“I am going to attend NGO CSW67 Forum in New York, NY, USA. Which is going to held from 6th March to 17th March 2023 in New York.” Thus began the by-now infamous letter by the Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, Indira Rana, to the US Embassy in Kathmandu requesting an early visa interview date. The missive itself was addressed to “The counselor General” at the embassy, seemingly a position that exists at the American embassy here but is unknown anywhere else in the world.

I will not rush to condemn Deputy Speaker Rana for what, in one extreme, has even been called a form of human trafficking, not especially having read about her life when she had been elevated to the august office. Perhaps it was only a serious lapse in judgement?

For me, the bigger crime was the letter itself. What followed the excerpt above was even more cringeworthy. That got me thinking about an interaction I had in a private chat group some weeks back. A Nepali woman who had reached a somewhat prestigious position in an international organisation had posted the following on social media: “I’m honored to serve another term as a President of XX Family Network with esteemed volunteers worldwide. It was pleasure to welcome Mr. YY, President of XX and the honorary president of XX Family Network...”

My off-the-cuff comment in the group was that while it was great Nepalis were reaching high places, it was “just annoying that she could not get simple grammar right. An Indian would never have let that pass”. Unlike Indira Rana, who went to a Nepali-medium school and who could be excused for coming up with such a hash of a letter, the above entry was by someone with a convent-school background. The least she should have been capable of is the proper use of the indefinite and definite articles—“a” and “the”. In just that one fragment of a sentence, there are four grammatical errors, with three having to do with her wrong use or non-use of articles.

Some years ago, a desk editor friend at an English newspaper said he spent nearly all his time fixing, as he called it, the “is-are” in the copy handed to him. He was expressing his frustration with stories filed by reporters without any idea about subject-verb agreement, i.e., using the correct verb to match the subject of the sentence. Considering that conjugation of verbs is generally quite simple in English, determined as it is mainly by the subject’s being singular or plural, one wonders why despite decades of English-medium, private school education, the quality of English among Nepalis remains so abysmal.

I believe the answer lies in the English-language textbooks students go through in their school life. I mean such books as produced in Nepal. In our times, we had to study books published in India, the same as those used in English schools there and without doubt of a quality that contributes to the facility with which Indians use the language.

Things began to change in Nepal in the mid-1980s. Indian publishers were still supplying textbooks to Nepal, albeit with tweaks such as Guided English for India being renamed Guided English for Nepal. But there was a market they could not fulfil. If I am not mistaken, Nepali publishers began their foray into English-language textbooks with social studies after there was a backlash from parents complaining about their children learning the history and geography of India. I was a schoolteacher back then, and I remember how atrocious those books were. Unfortunately, not much has changed. In fact, the situation has become worse, with the textbook market having spawned many new publishers, churning out stuff on all subjects that is almost criminal in content given the errors being drilled into our students.

A youngster I know has just entered Class XI to study physical science. Since language proficiency is possible only when used correctly in all contexts, and also out of plain curiosity, I had a look at his books. The following howlers have been taken from the very first paragraphs of the texts he will be reading for the next year.

A mathematics book dealing with elementary logic started with this: “Critical and rigorous thinking are necessary for the clear understanding of a subject in all areas. The ideas emerged can be communicated in speech or writing in sentences.” If only the communication had been both grammatically and linguistically correct.

And, there was this ostentatious start to a physics book: “The branch of science which deals with the study of natural phenomenon is called physics. To understand physics, we must be able to connect our theoretical description of nature with experimental observations. Such connection is made through quantitative measurements…The process of comparing an unknown physical quantity with a known fixed quantity is called the measurement. The quantity used as a standard of measurement is called the unit.” Apart from the unnecessary use of the definite article in the last two sentences and the absence of the indefinite ones in the preceding ones and at least one other error I could spot, this is written well enough but what a boring read.

The same was true for another physics book that began thus: “Just what is Physics? Physics deals with the understanding of natural phenomena. It is a science based on experimental observation. All of the ideas presented in this book were not found in a cave or brought to use by aliens; in fact, they were discovered by real people engaged to find a solution to a problem of life.” One understands where the authors are going but…

Given the changed times, the chemistry textbook cited here could easily have used a female as an example (after having corrected the language): “The student who works on the chemistry laboratory should always be realized about the importance of general direction of working in the chemistry laboratory. It is advised that he should always follows these rules with the attention and care they deserve and ultimately they will help him to add to his credit not only in his examination but in his later life as well.”

A numerical chemistry book began with numbers and so I went to the preface: “It’s our pleasure to bring this ‘Integrated Numerical Chemistry’ book to you all. This book covers numerical problems that students of 11th and 12th grade need to know so that they can excel in exam…In market it is not difficult to find many other numerical Chemistry books.”

Of course, all of these books have been, as some proudly declared, “Approved by Curriculum Development Centre (CDC), Nepal” (with the definite article before “Curriculum Development Centre” invariably missing). And, I have not even started on other aspects of book production that these publishers seem to have no idea about. There were unnecessary indents while indents were missing where required. The spacing between lines was inconsistent. None of the books I went through had used “smart quotes”, those squiggly things that are a pleasure to behold compared to the "straight ones". Neither was there any uniformity in the style or size of the font within the same book. The printing and paper used was terrible in some of the books, particularly those produced by the government, rendering page and page quite unreadable.

If such is the material being used to educate our children in expensive private schools, I should say, Indira Rana did not do that badly with her letter. After all, as the saying goes: Garbage in, garbage out.