The history and politics of schooling in Myanmar

ABSTRACT

Schooling is a critical topic in Myanmar’s socio-political discourse that involves multiple interests and actors. Different stakeholders deploy schools for various ends, such as the training of workers, cultural subjugation, identity preservation, religious imposition, political propagation and social control. This article identifies the main stakeholders and traces their strategies for pursuing their interests across the development of schooling. The article also highlights the correlated implications of schooling and socio-political conflicts throughout the history of Myanmar.

KEYWORDS:

• History of schooling
• actors and interests
• Myanmar/Burma
• politics of schooling
• Burmanisation

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Aung Kaung Myant, Dr Ling Kee Htang, Sena Galazzi, and the two anonymous reviewers for their feedback on my earlier drafts. My appreciation also goes to the Faculty of Education in the University of Hong Kong for the English editing service. I am also indebted to my friend Dr Ewan Wright for providing me with comments on my writing and helping me to polish my English expressions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

¹ “Myanmar” and “Burma” are confusing terms in the literature. Thant Myint-U remarked that the change of the country’s name from Burma to Myanmar was intended to legitimise the Union formed in 1948 as a succession from the “Myanma minn” (Kings of Myanmar). Thant Myint-U, The Hidden History of Burma: Race, Capitalism, and the Crisis of Democracy in the 21st Century (New York: W.W. Norton, 2020), xii. In this article, “Burma” is used when referring to Burma proper or the territories estimated to be part of the Myanma kingdom before the British occupation in 1886, and “Myanmar” is used when referring to the modern Union State formed in 1948.

² UNHCR Regional Bureau for Asia and the Pacific (RBAP), Myanmar Emergency Update, 6 April 2022, https://reliefweb.int/report/myanmar/unhcr-regional-bureau-asia-and-pacific-rbap-myanmar-emergency-external-update-6-april.

³ Michael W. Apple, “Power and School Knowledge”, The Review of Education 3, no. 1 (1977): 26. He said, “The structuring of knowledge and symbols in school is related to the principles of social and political control in a society”.

⁴ Michael Apple, Ideology and Curriculum. 3rd ed. (New York: Routledge Falmer, 2004).

⁵ Sabyasachi Bhattacharya, ed., The Contested Terrain: Perspectives on Education in India (New Delhi: Orient Longman, 1998).

⁶ Ministry of Labour, Immigration and Population, http://www.dop.gov.mm/en (accessed 20 July 2020).

⁷ Martin Smith, “The Ravages of History”, in Ethnic Groups in Burma: Development, Democracy and Human Rights (London: Anti-Slavery International, 1994), 34. This figure refers to the estimated 29 million Burman people of the 45 million total population at that time.

⁸ The 2014 Myanmar Population and Housing Census, The Union Report: Religion, Census Report Volume 2-C (2016), 3.

⁹ Kenneth D. Bush and Diana Saltarelli, eds., The Two Faces of Education in Ethnic Conflict: Towards a Peacebuilding Education for Children (Florence: UNICEF, 2000).

¹⁰ Nick Cheesman, “School, State and Sangha in Burma”, Comparative Education 39, no. 1 (2003); and C. B. Tipton, “Monks, Monasteries and Western Education in Colonial Burma”, Journal of Educational Administration and History 13, no. 1 (1981).

¹¹ Ashley South and Marie Lall, Schooling and Conflict: Ethnic Education and Mother Tongue-based Teaching in Myanmar (USAID and The Asia Foundation, 2016).

¹² Paul Standish, “Chroniclers and critics”, Paedagogica Historica 44, no. 6 (2008): 672. He also stated that analysing the past in as much detail as s/he can and disclosing his/her every standpoint is essential in a critical but historical writing (p. 674).

¹³ Cheesman, “School, State and Sangha in Burma”, 48.

¹⁴ Owen Hillman, “Education in Burma”, The Journal of Negro Education 15, no. 3 (1946): 527.

¹⁵ C. B. Tipton, “Western Education, Modernisation and the Burmese Court during the 19th Century”, Journal of Educational Administration and History 6, no. 1 (1974): 1.

¹⁶ Ibid.

¹⁷ Ibid.

¹⁸ C. B. Tipton, “The Beginning of English Education in Colonial Burma”, Journal of Educational Administration and History 8, no. 2 (1976): 19.

¹⁹ Report on the Administration of the Province of Pegu for 1855–6, 28.

