Reproduction of nationalist and neoliberal ideologies in Nepal’s language and literacy policies

ABSTRACT

The paper explores how the discourse of nationalist and neoliberal agendas have shaped the conceptions of literacy education in Nepal, the ramifications for social stratification. As the review shows, the ruling elites tactfully imposed their language, culture, and knowledge in literacy curricula in the name of national unity, but to maintain their status quo. Later, literacy planning was ideologically oriented to the neoliberalism, which overtly espoused the English language and its associated culture and knowledge as must-have literacy skills for global socioeconomic mobilities. In both cases, the local languages, culture, and knowledge have been ignored in literacy education, resulting in an ideology for minoritized groups to accept Nepali-English bilingual/bicultural literacy skills as valid and their languages, cultures, and knowledge as deficit and valueless. The article, therefore, argues that the increasing growth of globalization and neoliberal logics is altering the construct of literacy, especially in terms of its purposes and uses, taking it beyond the local cultural and communicative practices to the global.

KEYWORDS:

• Literacy education
• neoliberalism
• nationalist ideology
• critical literacies
• language planning
• literacy policy
• Nepal

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. One of the reviewers suggested to clarify the juxtaposition of the terms “language” and “literacy.” In this paper, the term “language” education refers to the development of communicative skills through languages, where “literacy education” refers to the development of ability to read and write a variety of texts (including multimodal texts). I have juxtaposed these two terms throughout the paper because, although they are conceptually different, they together refer to inseparable and simultaneous form of the overall communicative competence/performance of children. Similarly, as Liddicoat (2008) argues, “literacy development is one of the central objectives of language-in-education planning” and language planning is undertaken to develop the literacy abilities of children (p. 1). Another reason is that these two terms are hardly discussed separately in Nepali’s educational policy texts.

2. The following documents were used: (a) Nepal National Education Planning Commission Report 1956; (b) National Education System Plan 1971–1976; (c) The Report of National Language Policy Commission 1994; (d) Primary Education Curriculum 2007; (e) School Sector Development Plan 2016–2023; and (f) National Education Policy 2019.

Additional information

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Pramod K. Sah

Pramod K. Sah is a PhD candidate and Killam Scholar in the Department of Language and Literacy Education at the University of British Columbia, Canada. His research interests include language planning and policy, English medium instruction, language ideology, TESOL and social justice, politics of English, critical literacies, and teacher education. He has served as a Strand Coordinator for the Advocacy, Social Justice, and Community Building strand of TESOL International Association and leads Teaching English & Teaching English in Global Context as a South Asia Coordinator.