| Summary/Abstract |
Through the lens of an elite boarding school, this paper seeks to explore afresh the education–development nexus in Nepal. Moving beyond post-modern critiques of the development–schooling nexus, the paper draws on a historical understanding of development and concomitant notions of progress as emerging from earlier contacts between Nepali elites and the West. Combining this historical perspective with six months of ethnographic research at an elite boarding school in Nepal, the paper argues that the concept of development refers to the education of the individual through an emphasis on consciousness, self-discipline and character-building. This personalisation of bika¯
s operates as a holistic pedagogy that facilitates students’ embodiment of the national project through moral, physical and psychological progress.
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