Kathmandu: Fourth-graders in Nepal wouldn’t have to study math if the country’s communist rebels took control. But they would learn how to make bombs and grow vegetables.

Nepal’s Maoist rebels, fighting a decade-old insurgency against the monarchy, now have influence in nearly every district of this country of 27 million people, and citizens increasingly are wondering how their life would change if the rebels actually took power.

So a group of Nepalese teachers made a low-profile visit recently to three “model schools” run by the Maoists.

The rebels say the schools provide the ideal communist education.

“The stress was on military education: What is a bomb? How to blast it. How to carry out attacks. This was the main part of the curriculum in the fourth and fifth classes,’’ said Babu Ram Adhikari, general-secretary of the Nepal National Teachers’ Association, Nepal’s largest with 72,000 members.

“Maths is not compulsory until the fifth grade. English is also optional. But military science is compulsory,’’ Adhikari said. The insurgents insist the children are only taught ideology, not forced to fight.

Nearly 13,000 people have been killed in the rebellion.

------------------------------------------------------------------
- http://www.mumbaimirror.com/nmirror/mmpaper.asp?sectid=5&articleid=43200620331293432006203310140