the herds. Especially during the harvest season, every hand was needed. But the highlight for him was the traditional village thanksgiving rituals. The elders would sit together stationed around their piles of produce and tell generational stories of their history, while the women donning their lavish colorful dresses would dance and perform to rhythmical bamboo instruments. Every family prepared food from their produce and livestock. The whole village participated. These celebrations were loaded with meaning and gave the villagers their identity as a group. Still, Chung saw that the standard of living in his village was lower than that of the people in the city.

Through it all Chung knew that a college degree might be his family’s only chance to achieve a higher standard of living and to no longer be looked down on by the visiting government officials, NGOs, or even the church mission teams that came to aid them with their needs. So he gave it his all! He saw, what difference a college degree could make. Despite having exceled in lower grade levels at the school in his village, Chung now struggled with his assignments more than most. His classmates seemed to have no problems at all submitting their papers. He felt that his brain was somehow wired differently and not capable of putting out what was required of him in college. Without adopting a new way of thinking, processing, and remembering what he learned, Chung would fail. It required navigating a steep learning curve and came with plenty of setbacks. Still, Chung learned to master college courses and city life. Then without realizing it, by the time he graduated Chung loved reading books and his structured newfound ways of thinking, outlining, and putting his thoughts in writing allowed him to earn good scores in his subjects.

Unlike in his village, learning was very technical, and facts were presented as lists of prepositions to be memorized to recall during exams without real life experiences. It was not a communal or collective experience but an individual effort to stay afloat. At least now, Chung had access to all the books he needed in the library – a place that was so unusually quiet that Chung used his headphones to listen to some music while studying. Instead of taking four years, Chung needed five years to graduate. Early on, he had needed to repeat a few subjects and even one semester as he was forced to stop going to class and work at a fast-food restaurant to help pay for his mother’s hospital bill. Nevertheless, it brought great joy having his parents sit proudly in the audience as Chung walked on stage to receive his diploma. He did it! Chung was now the first from his entire village to graduate from college. His parents gladly took on debt just to travel to the city, and on top of that there would be a costly celebration with and for the whole village. But that was a problem for another day. The graduation was the focus today and Chung’s salary would be sufficient to supply the needs for the honor they all shared.

Indeed, Chung also passed the teacher licensing board-exam. He was now a teacher and got immediately hired in a public school. This guaranteed him a stable income that was sufficient for him and his family. Then after one year of teaching on probation at a school in the city, he was assigned to teach in a village neighboring the one where he grew up. This came about because the department of education took notice of how Chung’s students excelled, and the district had mandates to boost the learning of children in remote villages. In fact, this government program caused many of the best teachers to be reassigned to remote areas where children struggled in school. The program intended to minimize the learning gap between the lower functioning rural students and the more successful urban populations.

Despite Chung’s and his colleague’s best efforts using the latest up-to-date textbooks along with the curriculum and teaching methods that worked so well in the city, the children in the villages did not perform well on the standardized tests. Some scores even went down, and the students dropped out altogether. Chung became more and more frustrated. He started to think that people in the city might simply be smarter that those lazy students in these mountain villages. Chung did not know why he was not able to connect with these children. After all, at one time, he was just like them, he lived the same life experience, and even spoke their local dialect.

Because the teaching methods seamed ineffective Chung and his colleagues called a meeting with some parents. One of those “parent-teacher meetings” like they had done during his semester as a student teacher. The parents expressed their concern that they could not help their children with their strange assignments. Further, the children sometimes were needed to help at home and in the fields. School was a luxury. Farming was a necessity. This meeting was already frustrating, but it became shamefully embarrassing when some elders from the surrounding villages arrived at the meeting. They accused the teachers of dishonoring them and their long-time traditions and undermining the established village hierarchy. These young teachers had called for this meeting without consulting them ahead of time.

Chung spent a long sleepless night after the meeting. He pondered on what had happened and started to question himself. The barrier between him and the students could not have been cultural, not lingual, not even relational. Then it slowly dawned on him. He remembered his own path of learning, his struggle in school, his craving for the stories around the fire under the Himalayan star-filled night sky. He flashed back to the stories and proverbs related to the creatures in the valleys and on the mountains. It connected: the way he learned about life, about their history, and how it all came together during the annual village celebrations and festivals. Chung could now lead his students, his children with their hope for the future, by learning to teach all over again… in ways they could receive new knowledge, process, and remember it, and even pass it on to others…