UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN - MADISON

Education Policies along the Thailand-Burma

borderHow the Past affects the Present

December 1, 2012

Chapter 1: Introduction

In 2007, I started working along the Thailand-Burma border as a coordinator for the

teacher education program in two refugee camps, which housed a total of 30,000 refugees from

the armed conflict inside Burma. The teacher training program was one of four tertiary

education opportunities, including further academic training, medical training, teacher training,

and community development, available to Grade 10 graduates in the camps. Positions in tertiary

education programs were somewhat competitive, with admission based on Grade 10 overall

scores and an admission test. The students ranked each of the four programs according to their

preference, then the decisions based on preference and scores were made by the camp education

committee. On average, students rated the teacher training center third of the four options.

The mission of the teacher training center was to train Grade 10 graduates to be teachers

in the camp schools. The program was one academic year in length. The curriculum for training

teachers was developed by a Thai national and several Westerners working for an NGO, using

“best practices” as defined by INEE, including child-centered teaching methods, active learning,

and assessment techniques that included projects in addition to written exams. Burmese

language was the official medium of instruction; there were a number of different languages in

the camp but Burmese was considered to be the lingua franca. My job was to act as a technical

backstop for the administrator of the teacher training center.

The year I spent working in the refugee camp allowed me to get to know the

administration of the school, as well as the teachers and a few of the students. The head master

and I spent many afternoons discussing pedagogy, educational philosophy, and the applicability

of various program requirements to this particular setting. During that time, he was my best

friend.

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After about a year, I left the Thailand-Burma border for a similar job in Liberia. When I

arrived in Liberia, I was surprised at just how similar the jobs were. I worked with a teacher

training program, modifying and implementing curricula written by Western NGO workers and

based on INEE “best practices”. The student teachers I worked with and the children they would

be teaching, however, were completely different from those I had worked in the refugee camps.

Some of the differences were obvious: along the border, I worked with refugees; in Liberia, I

worked with returning refugees in their own country. Along the border, there was no state

government responsible for the education of refugee children and it fell to the NGOs to

coordinate with international bodies and the Royal Thai Government (RTG) in order to provide

education services; in Liberia, the a newly-elected president had tasked the newly-formed

Ministry of Education with developing an education system, one part of which was teacher

training.

These differences are important and meaningful at the policy level, however at the

individual level, where differences were measured as the ability/willingness of the

“beneficiaries” to learn and implement teaching best practices, these differences were not

important. The majority of the teacher trainers and the student teachers from both Liberia and

from along the border were interested in being good teachers, and they focused on their students,

not on education policy or political context.

I worked with individual teacher trainers to help them understand and implement the

INEE “best practices” in their classrooms full of student teachers. Whilst visiting schools in

Liberia I saw differences between student and teacher interactions in Liberia and along the Thai-

Burma border that caused me to question the applicability of “best practices” for all students,

regardless of cultural context.

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One of the most striking differences was the way students and teachers related to each

other. Respect was clearly important in both places, but the way it was embodied and

understood was vastly different. And the way students interacted with their parents, too, looked

different, although it was also based on respect in both Liberia and along the border. Gender

relations varied widely from Liberia to the Thailand-Burma border, and acceptable behavior

norms and attitudes in one place would not transfer to the other. I began to wonder how “best

practices” would be able to address the needs of both Liberian student teachers and the student

teachers along the border when they were clearly so different.

I began a process of reflexivity, taking into account my culture and background (White,

college-educated, female, US citizen from a rural area). I soon realized the painfulness of this

process as discussed by both de Jong (2009). The assumptions I had made about the purpose of

schooling, about the meaning of schooling, and about the definition of a “successful” student

were reflective of Western culture, my culture, not Liberian or Burmese cultures. They reflected

my own understandings of my life in the US, and I was working night and day to “help” the

teacher trainers reproduce these understandings for themselves and their student teachers. As de

Jong (2009) discusses, the immediate result of reflexivity was guilt, paralysis, and a feeling of

complicity. But I also felt bewildered-lied to. How could the universal best practices promote

assumptions, such as the universality of individualism, competition, and Western logic, that now

seemed to me to be so biased and skewed toward a Western paradigm?

One certainty that I lost from this process was that I was no longer certain that there was

one right way to educate children. Another certainty I lost was the belief that I had a lot to offer

the “beneficiaries” in terms of technical backstopping and mentoring teacher trainers in

educational “best practices”. A certainty that I gained was the belief and understanding of the

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critical role “beneficiaries” played in developing and interpreting best practices appropriate for

their communities. As a corollary to the previous certainty, I became certain that I did not know

who the “beneficiaries” or “Others”-either the Liberian Others of the border others-were; their

hidden transcripts, their unspoken assumptions previously being of only cursory importance to

me. I felt ashamed that I had ever allowed myself to think I knew the answer. Despite the

rhetoric of education and culture, I had failed to ask those I worked with for their thoughts,

feelings, and understandings of the “best practices” I was preaching. (How) did these fit with

their local practices, with their ideas of what a successful student looked like, with the

relationship of the school to the community?

