LEARNING IN LIMBO
THE IRRAWADDY: May, 1999 Vol 7 No 4
By Win HteinWin Htein writes on efforts by Burmese in exile to find ways to educate a neglected generation.
Some young people in a thatch hut in a camp on the Thai-Burma border are debating the educational problems facing young people in Burma today. "We must improve our education level and then change the curriculum in all schools in the liberated area," declared one student with emotion.
This subject was being discussed during a brief one-off seminar on the current education situation in Burma organized by the All Burma Students Democratic Front (ABSDF). Most ABSDF members never graduated from university because they were deprived of their right to continue their education for participating in the 8-8-88 demonstrations. In Rangoon, the army closed all universities after the 8-8-88 uprising. In the past decade, universities have been open for a total of only about two years. They were re-opened briefly following elections in 1990, but then shut down again after students demonstrated to show their support for Daw Aung San Suu Kyi when she won the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize. The universities have been closed most of the time since December 1996, when protests were held at the Rangoon Institute of Technology. Protests by RIT students during the brief reopening of universities for examinations in August 1998 probably mean that they will not be opened again soon. "While students in open societies are debating whether education should be for business or knowledge, students in Burma don't even have the right to go to university. It's a very sad situation for the generation of Burmese who will be leading the country in the future," lamented a Burmese lecturer at Assumption Business Administration College in Bangkok. More than 500 Burmese professors and lecturers teach at universities in Thailand, while thousands more teach in the US, Europe, Japan and other countries. Most left their native country because there were no jobs for them at Burmese universities, or because they could not stand working under military supervisors with no understanding of educational matters. Extremely poor salaries are another reason many leave Burma. "My monthly salary at Rangoon University was 1750 kyat (about six dollars), while a meal in the market cost nearly 100 kyat. How could I live on just my own income? I still had to get money from my parents," said a lecturer in an interview with the Democratic Voice of Burma. She now earns nearly 20,000 baht (about US$500) a month at a Thai university, where she also has her own computer with an Internet connection. Now, she says, she can even afford to send some money to her parents. "STUDENTS ARE THEIR ENEMIES" Instead of helping lecturers to become better educators, the emphasis of "teacher training" under the military regime is learning how to control students in order to prevent them from participating in demonstrations. "They warned us that if one of our students joins a protest, we will be sent to jail for six months," said a lecturer who is now working in Thailand. "In the generals' minds, the students are their enemies." A dramatic example of this mindset at work was General Ne Win's destruction of the Students Union Building at Rangoon University on July 7, 1962. The dictator evidently wanted to make his attitude towards the students abundantly clear. "Ne Win and his Tamadaw (military) men have never had a good view of students. They are psychopaths who are afraid of educated people. They only want uneducated people who will obey their commands in Burma," commented Dr Mya Maung from Boston College, who worked for many years as a teacher at the Defense Services Academy in Maymyo. Soon after the State Law and Order Council (Slorc) took power in 1988, Lt-Gen Khin Nyunt, the powerful first secretary of the ruling junta, became the chairman of the National Education Committee. He is also the chief of the Military Intelligence Service (MIS), which orders teachers to spy on their students. These facts alone do a great deal to explain why the education system in Burma is in such bad shape. Another serious problem that derives from the military's attitude towards students is underfunding. While 4% of the national budget is spent on education, over 40% goes to the military. There are nearly half a million soldiers in Burma, and roughly the same number of students who are waiting for the universities to re-open. Before the student demonstrations in December 1996, the junta planned to shorten the university curriculum from four years to two years in an effort to deal with the large number of high school graduates who spent years waiting just to get into university. Now it looks as if they will not even get a two-year education. "Most young students in Rangoon are sitting in teashops waiting for the universities to re-open. They want to do something but there's nothing they can do," said a Thai NGO worker who recently attended an education seminar in Rangoon. The sight of jobless young people sitting in teashops is a common one in Rangoon. Not as visible are the many would-be students who have turned to drugs to deal with the hopelessness of their situation. Nor can you see the many others who have moved to Thailand in search of work, or those sent to prison for engaging in political activities. "The world community and NGOs should hurry to Burma to promote education, even if the universities are closed. There is no one else here who can help the younger generation. So we should not wait until the government changes," said the Thai NGO worker. The state of education in Burma is often ridiculed in Burmese popular culture. In a well-known censored song, the singer laments that after he graduates, he will have to ask his friend, who didn't pass high school, to give him a job. While university graduates in many countries complain about the difficulty of finding a decent job, in Burma it is no exaggeration to say that many educated people are lucky to find jobs as taxi or trishaw drivers. When a famous comedian interviewing a recent high school graduate on state-run TV jokingly congratulated her on completing her education, he obviously struck a little too close to home. He was arrested the next day and sentenced to a six-month jail term for making the remark. Another weak point in Burma's education system is corruption. Money or even force is often used to ensure that the children of influential people always do well in examinations and get into the best universities. "If you can give 100,000 kyat, you are sure to win distinction in the high school examination," said one student. For teachers earning negligible salaries, accepting bribes is undoubtedly an irresistible temptation. The problem of