Myanmar Needs New Education Skills to Envisage Democracy

By Dr. Sheraz Akhtar and Patrick Keeney 20 April 2023

Philosophers from Socrates onwards have commented on the transformative energy of schooling. As Nelson Mandela famous, “Training is essentially the most highly effective weapon you need to use to vary the world.”

However can schooling remodel the present scenario in Myanmar? Does the Myanmar schooling system have transformational energy inside it?

Researchers typically concede {that a} specific sort of studying is related to schooling’s transformative energy. This schooling is incessantly known as liberal studying, and it permits college students to make use of cause, suppose systematically, think about a world past their present predicaments, and search sustainable options. Because the identify suggests, liberal schooling ‘liberates’ the scholar from the contingencies of their delivery and permits them to examine the world anew.

On the coronary heart of this enterprise is the power to suppose critically. Vital considering, when aligned with highly effective concepts, corresponding to democracy and equality, is important for constructing a extra simply society in fragile states corresponding to Myanmar.

Twenty first-century challenges require us to ‘suppose the unthinkable’ and search democratic values. The flexibility to ‘suppose past’ can allow Myanmar college students to vary their nation. Thomas Eugene Robbins, an American novelist, stated, “to realize the not possible, it’s exactly the unthinkable that have to be thought.”

Sadly, Myanmar’s lecture rooms are famous for his or her rote memorization and teacher-centered approaches. Lecturers echo the concepts of the authoritarian system, that are then pressured on college students. This conventional, rote studying doesn’t permit college students to suppose, create, and problem intrinsic social constructions.

The standard schooling entrenchment has de facto favored the navy regime in perpetuating its unconstitutional and undemocratic authority. For that cause, the Myanmar navy encourages “state-sanctioned values” in schooling to keep at bay college students’ skill to suppose and lift troublesome questions.

Merely put, the absence of crucial considering in schooling incubates docility and malleability in college students, an inclination considerably exacerbated underneath navy rule. Furthermore, the Buddhist respect for lecturers, embedded in college students’ minds from childhood, makes college students detest to query or disagree with their lecturers. Total, non secular, social, and political components inculcate in college students submissive attitudes towards individuals in authority.

To vary the normal schooling system, worldwide non-government organizations (INGOs) and the Nationwide League of Democracy authorities launched crucial considering abilities and a student-centered curriculum in Myanmar.

Nevertheless, these much-needed reforms had been quickly suffocated by social components. For instance, Marie Lall notes in her latest e book that lecturers have restricted time to implement the student-centered strategy as a result of they should end the course arrange by the Ministry of Training. Additionally, Myanmar’s societal mindset values accreditation, certificates, levels and potential employment alternatives, that are indispensable for people to achieve social mobility.

One of many authors, Dr. Sheraz Akhtar, noticed what may be termed the ‘credentialist’ mindset when he not too long ago visited group studying facilities within the Thai-Myanmar border area. One has sympathy for and may simply perceive the person need for social mobility; nonetheless, this mindset has limitations for altering the trajectory of a nation through schooling’s transformational energy.

Earlier than the February 1, 2021 coup, a shortage of crucial considering abilities within the schooling system made Myanmar residents unprepared to tackle the highly effective navy. The inclusion of lecturers and college students within the Civil Disobedience Motion and the following navy crackdown with illegal arrests, detentions, and harassment pressured residents to disengage from the schooling system. The junta holds a good grip on the schooling system, claiming it needs to normalize it. On the similar time, it has dismissed hundreds of lecturers, together with college professors, and turned faculties and college buildings into barracks and ammunition depots.

Consequently, Myanmar dad and mom and college college students have demonstrated their dissatisfaction by not enrolling in instructional establishments. As a Myanmar dad or mum famous, “I’m uncomfortable sending my daughters to high school, particularly when the navy is utilizing a portion of that faculty as barracks.” The dad and mom have real considerations contemplating their kids’s security and safety.

The shortage of crucial considering abilities and the disruption of schooling go away residents in a parlous Catch-22 scenario. To place their nation again on the trail to democracy, college students want entry to the transformational energy of liberal studying. Nevertheless, given the obstacles the navy authorities units, looking for real looking options for Myanmar college students will likely be an infinite problem.

Turbulent historic occasions have proven how schooling is significant in reworking a nation’s future. For instance, many Jewish refugees in post-World Struggle II ended up in Western European camps. Initially, they confronted hostility from their host societies, which restricted their entry to instructional establishments. Nonetheless, refugee students and teachers took accountability for educating the subsequent era. These non-formal teams in confined refugee camps had been unconcerned about accreditations and certifications. Their concern was cultivating and nurturing college students, permitting them to suppose the unthinkable and picture a affluent future.

An enormous obligation falls on lecturers, students, college students, and the worldwide group. Myanmar wants to interact lecturers to suppose, think about, and create lesson plans and syllabi for non-formal settings; INGOs may assist by supporting, for instance, instructor coaching. Moreover, relatively than banking on bricks and mortar constructions, group facilities and on-line sources can turn out to be wonderful platforms for lecturers and college students.

Maybe most significantly, Myanmar college students ought to learn extensively about nice thinkers who’ve contributed to democracy and a simply world. As the good political thinker Leo Strauss famous, “Liberal schooling consists within the fixed intercourse with the best minds…” It liberates us from vulgarity and provides us with expertise in one thing lovely. Via studying, college students can study from these historic personages and occasions to achieve power, envision issues lovely and plan a brighter, democratic future for his or her nation.

Dr. Sheraz Akhtar lectures at Indiana Wesleyan College (United States) and Chiang Mai College (Thailand). His analysis focuses on refugee communities’ social, financial, and schooling growth together with instructor trainings in rising nations. 

Patrick Keeney holds a Ph.D. within the philosophy of schooling from Simon Fraser College in Vancouver, Canada. He divides his yr between Kelowna, B.C, and Thailand, the place he’s at present a visiting scholar within the College of Training at Chiang Mai College.