²⁰ L.E. Bagshawe, “A Study of the Burmese Books approved for use in Schools by the Education Department in 1885, and of Their Place in the Developing Education System in British Burma” (Master’s thesis, University of London: SOAS, 1976), 16.

²¹ Report of the Administration of the Province of Pegu for 1855–6, 28–30. See the diverse forms of schooling in the record.

²² Hillman, “Education in Burma”, 531.

²³ Tipton, “Western Education, Modernisation and the Burmese Court”, 2.

²⁴ Ibid.

²⁵ Bagshawe, “A Study of the Burmese Books”, 7.

²⁶ Tipton, “Western Education, Modernisation and the Burmese Court”, 3.

²⁷ John E. Marks, Forty Years in Burma (London: Hutchinson, 1917), 71. He mentioned those as subjects tested for students in British-Burma. Because he also administered schools in the Myanma king’s territory, the subjects taught in both areas were expected to be the same.

²⁸ Thant Myint-U, The Making of Modern Burma (Cambridge University Press, 2004), 106, 112.

²⁹ Tipton, “Western Education, Modernisation and the Burmese Court”, 3.

³⁰ William Womack, “Contesting Indigenous and Female Authority in the Burma Baptist Mission: The case of Ellen Mason”, Women’s History Review 17, no. 4 (2008): 545–6, 548.

³¹ Alexander Campbell, “Education in Burma”, Journal of Royal Society of Arts 94, no. 4719 (1946): 441. In contrast, some schools had been granted aid in the Annual Report on the Administration of the Province of Pegu for the Year 1858–59, 585.

³² Arthur P. Phayre, Report of the Administration of the Province of British Burma for the Year 1863–64 (Calcutta: O. T. Cutter, Military Orphan Press, 1964), 27.

³³ Campbell, “Education in Burma”, 440.

³⁴ Womack, “Contesting Indigenous and Female Authority”, 544, 550.

³⁵ Scott O’Brien, “Karen Perspectives on Schooling in their Communities: Indigenous Knowledge and Western Models of Education” (Master’s thesis, University of Toronto, 2004), 23.

³⁶ Tipton, “The Beginning of English Education in Colonial Burma”, 27.

³⁷ Jörg Schendel, “Christian Missionaries in Upper Burma, 1853–85”, South East Asia Research 7, no. 1 (1999), 62.

³⁸ See note 33 above.

³⁹ Myo Myint, “The Politics of Survival in Burma: Diplomacy and Statecraft in the Reign of King Mindon, 1853–1878” (PhD Diss., Cornell University, 1987), 140–88.

⁴⁰ Tipton, “Western Education, Modernisation and the Burmese Court”, 6. He cited the “Proceedings of the Administration of British Burma” (Foreign Department, 1884), 6.

⁴¹ Ibid., 4.

⁴² Government of Burma, Report on the Administration of Burma for the Year 1935–36 (Rangoon: Supdt. Govt. Printing and Stationery, 1937), 131–2.

⁴³ Government of Burma, Report on Public Instruction in British Burma for the Year 1925–26 (Rangoon: Supdt. Govt. Printing and Stationery, 1927), xii, 91. The report stated that “one-fifth of the total recognised vernacular schools and nearly all private vernacular schools were monastic” (p. 91), but the context of this was Burma, excluding the frontier areas.

⁴⁴ See note 33 above.

⁴⁵ Ibid., 441; and Hillman, “Education in Burma”, 529. Hillman estimated that there were about 18,000 unregistered monastic schools in 1933.

⁴⁶ Cheesman, “School, State and Sangha in Burma”, 53. He cited Htin Aung (1967).

⁴⁷ C. B. Tipton, “Monks, Monasteries and Western Education in Colonial Burma”, Journal of Educational Administration and History 13, no. 1 (1981): 29. He credited the “Report on Public Instruction in British Burma for the Year 1925–26, p. 9”, but I do not have access to that document.

⁴⁸ Cheesman, “School, State and Sangha in Burma”, 51.

⁴⁹ Hillman, “Education in Burma”, 529.

⁵⁰ Government of Burma, Report on Public Instruction in British Burma for the Year 1931–32 (Rangoon: Supdt. Govt. Printing and Stationery, 1933), 142.

⁵¹ Campbell, “Education in Burma”, 441.

⁵² Pierre Bourdieu and Jean-Claude Passeron, Reproduction in Education, Society, and Culture, trans. Richard Nice (London, Newbury Park & New Delhi, [1989] 1990), xi. He said, “[C]redentials contribute to ensuring the reproduction of social inequality”.

