Non-State Education and Ethnic Conflict in Myanmar
Lead Research Organisation:
Goldsmiths University of London
Department Name: Politics
Abstract
This network aims to bring together London-based scholars working on education, knowledge and ethnonational conflict with education researchers and practitioners in Myanmar. Its main aim is to analyse the role of non-state education in Myanmar's competing nation-building projects and ethnic conflict. In doing so to it aims to a) generate academic and policy-relevant knowledge on the extensive landscape of non-state ethnic minority-based education regimes in Myanmar's conflict zones, to b) aid capacity building of education practitioners and researchers in Myanmar's ethnic minority communities, and to c) to inform the country's education reform, including international donors engaged in the reform process.
This is important as education has long served as a main vehicle for Myanmar's violent nation-building, including the forced assimilation of its ethnic minorities. At the same time, competing non-state education regimes have emerged as one of the means of resistance amongst the numerous revolutionary movements recruited from ethnic minorities. In order to analyse the politics of these non-state education regimes the network will use participatory research methods, including auto-ethnographic approaches that draw on the extensive experience of its local participants: education researchers who are themselves involved in non-state education provision. This will help to address the main paradoxes that ethnic-minority education providers are confronted with: 1) the tension between their aspiration to modernity and their need to create and preserve identities, ancestry and heritage and 2) the tension between resistance against an ethnocratic state oppression and the need to homogenise and solidify fluid and diverse ethnic minority identities into salient ethnic categories under the banner of an alternative nationalism.
The network aims to address these challenges in three workshops (two in Myanmar and one in London). The workshops will provide the platform to connect the network, generate empirical and conceptual knowledge about non-state education in Myanmar, provide a platform for knowledge and experience sharing between participants, and inform Myanmar's education reform and international donors by incorporating seminars for a policy audience. The network will also disseminate its findings through academic, media and policy publications.
This is important as education has long served as a main vehicle for Myanmar's violent nation-building, including the forced assimilation of its ethnic minorities. At the same time, competing non-state education regimes have emerged as one of the means of resistance amongst the numerous revolutionary movements recruited from ethnic minorities. In order to analyse the politics of these non-state education regimes the network will use participatory research methods, including auto-ethnographic approaches that draw on the extensive experience of its local participants: education researchers who are themselves involved in non-state education provision. This will help to address the main paradoxes that ethnic-minority education providers are confronted with: 1) the tension between their aspiration to modernity and their need to create and preserve identities, ancestry and heritage and 2) the tension between resistance against an ethnocratic state oppression and the need to homogenise and solidify fluid and diverse ethnic minority identities into salient ethnic categories under the banner of an alternative nationalism.
The network aims to address these challenges in three workshops (two in Myanmar and one in London). The workshops will provide the platform to connect the network, generate empirical and conceptual knowledge about non-state education in Myanmar, provide a platform for knowledge and experience sharing between participants, and inform Myanmar's education reform and international donors by incorporating seminars for a policy audience. The network will also disseminate its findings through academic, media and policy publications.
Planned Impact
The network will make important impacts in the fields of education, conflict transformation and peacebuilding in Myanmar during and beyond the 24 months of AHRC funding. In doing so the network addresses Goals 4 and 16 of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, namely: ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education and the promotion of peaceful and inclusive societies that provide access to justice for all and promote the building of effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels. In particular the network's activities will benefit marginalised ethnic minority communities in the country's conflict-torn border areas, where competing state and non-state education regimes have become part and parcel of ethnic conflict. The network will do so by identifying, benefitting and addressing key stakeholders engaged in education and conflict in Myanmar. These can be broadly split into three groups, who will benefit in different ways: a) non-state educators, b) wider civil society and c) Myanmar policy-makers and international donors.