De Jong (2009) discusses the idea of complicity-productive, constructive and otherwise.

This, however, was not my reaction. I knew I could no longer work in the capacity in which I

had been working-that of a technical backstop for teacher training programs in “developing”

settings. I also knew I could not just walk away—during my time in Asia and Liberia, I had

grown to love and respect (in my sense of the word) the people I worked with. The fact that I

came from such a privileged background seemed to obligate me to do something—and to

carefully consider what that “something” was.

To consider the situation carefully required critical thinking, however my definition of

critical thinking changed, and I no longer accept the idea that to “think critically” means to look

for more nuanced “facts”. I now believe that to think critically requires one to think

empathetically; it requires listening, immersion in a setting, questioning both self and others, and

accepting ambiguous answers and definitions. I needed to question my assumptions-where did

they come from and where were they leading me. This change in my definition of critical

thinking marked the end of my time working with INGOs and the beginning of this study.

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Ideally, this study would compare and contrast the education systems along the Thailand-

Burma border and in Liberia in order to see the different ways of understanding and

implementing “best practices”. What I’ve learned, though, is that to think empathetically

requires a complete immersion into a context. It requires everything from learning the language

to making deep and lasting friendships. It also means learning the stories and the songs that my

friends learned as children. To think empathetically with a group of people, it is necessary to

know some of their history. What forms the foundation of their beliefs, what events have shaped

their present situation, knowledge, and attitudes? It is exhilarating and exhausting and never

completely finished.

For me, learning to think empathetically was only possible in either Liberia or along the

Thailand-Burma border; I don’t have the fortitude to do both. I chose to try and learn to think

empathetically with the people along the border. I speculate that this choice was influenced by

my work with a small NGO and daily contact with refugee children, teachers, and parents along

the border as opposed to my work with a large INGO in Liberia where my daily contacts were

limited to the teacher trainers and a number of NGO staff working on the program. Whatever the

rationale for the choice, it has been made, and this study documents my efforts to think

empathetically about education with the ethnic minority people living along the Thailand and

Burma border.

By nature, I am a comparativist, thus examining a singular situation is meaningless unless

it is compared to something else. In this case, I compare education along the Thailand-Burmese

border before and after 2005, the year when educational opportunities for Burmese migrants

dramatically increased. The purpose of this study is to examine how access to education for

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Burmese migrants living along the Thailand-Burma border has been understood by dominant

groups in Thailand and Burma in terms of the purpose of educating ethnic minority children.

The three themes I examine throughout this study are governance, morality and merit,

and social structure. These three themes initially emerged out of my participant observations at

schools and teacher training workshops; they were reinforced by observations from my daily life

when living and working along the border. The first theme, governance, became a theme as a

direct outgrowth of my daily commute through police checkpoints on my way to schools for

undocumented migrant children. This part of Thailand is highly militarized, and the interactions

between Thai, Burmese, and Western people (tourists and NGO workers) are governed by ID

cards, passports, and visas, with discussions regularly centering on, although virtually never

overtly articulating, one’s right to be in Thailand. Once I arrived in the schools, I found the

headmasters and teachers policing themselves with regards to what content and even what

pedagogies to use with their students. Morality and merit came from observations that, along the

Thailand-Burma border, most Burmese people indicated that education was a human right, and

conversations about employment were virtually all initiated by me. I began to wonder about the

clandestine human rights training courses conducted along the border by NGOs. I know there

are a lot of them, but has everyone adopted the lingo? What exactly did Burmese migrants mean

when they said “human right”? The idea that it was a moral obligation to ensure students had

access to education was clear, and I was curious to know more about the origin of the moral

obligation to fulfill access to a human right. The third theme, social structure, came as a natural

outgrowth of the previous two. In the West, the social hierarchy is determined most often by

one’s political/economic status. Along the border, there was clearly a hierarchy that involved

one’s ethnicity and citizenship status. (How) did education along the border meet the

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requirements of Western authorities, fulfill the moral obligation toward education, comply with

Thai immigration standards, and affect one’s citizenship status?

This paper makes three main arguments. One argument is that education policies

stemming from the British desire to fulfill their “moral mandate” helped to facilitate a change in

Burmese social hierarchy and worldview. The social hierarchy that followed the educational

policies was based on access to “quality” education, which in turn was a function of ethnicity.