⁵³ See note 33 above.

⁵⁴ Tipton, “Monk, Monasteries and Western Education in Colonial Burma”, 27–8.

⁵⁵ John. F. Bowerman, “The Frontier Areas of Burma”, Journal of the Royal Society 95, no. 4732 (December 6, 1946): 47.

⁵⁶ Womack, “Contesting Indigenous and Female Authority in the Burma Baptist Mission”, 548.

⁵⁷ Union of Burma, Octennial Report on Education in Burma (1947–48 to 1854–55) (Rangoon, 1956), 6. The report said that the attempt was done with 3,000 primary schools, 300 middle schools and 100 high schools.

⁵⁸ Ibid., 6–8.

⁵⁹ Bowerman, “The Frontier Areas of Burma”, 49–50.

⁶⁰ Union of Burma, Octennial Report on Education in Burma, 9.

⁶¹ Thein Lwin, Education in Burma (1945–2000). 2nd ed. (2000), 5, http://www.thinkingclassroom.org/resources.html (accessed 22 February 2019).

⁶² Charles W. Prewitt, “Science Education in Burma and the Fulbright Program”, Science Education 43, no. 3 (1959): 259.

⁶³ Hillman, “Education in Burma”, 533. He acknowledged the challenge of using English for Burmese but also warned of the need to integrate with the development of Western science.

⁶⁴ Tipton, “Monks, Monasteries and Western Education in Colonial Burma”, 29.

⁶⁵ See note 51 above.

⁶⁶ Hillman, “Education in Burma”, 533.

⁶⁷ Burmanisation refers to the imposition of Buddhist-Burman ways of knowing and living by using different means such as the school curriculum, language policy, school uniforms, literacy campaigns, development projects, and so on. For example, Richard Cockett, Blood, Dreams and Gold: The Changing Face of Burma (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015), 82–90. Cockett analysed the way the dominant identity was imposed on ethnic and religious minorities through schooling and the school curriculum. Brooke A. Treadwell, “Downplaying Difference: Representations of Diversity in Contemporary Burmese Schools and Education Equity”, in Equity, Opportunity and Education in Postcolonial Southeast Asia, ed. Cynthia Joseph and Julie Matthews (Oxon: Routledge, 2014), 32–57. Treadwell criticised the way that dominant norms and values were overemphasised in primary school texts. Mary P. Callahan, “Language Policy in Modern Burma”, 163–4. Callahan remarked that the government’s literacy campaigns undermined the languages, arts, values and norms of minorities. Mary P. Callahan, Making Enemies: War and State Building in Burma (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003), 215. Callahan remarked how developmental projects were deployed for the expansion of Burmanisation. Matthew Walton, “‘The Wage of Burman-ness: Ethnicity and Burman Privilege in Contemporary Myanmar”, Journal of Contemporary Asia 43, no. 1 (2012): 12. Walton highlighted the ways that Burmanisation was implemented not only through schooling, but also through the renaming of cities, streets, geographical landmarks, and so on.

⁶⁸ Department of Education and Culture, “Brief History of Karen Education”, Karen National Union, https://www.knuhq.org/public/en/department/education_and_culture (accessed 20 January 2022).

⁶⁹ Ryuichi Sugiyama, National Curriculum Review in Myanmar: Technical Input for CESR Working Group (PACECO Co. Ltd., 2013), 1.

⁷⁰ Cheesman, “State, School and Sangha in Burma”, 54. He cited U Nu’s words from Economic and Social Board (1954), 113.

⁷¹ Thein Lwin, Education in Burma, 8.

⁷² Frank E. Wolf, “Education in Burma: No Blackboard Jungle”, Science Education 43, no. 3 (1959): 264.

⁷³ Tharaphi Than, “The Languages of Pyidawtha and the Burmese Approach to National Development”, South East Asia Research 21, no. 4 (2013): 640.

⁷⁴ Prewitt, “Science Education in Burma and the Fulbright Program”, 258.

⁷⁵ Ibid.

⁷⁶ See note 71 above.

⁷⁷ Union of Burma, Octennial Report on Education in Burma. The report included a paragraph that included 12 sentences in section 0a titled, “Education of the Mons”, 32. The paragraph mentioned that the “Education Department took action to preserve Mon language and culture” and cited the appointment of 10 Mon language teachers. However, the sections referring to the “new language policy” and “Burmese as the medium of instruction” only discussed the challenges that Burmese children faced when learning English, and there was no mention of potentially similar challenges that children of other ethnicities might have faced when learning Burmese, 12–29.