The network will primarily benefit non-state educator by involving important stakeholders from different ethnic-minority based education regimes as key participants in the network itself. By including Ja Htoi Pan, Saw La Eh Moo and Athong Makury in the network's core team, the network already comprises of key educationalists from the Kachin, Karen, Naga minority nationalities. Utilising the connections of our project partner Tharti Myay Foundation, the network will also be able to identify and include key stakeholders from the Chin, Mon and Shan minority nationalities as well as progressive non-state education providers from the Bamar community. Non-state educators from this variety of ethnic communities will thus be present at all three workshops, which will address capacity building amongst non-state educators by providing a platform of mutual learning. Activities will be based on participatory methodology, including auto-ethnographies, which enable participants to share knowledge and experiences across different contexts and to develop a shared understanding of the challenges faced by non-state education regimes, including their similarities and differences. The second workshop will bring the network's fifteen key participants from Myanmar to London in order to further this exchange with researchers engaged in education and nationalist conflict in comparative contexts. The workshops will also provide the basis for the network's policy engagement (see below). The network will also benefit civil society in Myanmar more broadly by involving gender expert Ja Seng Ra, ethnic reconciliation activist Sunny Neupane and environmentalist Athong Makury in the core team as well inviting other members of civil society to the third workshop in Yangon (with the help of Tharti Myay Foundation). Engaging them in knowledge sharing and policy activities of the network is important as cross-cutting social and political issues surrounding gender, the environment or health, cannot be separated from the politics of education.
In creating this network of non-state educationalists and civil society, the network also aims at benefiting policy-makers and donors by feeding its findings and recommendations into Myanmar's education reform process, the National Education Strategic Plan. We particularly aim to produce recommendations about question of how Myanmar's non-state education regimes can be integrated into wider conflict transformation and peacebuilding strategies. To do so the workshop in London and Yangon will include policy seminars with stakeholders from DFiD, the FCO, the British Council, the Myanmar Embassy (in the London workshop) and Myanmar's Ministry of Education, DfID and the British Council (in the Yangon workshop). These seminars will provide a platform for presenting findings and recommendations, including the release of the network's policy report (at the Yangon workshop).
The network will primarily benefit non-state educator by involving important stakeholders from different ethnic-minority based education regimes as key participants in the network itself. By including Ja Htoi Pan, Saw La Eh Moo and Athong Makury in the network's core team, the network already comprises of key educationalists from the Kachin, Karen, Naga minority nationalities. Utilising the connections of our project partner Tharti Myay Foundation, the network will also be able to identify and include key stakeholders from the Chin, Mon and Shan minority nationalities as well as progressive non-state education providers from the Bamar community. Non-state educators from this variety of ethnic communities will thus be present at all three workshops, which will address capacity building amongst non-state educators by providing a platform of mutual learning. Activities will be based on participatory methodology, including auto-ethnographies, which enable participants to share knowledge and experiences across different contexts and to develop a shared understanding of the challenges faced by non-state education regimes, including their similarities and differences. The second workshop will bring the network's fifteen key participants from Myanmar to London in order to further this exchange with researchers engaged in education and nationalist conflict in comparative contexts. The workshops will also provide the basis for the network's policy engagement (see below). The network will also benefit civil society in Myanmar more broadly by involving gender expert Ja Seng Ra, ethnic reconciliation activist Sunny Neupane and environmentalist Athong Makury in the core team as well inviting other members of civil society to the third workshop in Yangon (with the help of Tharti Myay Foundation). Engaging them in knowledge sharing and policy activities of the network is important as cross-cutting social and political issues surrounding gender, the environment or health, cannot be separated from the politics of education.
In creating this network of non-state educationalists and civil society, the network also aims at benefiting policy-makers and donors by feeding its findings and recommendations into Myanmar's education reform process, the National Education Strategic Plan. We particularly aim to produce recommendations about question of how Myanmar's non-state education regimes can be integrated into wider conflict transformation and peacebuilding strategies. To do so the workshop in London and Yangon will include policy seminars with stakeholders from DFiD, the FCO, the British Council, the Myanmar Embassy (in the London workshop) and Myanmar's Ministry of Education, DfID and the British Council (in the Yangon workshop). These seminars will provide a platform for presenting findings and recommendations, including the release of the network's policy report (at the Yangon workshop).
