Through his travels, an alumnus finds Myanmar’s education system is improving, but still has a lot to learn

Travel is on hold for of 2020, so consider this essay from Diploma Programme (DP) graduate Nick Bradman as he recounts his experience as a visiting lecturer on the Australian National University’s Myanmar Law Clinic. This is ­­his third story in our graduate voices series.  

This essay is based on the research and opinions of the author and does not necessarily reflect the views of the International Baccalaureate.  The IB believes in the free exchange of opinions and that a productive and robust dialogue is healthy for our society and essential to building a better world. 

By Nick Bradman

Standing outside a rundown university classroom in Taunggyi—the mountainous capital of Myanmar’s Shan State—it takes a minute before one realises that the monotonous chanting echoing from within is not in Burmese, but garbled English. The teacher, a law lecturer, is reading out passages of legislation in English to students who dutifully recite it back in unison. The only problem is that many of the students can scarcely understand it; for them, it is mostly an exercise in phonetic imitation. Like Myanmar’s other tertiary institutions, Taunggyi University uses English as a medium for instruction despite the country’s very low levels of proficiency—it ranks 86 out of 100 nations in the EF Non-Native English Proficiency Index. With the classroom’s chanting complete, the remaining time is spent translating the English recitations into Burmese. For those students that speak a different dialect, or one of Myanmar’s other 100 or so languages, comprehension of Burmese may be limited, necessitating a further translation. For many students, much of the teaching gets lost along the way.

This confused language system was one of many issues that I and 25 other students encountered in January of this year, upon travelling to the country for the Australian National University’s Myanmar Law Clinic. Working with an NGO and local universities, the programme aims to develop Myanmar students’ legal English and promote access to justice and the rule of law through legal education.

Like many of the country’s modern-day woes, the state of Myanmar’s education system stems from its turbulent political past. When Myanmar (then Burma) attained independence from British rule in 1948, its education system was one of South-East Asia’s best, with English understood widely and well. This changed after a military coup in 1962. Schools were nationalised, neglected and used as tools of indoctrination. Protests at the University of Yangon were violently quelled; students were killed, and the historic Student Union building was blown up. Law schools and the justice system suffered in particular. Seen as agents of government subversion, lawyers were derided and law schools’ entry-standards lowered; law became one of the least prestigious majors and, even now, can carry shameful connotations. Contributing to the linguistic confusion in today’s schools, the new regime also tergiversated on language policy, switching repeatedly between English and Burmese. Burmese was ultimately made the language of secondary schools, but English became the language of universities—a decision supposedly prompted by the daughter of Myanmar’s dictator failing to gain entry to a British medical school due to her poor English.

Although military government was formally abandoned in 2011, and gradual democratic reforms undertaken over the subsequent decade, this legacy of capricious rule leaves major challenges for today’s education system. Language barriers are not the only one. Teachers complain that the curriculum is outdated or inaccurate; until recently, the last systematic amendment to school syllabi occurred in 1985. Dreary content undoubtedly contributes to Myanmar’s high drop-out rates. Although the vast majority of Myanmar’s children are enrolled in primary school, only one in ten complete their final school exams; most cite disinterest, rather than economic necessity, as the reason.

A dated curriculum is not the only thing likely to tire students. As our observations in Taunggyi showed, schools’ teaching methods can be mind-numbing, dominated by a ‘chalk-and-talk’ approach of rote-learning and recitation. Students are sometimes given the answers to tests in advance and told to memorise them.

To its credit, the new quasi-democratic government has acknowledged the importance of education reform. In 2017, they started rolling out the National Strategic Education Plan for primary and secondary school students, which specifically aims to teach students ‘how to think critically and creatively’. In an encouraging sign for the country’s incipient democracy, the new curriculum also mandates the teaching of a ‘morality and civics class’.