⁷⁸ Zar Ni, “The Nationalization of Education in Burma: A Radical Response to the Capitalist Development” (paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Francisco, CA, 18–22 April 1995), 18.

⁷⁹ Ibid.

⁸⁰ Frauke Kraas, Aung Kyaw and Nay Min Oo, “Education and Education System”, in Socio-Economic Atlas of Myanmar, ed. Frauke Kraas, Regine Spohner and Aye Aye Myint (Franz Steiner Verlag, 2017), 144.

⁸¹ Cheesman, “School, State and Sangha in Burma”, 55; and Ministry of Religious Affairs and Culture, “Department for the Promotion and Propagation of Sasana”, http://www.mora.gov.mm/mora_sasana1.aspx (accessed 6 August 2020). One of this ministry’s objectives is “Missionary tasks are to be based in hilly regions and extended to other necessary regions”.

⁸² Thein Lwin, Education in Burma, 3. U Nu’s government faced many challenges at that time. See also Tharaphi Than, “The Languages of Pyidawtha and the Burmese Approach to National Development”.

⁸³ Maureen Aung-Thwin and Thant Myint, “The Burmese Ways to Socialism”, Third World Quarterly 13, no. 1 (1992): 71.

⁸⁴ South and Lall, Schooling and Conflict, 13.

⁸⁵ Department of Education & Culture, “Brief History of Karen Education”, https://www.knuhq.org/public/en/department/education_and_culture (accessed 11 November 2021).

⁸⁶ Prewitt, “Science Education in Burma and the Fulbright Program”, 261.

⁸⁷ David I. Steinberg, Burma/Myanmar: What Everyone Needs to Know (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 64.

⁸⁸ Thein Lwin, Education in Burma,10.

⁸⁹ Zar Ni, “The Nationalization of Education in Burma”, 21.

⁹⁰ Thein Lwin, Education in Burma, 9.

⁹¹ Callahan, Making Enemies, 215; Callahan, “Language Policy in Modern Burma”, 163–4; and Walton, “The Wage of Burman-Ness”, 12.

⁹² Thein Lwin, Education in Burma, 11.

⁹³ Callahan, “Language Policy in modern Burma”, 163–4.

⁹⁴ Cheesman, “School, State and Sangha in Burma”, 56.

⁹⁵ Ibid.

⁹⁶ See note 90 above.

⁹⁷ Nicolas Salem-Gervais and Van Cung Lian, “How Many Chin Languages Should be Taught in Government Schools?”, Parami Journal of Education 1, no. 1 (2020): 122–40.

⁹⁸ Marie Lall, “Evolving Education in Myanmar: The Interplay of State, Business, and the Community”, in Dictatorship, Disorder, and Decline in Myanmar, ed. Monique Skidmore and Trevor Wilson (The Australian National University: E Press, 2008), 127–50; and Jasmin Lorch, “The (Re)-emergence of Civil Society in Areas of State Weakness: The Case of Education in Burma/Myanmar”, in Dictatorship, Disorder, and Decline in Myanmar, ed Monique Skidmore and Trevor Wilson (The Australian National University: E Press, 2008), 151–76.

⁹⁹ For the number of groups and schools, see Kim Jollife, Ethnic Conflict and Social Services in Myanmar’s Contested Regions (The Asia Foundation, 2014).

¹⁰⁰ Kim Jolliffe, Ethnic Conflict and Social Services, 15–22.

¹⁰¹ Nicolas Salem-Gervais and Rosalie Metro, “A Textbook Case of Nation-Building: The Evolution of History Curricula in Myanmar”, The Journal of Burma Studies 16, no. 1 (2012): 59–68.

¹⁰² Nicolas Salem-Gervais and Mael Raynaud, Teaching Ethnic Minority Languages in Government Schools and Developing the Local Curriculum: Elements of Decentralisation in Language-in-Education Policy (Yangon: Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, 2020), 15–16.

¹⁰³ Salem-Gervais and Raynaud, Teaching Ethnic Minority Languages in Government Schools, 15–16.

¹⁰⁴ Soe Soe Aung, Government Expenditure on Education: Working Paper Series No. 4.2 (Yangon: Myanmar Education Research Bureau, UNESCO and UNDP, 1992).

¹⁰⁵ See U Han Tin, Mid-Decade Review of Education for All (Yangon: Ministry of Education).