closed universities exists only for ordinary people. "This problem is just for us because we are not VIPs," said one student in Rangoon who has been waiting to enter university since 1995. "VIP" refers to members of families with military connections, who can attend such institutions as the Defense Studies Academy, the Military Institute of Medicine, the Military Institute of Technology, the Military Institute of Economics, or the Military Institute of Computer Science. MOVING FORWARD Finding a solution to these problems will not be easy, but activists in the liberated area are determined to make a start. At the ABSDF education seminar held on the Thai-Burma border, it was decided that a plan should be drawn up to promote education in the liberated area while universities in the rest of the country remain closed. According to figures compiled by the National Educational Council, established in Manerplaw in 1993 by the National Council for the Union of Burma (NCUB), the liberated area has 19 high schools, 95 middle schools and 1209 primary schools, with a total of almost 150,000 students. This includes schools in areas under the control of ethnic cease-fire groups. "We have a plan to do a seminar to develop a curriculum for the whole liberated area. But now we have no stable area, and another problem is the various ethnic languages," said an officer of the NEC, adding that their main task right now is to find supporting groups. At present, the Norway Burma Council is their main donor. A student at the ABSDF Headquarters School said, "Now I study in the 6th standard, but I don't know when we will have to move again." Burmese army offensives have forced his school to move five times in the past seven years. Burmese soldiers killed both his parents in his village when he was five years old. "They (the ABSDF and the Karen National Union) are pushing for better education but their camps are not stable," said an Australian volunteer teacher at the ABSDF Headquarters School. "I believe that the Burmese are much more interested in education than people in my country," he added. When he visited Rangoon, he said people asked him how the education system in other countries differed from that in Burma. They also asked him about relations between students and soldiers. Another western education worker involved in a teacher training program commented that while the ABSDF and KNU were very interested in promoting education, they were often too busy with their political activities to devote much energy to it. He said that he was working on a six-month program, but after three months, they still hadn't completed the translation of teaching materials from English into Burmese and Karen. He added that there was also a shortage of teachers, especially ones with a professional teaching background. Most of the teachers receiving training were former soldiers, politicians, doctors, or engineers. The headmaster at the ABSDF Headquarters School is a mining engineer with no previous teaching experience. One of the teachers working under him is a former battalion commander from the Students Army. The headmaster was appointed to his position, but the soldier-cum-teacher was more than willing to make a career change. "I chose myself as a teacher because I believe that we should share our education with the new generation here." While he seemed happy about his new line of work, not everybody shared his enthusiasm for teaching. One leader who used to work as a professional teacher in Burma remarked that "A commander is more important than a teacher in the revolutionary area. We came here to do political work, not to teach." For some, the education problem is merely an offshoot of the political situation. "If we can change the whole political system to make a democratic government, it (the education problem) will be solved automatically," commented one activist. Meanwhile, Burmese opposition groups continue to seek ways to educate young people. One effective approach to providing post-secondary education has been through the Distance Education Program, a correspondence course using a curriculum developed by an Australian university. The DEP has proven very useful to former students who weren't able to complete their university studies in Burma, and younger people who have graduated from high schools in refugee camps in border areas of Thailand and India. To date, the DEP has reached more than 300 students. Another option available to some exceptional students is sponsorship to study in foreign countries. Hundreds of students have received scholarships from the Open Society Institute and some US and Australian universities, giving them a chance to study at universities in Thailand, India or in third countries. While such opportunities exist for a small minority of students, however, many obstacles remain for the majority of Burmese who live in foreign countries without official recognition. The Thai Action Committee for Democracy in Burma, an NGO based in Thailand, established a primary school for the children of immigrants living in Mahachai, Bangkok's "Little Burma", but the school was later shut down for "security reasons". Zaw Htoo, a 20-year-old history student from Tavoy College, has been waiting since December 1996 for a chance to resume his studies. In the meantime, he works at a fish-processing factory in Mahachai. "We are the victims of an inadequate education system and political unrest," he says. "In my factory, all Thai graduates get high positions and good salaries, but all we can do is manual labor." But even if he had graduated, he would have been lucky to earn two thousand kyat (roughly 200 baht) a month in Burma, compared to his present salary of 4,500 baht. Now he is not certain if he would return to Burma even if he had a chance to continue his studies. The junta in Rangoon recently ordered all high schools to hold separate examinations, to prevent a large gathering of students in one place. The same order informed teachers that they could give students extra marks for holding "correct" political views. About 300,000 students sat for high school examinations held in early March, of whom around 100,000 could be expected to pass. That means there will be a significant increase in the backlog of students waiting to enter university. If universities are not opened in the near future, the total number could reach a million within a few years. Until Burma's military regime realizes that this figure represents a tremendous loss for the country's future, it is unlikely to risk re-opening the universities. But while the generals clearly wish to see their hold on power last in perpetuity, they seem to regard the future as somebody else's problem. Win Htein is a correspondent for the Democratic Voice of Burma.