People |
ORCID iD |
| Sanjay Seth (Principal Investigator) | |
| David Brenner (Co-Investigator) |
Publications
Brenner D
(2022)
Defending Society, Building the Nation: Rebel Governance as Competing Biopolitics
in International Studies Quarterly
Brenner D
(2024)
Misunderstanding Myanmar through the lens of democracy
in International Affairs
| Description | The key finding from continued engagement with the ten educationalists in our network is the highly political and fragmented nature of Myanmar's non-state education system. This is to do with the fragmentation and conflict-ridden nature of state and society in Myanmar. The following report will first provide a general overview of fragmented education in Myanmar, then elaborate on important variations of this fragmentation that we found, and then conclude with reflections on the impact of the military coup of February 2021 and the popular resistance to it and the transformative potential that it could hold for the future of Myanmar and its education system. Fragmentation Myanmar's official education system is limited in its reach, reflecting the limited authority that the state can project in large parts of the country. This was already the case military met a country-wide revolution against the military coup of February 2021 with brute force, sparking an unprecedented escalation of the country's long-standing civil war. Indeed, the state in Myanmar has never fully exerted control over its territory and population, specifically in its borderlands which are home to ethnic minority communities. Before the coup, a decades-long civil war between ethnic minority rebel movements - also known as Ethnic Armed Organisations (EAOs) - and the ethnic majority and military-dominated state has brought about sophisticated alternative orders to the state. Many of these EAO states within the state have also established extensive education systems. While these are part of the wider public service provision by EAOs, which also provide security, justice, and healthcare to populations under their control, these non-state education systems play a central role in Myanmar's ethnonational conflict. This is because they are central to the demands of ethnic minorities regarding cultural autonomy and indeed survival in a context of an assimilationist state, which for instance forecloses the teaching of ethnic minority languages. Most of our network participants, who teach in non-state facilities and design curricula, stress their desire to utilise education in order to preserve their ethnic identities for instance by mother-tongue based education and alternative narrations of history. Non-state education in this context thus becomes a prime vehicle for aspirations of non-state nationbuilding and resistance to the ethnocratic state in Myanmar. Variation At the same time, our project found an extreme diversity of non-state educational projects linked to the different challenges faced by our participants, which vary largely with regards to their relations to the state and EAOs as well as the make-up of local communities. Before the military coup, some non-state education systems of ethnic minority communities have developed better relations to the state and its official education system than others. Partly this is reflective of the relations between respective EAOs and the state. The education system linked to the EAO Kachin Independence Organisation for instance used to be accredited by the state during the organisation's 17 year long ceasefire between 1994 and 2011. With the resumption of fighting between the KIO and the military, the state's education ministry took away this accreditation, which for instance meant that students from KIO schools could not continue to university in Myanmar. As a response the KIO opened two universities in Mai Ja Yang, a KIO controlled town at the Myanmar-Chinese border and educational hub. By contrast, the Mon Education Department, which is linked to the EAO New Mon State Party, for instance has partly integrated its curriculum with the state curriculum enabling accreditation of its education system. The Karen Education and Culture Department, linked to the EAO Karen National Union, has retained a more separate curriculum and generally a more wary stance towards the state. While both EAOs signed ceasefires and participated in the nationwide peace process their different approaches to education reflects the fact that the Karen are a stronger military force with much larger territorial control that can resist what educationalists from both communities described as state assimilation much more effectively. But not all our participants were linked to EAO education systems. We also learned that some non-state education systems reflect ethnic minority aspirations of cultural autonomy and nationbuilding but prefer to work outside the realm of EAOs or even find themselves in conflict with existing EAOs. One of our participants for instance was a headteacher from a school in Chin State, one of the poorest and most inaccessible mountain regions of Myanmar. While an EAO existed there before the coup (the Chin National Front), the EAO has not been active in education provision due to capacity restraints and non-state educationalists in Chin State also felt more comfortable operating independently from them. This is reflective of the fact that the CNF before the coup had much more limited ties to wider society than for instance the KNU in many Karen communities on the Thai border. One of our participants came from the Shanni ethnic minority in Kachin State, a minority amongst a minority population reflecting the highly diverse nature of Myanmar society. While our Shanni participant expressed similar resentments