Indeed, part of our aim in the Myanmar Law Clinic was to expose students to interactive teaching methods that would promote critical thinking and a healthy scepticism of authority. We encouraged students to lead discussions about Myanmarese law and politics and then offered them comparisons with Australia. Students were eager to hear how Australia did things differently—demonstrating an interest in topics like jury trials (Myanmar uses judges alone), legalising same-sex marriage, our justification for the absence of a death penalty or the aims of Australia’s (relatively) robust separation of government powers. The opportunity to hear different people’s perspectives on the world, and to think about alternatives to the status quo, excited many of the students. In a closing survey we did, one student wrote of the class: ‘I am so happy when I get to talk about Australia and practice my English with all of you. When you ask questions to us, you are patient, kind and listen to our answers’. Another wrote: ‘We are cold people, but when we are with you, we are so active and so fun’.

I also ask one student why, despite its many shortcomings, they wanted to attend university: ‘learning is not easy … but I think if I become educated—if I become a lawyer—I can help improve things in Myanmar. If you want to understand politics too, you need to do well at school … Education is how to make change’. Within his answer was an awareness that education does not just improve individuals’ lives but can also impact a country’s politics and society more broadly.

Certainly, Myanmar’s evolving democracy is one that could use the help. For one thing, the country’s military still holds too much power. The constitution agreed to by the military regime, which established a ‘disciplined democracy’, guarantees the army enough seats in parliament to veto any constitutional amendments—which they frequently used to resist attempts to curtail their authority. The constitution also provides for a self-regulated military justice system, enabling the army to act with judicial impunity. The elected government, headed by Aung Sang Suu Kyi, is also no paragon of virtue. Corruption, political interference in the bureaucracy and judiciary and a resistance to media criticism all undermine the legitimacy of her government and bedevil the country’s democratic transition.

Myanmar’s ethnic tensions and multiple, decades-long armed conflicts must also be redressed if the country is to emerge as a stable and respected democratic regime. Indeed, most of Myanmar’s significant civic achievements in recent years have been overshadowed by the international ignominy of the 2016-17 Rohingya refugee crisis. This exodus of the Rohingya—a long-persecuted Muslim minority in Myanmar’s Rakhine State—was sparked by military reprisals to insurgent movements in the region, for which Myanmar is currently facing charges of genocide at the International Court of Justice.

These problems are immensely complex, emerging from inveterate ethnic tensions and longstanding conflicts (clashes in Rakhine state have been ongoing since 1947). If solutions are to come from Myanmar’s next generation, the young must be both well-informed and willing to understand the perspectives of others. A no-questions-asked approach to learning, and books that teach of Myanmar’s ethnic groups living, ‘in peace and harmony’, are unlikely to produce the thoughtful voters, and leaders, these solutions demand. Didactic teaching methods and docile students will not create the engaged citizens this fragmented democracy needs.

Nonetheless, our experiences with Taunggyi’s young people may because for some sanguinity. Many were anxious to know how Myanmar was viewed overseas and were eager to change the country’s image. Most had ambitions to be lawyers or politicians, often with the intention of travelling overseas to work, before returning to use those skills at home. These ambitions stand in contrast to the aspirations of Myanmar’s older generation. Speaking to a lawyer-turned-politician of Myanmar’s national parliament, we asked him if his goal had always been to work in the law: ‘No. To be honest, I had always wanted to be a general … I had to settle for law because I couldn’t get into the army’.

It is clear that the youth of Myanmar have a lot of heavy lifting ahead of them. If the country’s nascent democracy is to succeed, an informed and politically engaged citizenry must be a bulwark against repressive government. So too will the resolution of Myanmar’s ethnic conflicts demand introspection and a willingness to confront uncomfortable truths. The education system must improve further to help prepare the youth for these challenges. Of course, change will come when citizens start, as our students did in the classroom, to question the state of the world and wonder how it might be different. Yet, if citizens are to learn to question authority and convention, then they should start doing so early. They cannot be expected to ask questions in public life if they were never taught to ask them in school.

Nick Bradman is an IB Diploma graduate of Pembroke School in Adelaide, Australia. He is now studying a Bachelor of Laws and a Bachelor of Politics, Philosophy & Economics at the Australian National University. Nick has a particular interest in politics, and is currently working at the Australian Senate in Canberra. You can connect with him on LinkedIn here.

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