¹⁰⁶ Education Sector Study phase II: Draft Proposal for Education Development, vol. I (Yangon: Myanmar Education Research Bureau, UNESCO and UNDP, 1993).

¹⁰⁷ Sugiyama, National Curriculum Review in Myanmar, 1.

¹⁰⁸ Thein Lwin, Education in Burma, 14–15. There were changes in 1991 and 1993, but this citation refers to changes in 2000–2001.

¹⁰⁹ U Han Tin, Mid-Decade Review of Education for All, 2.

¹¹⁰ Ministry of Education, “Education for All: Access to and Quality of Education in Myanmar” (Paper presented at Development Policy Options with Special Reference to Education and Health in Myanmar, Naypyitaw: Myanmar, 13–16 February 2012), 2.

¹¹¹ Ibid.

¹¹² Cheesman, “Legitimising the Union of Myanmar through Primary School Textbooks” (MEd Dissertation, The University of Western Australia, 2002), 70.

¹¹³ Treadwell, “Teaching citizenship under an authoritarian regime: A case-study of Burma/Myanmar” (PhD Dissertation, Indiana University, 2013).

¹¹⁴ Treadwell, “Downplaying Differences”, 32–56. See also Cockett, Blood, Dreams and Gold, 82–90.

¹¹⁵ Metro, “Myanma Identity and the Shifting Value of the Classical Past: A case study of King Kyansittha in Burmese History Textbooks, 1829–2017”, in Southeast Asian Education in Modern History: Schools, Manipulation, and Contest, ed. Pia Maria Jolliffe and Thomas Richard Bruce (London: Routledge: Taylor & Francis, 2019), 12.

¹¹⁶ Ministry of Border Affairs, https://myanmar.gov.mm/ministry-of-border-affairs (accessed 23 August 2020). In the 2017/18 academic year, it runs 1 university, 2 degree colleges, 9 technical schools, 45 training schools, 45 vocational training girls’ schools, and 6,719 students in its training schools.

¹¹⁷ Elizabeth J. T. Maber, “Conflict and Peacebuilding: Background, Challenges and Intersections with Education”, In Sustainable Peacebuilding and Social Justice in Times of Transition: Findings on the role of Education in Myanmar, ed. Mieke T. A. Lopes and Elizabeth J. T. Maber (Springer International, 2019), 56–7.

¹¹⁸ Ibid.; and South and Lall, Schooling and Conflict, 29.

¹¹⁹ Lorch, “(Re)-emergence of Civil Society”, 157. Additionally, this author’s cousin, a Christian, was a student in a MOBA training school in Chin State in the 2010s, and the school forced him to wear Buddhist robes during summer holidays.

¹²⁰ Ministry of Religious Affairs and Culture, http://www.mora.gov.mm/mora_sasana1.aspx (accessed 3 August 2020).

¹²¹ Nyein (Shalom) Foundation, Myanmar Language Learning Levels of Ethnic Nationality Children with Different Levels of Burmese Language Exposure (Nyein [Shalom] Foundation: unpublished report, 2011).

¹²² Nicolas Edwards, “How Important is Mother Tongue Education to the Chin Community in Myanmar” (paper presented at the 2nd International Conference on Burma/Myanmar Studies, University of Mandalay, 16–18 February 2018).

¹²³ National Strategic Education Plan (Naypyitaw: Ministry of Education, 2016), 36–8, 100–24.

¹²⁴ Elizabeth J. T. Maber, Hla Win May Oo and Sean Higgins, “Understanding the Changing Roles of Teachers in Transitional Myanmar”, in Sustainable Peacebuilding and Social Justice in Times of Transition: Findings on the Role of Education in Myanmar, ed. Mieke T. A. Lopes and Elizabeth J. T. Maber (Springer International, 2019), 121.

¹²⁵ National Strategic Education Plan, 38, 100–24.

¹²⁶ Myanmar Statistical Yearbook 2017, 152.

¹²⁷ Myanmar Statistical Yearbook 2019 (Naypyitaw: Ministry of Education, 2019), 163. There were 79 private primary schools, 67 middle schools, and 584 high schools with a total of 179,183 students in the 2017/18 academic year compared to 62 private primary schools, 49 middle schools, and 474 high schools in the 2016/17 academic year.

¹²⁸ Lopes and Maber, eds., Sustainable Peacebuilding and Social Justice in Times of Transition. These main issues and concerns, as seen through the four frameworks – redistribution, recognition, representation and reconciliation (pp. 260–5) – might summarise their book.