against the assimilationist nature and ethnocratic oppression of the Myanmar State, they felt that the Kachin nationalist project posed an even more immediate threat. In fact, the conflict between different minorities in Myanmar with competing claims to territorial belonging is not new or specific to the realm of education. Rather it has been an increasing rift in an already deeply divided society. This is not least because the state has sought to exploit such conflicts and divide and rule minority populations as a way of gaining superiority in its borderlands. These conflicts were also present in our network. While our Shanni and Kachin participants argued about the need for greater ethnic minority solidarity between the two groups, the conflict between them drove the Shanni educationalist to provide non-state education with the support of local state authorities instead, a cooperation which increased the mistrust between both communities. The outcome was not comparable in terms of reach and depth (indeed it only meant the provision of a few hours of extracurricular language schooling in the afternoon). But it looked like the only available option for the Shanni community in Kachin State. Transformation? Since the military couped in February 2021 the country has been thrown into chaos and violence nationwide. This has severely impacted our project, please see below. Despite this, we managed to keep sporadic contact to individuals of our local network, and conveyed two online / hybrid meetings with a handful of our participants. What emerged from these meetings is that the coup and nationwide resistance against it has transformed the non-state education landscape, but it is unclear to what effect and with what trajectory for the future. On the one hand, non-state education has been severely disrupted by the coup as the military targets civilian settlements in places of resistance against the coup. Karen schools have been bombarded and whole villages and towns in Karenni and Chin States have been razed to the ground by a genocidal military that seeks to punish its population for rising up against its rule. Following the inactivity of many education programmes during Covid, this has made it impossible for many of our educationalists to continue with their schooling efforts especially for educationalists in places that are military contested, rather than more thoroughly liberated by EAOs or the newer People's Defense Forces (PDFs), guerrilla units that have sprung up across the country in reaction to the coup. The Karen Education and Culture Department for instance has continued schooling children in the liberated areas of south-eastern Myanmar, even though they are battling with new displacement and schools often became mobile units in the forests, or fortified with trenches and make-shift bomb shelters. On the other hand, non-state education systems across the country has seen a significant influx from the official system for two reasons. Firstly, many people fled the military from the central cities, including dissidents from the Bamar ethnic majority. Many of these newly displaced people have also ended up in the liberated areas of EAOs. Our participant from the Karen Education and Culture Department for instance has reported how their schools are now also schooling children from Yangon or Mandalay with the obvious challenges in terms of capacity but also language. Moreover, the countrywide Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM) has brought Myanmar's public sector, including the official education sector, to a standstill as many public service workers, including teachers and professors continue to strike in protest to the military takeover and illegal removal of a democratically elected government. Many parents also refuse to send their children to state schools in fear that their children will be indoctrinated by military propaganda. CDM teachers have therefore often found themselves teaching in existing or newly found non-state education facilities funded by local communities. This is particularly pronounced in the Sagaing and Magway regions, both of which are in the Bamar heartlands but have risen up against the military coup and have partly been liberated by PDF forces. These largely rural regions have also seen some of the brunt of military force that has systematically destroyed civilian settlements and infrastructure on a large scale to punish rebellious populations. With comparatively little military capacity (compared to some of the stronger EAOs) many of these populations have been particularly vulnerable to military reprisals. One of our network participants who is regularly visiting these areas in order to conduct teacher trainings nevertheless, however, reports from the dedication of CDM teacher who continue to teach children in bombed out school buildings under the most horrendous humanitarian conditions. So while non-state education in competition to the official education system has mostly been a phenomenon in ethnic minority border areas before the coup, the coup and the escalation of civil war has normalised non-state education as part of a community-driven response to a complex humanitarian emergency. It is however unclear where this will lead to. Another important and potentially more positive transformation that some of our network members pointed to is that the coup and country-wide resistance to it has opened a window of opportunity for societal reconciliation between different ethnic groups, many of which are fighting the military together. This is also mirrored in the opposition government that has found itself from the remnants of the toppled government as National Unity Government (NUG). Some of our participants are rather cautious about the fact that the NUG is still dominated by a Bamar elite with little understanding of the conditions and demands of ethnic minority projects. Others however place a lot of hope into this new formation, also for the future of ethnic minority education systems. This is not least because one of our network members an ethnic Kachin, has been appointed as the NUG's deputy minister for education. However, all of this is tentative and unfolding in real-time in a context that is dominated by atrocious violence and great uncertainty about the future. |
