Nepal, May 9 -- On a freezing recent morning in Kalikot district, the classroom is too cold to be in. So the teacher moves the lesson outside, into a small patch of sunlight against the school wall (pictured, above).

Twenty children huddle close together on the dirt. There are no materials to pass around, no charts on the walls inside, no books. The teacher recites, the children repeat. The teacher writes on the board, the children copy.

This is what learning looks like in some of Nepal's most underserved communities. It is not cruelty, it is just the only instruction method anyone has ever shown the teachers in the remote mountains.

So, when the new RSP government's Education Minister announced last month that written exams from Grade...