¹²⁹ Rosalie Metro, “Center, Periphery, and Boundary in the New Myanmar Curriculum” (paper presented at Myanmar Studies from Center, Periphery, and Boundary International Symposium, Naypyitaw: Myanmar, 16–17 September 2019), 5–12.

¹³⁰ Salem-Gervais and Raynaud, Teaching Ethnic Minority Languages in Government Schools, 83.

¹³¹ Ibid., 120.

¹³² South and Lall, Schooling and Conflict, 38.

¹³³ Apple, “Power and School Knowledge”, 26.

¹³⁴ A. Green, Education and State Formation: Europe, East Asia and the USA. 2nd ed. (Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 306. He said that new (or underdeveloped) countries emphasise state formation as a necessity while developed countries focus on skill formation for economic development.

¹³⁵ Tipton, “Monks, Monasteries and Western Education in Colonial Burma”, 23. He seemed to quote it from “Report on Public Instruction in British Burma for the Year 1867–68”, 62, but I cannot access that document.

¹³⁶ Tipton, “Western Education, Modernisation and the Burmese Court”, 3–4. The king invited Catholic and Anglican churches to open schools in his palaces and supported their expenses. However, when he realised that the missionaries were not supportive of his political agenda, he stopped giving grants to the schools and even withdrew his son from one of them.

¹³⁷ Womack, “Contesting Indigenous and Female Authority in the Burma Baptist Mission”, 548.

¹³⁸ Ministry of Religious Affairs and Culture, “Department for the Promotion and Propagation of Sasana”, http://www.mora.gov.mm/mora_sasana1.aspx (accessed 6 August 2020). One of the department’s objectives is to convey the Sasana (Buddhism) to the hill people.

¹³⁹ O’Brien, “Karen Perspectives on Schooling in their Communities”, 23.

¹⁴⁰ Thein Lwin, Education in Burma, 10; Callahan, Making Enemies, 215; Callahan, “Language Policy in Modern Burma”, 163–4; and Walton, “The Wage of Burman-Ness”, 12.

¹⁴¹ Campbell, “Education in Burma”, 442; and Lall, “Evolving Education in Myanmar”, 132–4. Campbell praised missionaries for having “made an invaluable contribution to the development of education in Burma”, whereas Lall considered Buddhist monasteries to be the leading educational institutes.

¹⁴² Tipton, “Monks, Monasteries and Western Education in Colonial Burma”, 29.

¹⁴³ Womack, “Contesting Indigenous and Female Authority in the Burma Baptist Mission”, 544, 551.

¹⁴⁴ Lall, “Evolving Education in Myanmar”; and Lorch, “(Re)-emergence of Civil Society”.

¹⁴⁵ Tipton, “Beginning of English Education in Colonial Burma”, 27; and Campbell, “Education in Burma”, 440.

¹⁴⁶ South and Lall, Schooling and Conflict, 29.

¹⁴⁷ Yoonmi Lee, “Religion, modernity and politics: colonial education and the Australian mission in Korea, 1910–1941”, Paedagogica Historica 52, no. 6 (2016): 596–613. Lee stated that missionaries often clashed with the colonial Japanese who tried to employ schooling for political agendas by standardising curriculum and schooling structures.

¹⁴⁸ Brendan Carmody, “The politics of Catholic Education in Zambia: 1964–2001”, Paedagogica Historica 39, no. 3 (2003): 301–2.

¹⁴⁹ Ibid.

¹⁵⁰ Tejendra Pherali, “A critical analysis of conflict, education and fragility in Nepal: Towards a peacebuilding education”, in The Contested Role of Education in Conflict and Fragility, ed. Zehavit Gross and Lynn Davies (Rotterdam: Sense Publishers, 2015), 121.

¹⁵¹ Bush and Saltarelli, The Two Faces of Education in Ethnic Conflict.

¹⁵² See note 33 above.

¹⁵³ Thein Lwin, Education in Burma, 10.

¹⁵⁴ Green, Education and State Formation, 305–7.

¹⁵⁵ See for recent developments: Rosalie Metro, “The emerging alternatives to military slave education”, Frontier Myanmar, 24 June 2021, https://www.frontiermyanmar.net/en/the-emerging-alternatives-to-military-slave-education/?fbclid=IwAR0vJE5MhuAr4hemeEhQxeUnqktRxJN-HJNh95KLBf8VcAy-FEIefkIlJyo.

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Kam Tung Tuang Suante

Kam Tung Tuang Suante is a PhD candidate in the University of Hong Kong.