| Exploitation Route | We believe that assembling the network and engaging with our participants was still worthwhile despite the challenges and limitations. This is because we learned a lot about the diversity of non-state education and the challenges faced by both students and teachers in the context of a permanent and escalating humanitarian crisis in Myanmar (as per above's report). While the objectives of this network grant could not be met, we hope that the situation allows for a more structured reengagement in the future. Most importantly, our network participants themselves reported that they have learned a lot about each other's, often starkly different situations, something that they, too, were not aware about. According to our continued conversations with some of them, it is clear that this is shaping some of their own outlook and engagement (see narrative impact). |
| Sectors | Education Government Democracy and Justice Security and Diplomacy |
| Description | The network has assembled a group of non-state educationalists from diverse ethnic backgrounds from different conflict-affected parts of Myanmar. The first workshop in September 2019 enabled the building of trust between participants and a sharing of experiences. One of the aims from this workshop was to publish a book with essays detailing these diverse experiences for a Burmese-speaking audience, specifically aimed at civil society in Myanmar. Due to the closure of our partner institution, the end of independent publishing in Myanmar as a result of the military coup in 2021, and the situation of our participants in the current civil war this was no longer feasible. For the second workshop that was planned for London in March 2020, staff from DfID was planning to attend a dedicated policy session and we wanted to link our collaborators from Myanmar up with non-state educationalists from other contexts in order to facilitate global networks. The third workshop that was planned to be held in December 2020 in Yangon was meant to engage policy makers and civil society in Myanmar with our findings. Unfortunately, Covid-19 and the military coup made both workshops impossible. Nevertheless, the network has made a lasting impact on its participants itself. Several of them reported that it was transformative to learn about the challenges faced by educationalists form other ethnic communities and the sharing of experiences in a deeply-divided society where different ethnic communities often know very little about each other. As a result of the hybrid workshop held in December 2021, our network collaborators have started to engage with striking high school teachers from the civil disobedience movement in regular online workshops. In these our collaborators explain the difficult context of ethnic minority education and provide an insight into existing non-state education projects that the majority of Myanmar's population is usually unaware of. This is significant because there is now a direct and critical engagement between ethnic minority non-state educationalists and ethnic majority educationalists form the formal state system as well as the new non-state education systems in ethnic majority communities that have sprung up as a reaction to the coup. It enables the network to achieve similar aims that it had with its book project. |
| First Year Of Impact | 2022 |
| Sector | Communities and Social Services/Policy,Education |
| Impact Types | Cultural Societal |
| Description | CI David Brenner is travelling to a UKRI/GCRF workshop on education (INEE Learning Agenda consultation) in Dhaka, Bangladesh to present a thematic overview of our research and findings as well as on challenges with regards to research ethics, dissemination and impact, and equitable research partnership. |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | tbc once the workshop has been completed |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2020 |
| Description | Hybrid workshop on Thai-Myanmar border |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Study participants or study members |
| Results and Impact | In a hybrid (online/in-person) workshop we engaged with eight of our network members in different parts of Myanmar as well as on the Thai-Myanmar border. The workshop resulted in the engagement of our network members with striking CDM teachers, and thus a depending of the inter-ethnic engagement of non-state educationalists that the Myitkyina workshop initiated. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| Description | Myitkyina Workshop |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Our first workshop in Myitkyina, the capital of Kachin State in northern Myanmar, brought together our network members from across Myanmar with local educationalists, community leaders, civil society and academics from Myitkyina in a discussion between different ethnic communities and their experiences with non-state education. Several participants remarked that this was a unique encounter that changed their views about other ethnic communities and helped to build cross-ethnic solildarity. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019 |