The worldview promoted by the British was based on a social structure that privileged

individuals and secular meritocracy over collectivism and Buddhist rebirth. A second argument

is that undocumented children and families are effectively removed from the discussion of access

to education for all. The lack of access and voice they experience is a result of the interface

between the global, state, and local level education and immigration policies and authorities. A

final argument is that the pedagogy promoted by NGOs along the Thailand-Burma border is not

value-neutral; rather it mirrors the British educational policies of the nineteenth century.

Themes

Governance

Governance is the use of political authority and institutional resources to manage a

country by employing policies and institutional resources to define and enforce acceptable and

unacceptable behavior for and by the polity (World Bank, 2006). This enforcement of policies

has been an integral part of regulating the behavior of ethnic minority people living along the

border for over 200 years. The interaction between Burma and the British began when the East

India Company urged the British government to take possession of Burma in order to extract the

natural resources found there. To establish the right to the Burmese resources, Britain needed to

be recognized as the ruling power over Burmese land and people, thus after defeating the

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Burmese in armed conflict, the British began to design and implement policies to regulate trade,

education, and citizenship as a way of controlling the population and land.

Thailand has historically been a militarized state, with the Ministry of Interior (MOI)

playing a key role in border security and internal security, including MOI administration of rural

basic education for Thai citizens (Winichakul, 1994; Fry, 2002). Today, education continues to

be viewed through the lens of national security, with various governmental bodies, including the

MOI, in charge of screening education resources used in the MLCs and refugee camps.

Morality and merit

Social hierarchy in both Burma and Britain was based on a meritocratic system, meaning

that individuals who were both born with natural intelligence and who put forth effort were

rewarded more than individuals who were born to a lower station in life and/or did not put for

much effort at achieving success. One’s station in life was linked to the moral obligation one

had to put forth effort toward achieving success. While these definitions of success varied

greatly between the two populations, the idea that one was morally obligated to work toward

them was a commonality. From the British point of view, a meritocracy rewarded Burmese

individuals who proved to be the “best” of their peers. The reward was social capital in the form

of working for and with the British and economic capital in the form of wages. Possessing social

and economic capital was an observable result of fulfilling one’s moral obligation to work hard,

and schools were one vehicle for teaching and testing the efficacy of one’s morality vis-à-vis

grades and skills leading to future employment. Both social and economic capital were

perceived to be limited, thus competition between individuals was considered a just way for

distributing rewards.

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In traditional Theravada Buddhism, the dominant religion and worldview in Burma, the

concepts of karma, merit, and differential rebirth are integral to the religion and to the world

view held by both men and women in the area. More merit earned in a lifetime increases one’s

karma, which in turn elevates ones status in the next lifetime. These concepts are based on a

larger universe of social inequality, leaving a feeling of “cosmic justification” for a social

hierarchy, with the “inherent demerit implied by the female condition” being accepted as a

natural place in the hierarchy (Eberhardt, 2006, p137). The lack of accrued karma evidenced by

the female condition results in females being excluded from the sangha, or the body charged

with moral and ethical guidance. Conversely, the male condition allows one to join the sangha,

and to receive an education that will enable him to move forward on the path toward

enlightenment (Eberhardt, 2006). This view of sasana (religious) meritocracy held that merit

was available to all who put forth effort to conform to the Buddhist scriptures and ideals.

Possessing a male form was an observable result of accruing enough karma over past lifetimes to

allow one to access education and continue on the path to enlightenment. Sasana meritocracy

was available in infinite quantities; there was no competition between individuals, rather one’s

merit increased by helping others to increase their own merit.

Social Structure

Social structure is the pattern of social arrangements in society that both result from and

are determined by the actions of individuals; structure and agency are intimately bound together

(Giddens, 1998; Guantlett, 2002). Social structure is formed by numerous variables that are

linked to individuals and how they relate to each other. From my observations along the border,

two variables were noticeably problematized as educational norms were being established by

negotiated compromises between Burmese migrants and Western NGOs. These two variables

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are 1. the unit of analysis (the individual versus a different unit), and 2. the embodied concept of

citizenship.

Unit of analysis. Despite its controversial status, I decided to use

individualism/collectivism as part of the framework for this story for several reasons. First, I do

see differences at a community level in the way people interact and how they define success that

could be attributed to group/individual dynamics, thus arguments for the use of individualism

and collectivism as a part of a framework are consistent with my observations (Triandis, 1996;

Greenfield, 2000). Also, Greenfield’s argument for “deep structure” of cultures makes sense to

me.

“From a theoretical perspective, I concluded that individualism and collectivism are deep principles of cultural interpretation and organization that have tremendous generative value. Like a grammar, they can generate both behavior and comprehension of others’ behavior in an infinite number of situations. They do not obliterate specific cultural customs; the customs are simply culturally variable instantiations of the principles. It is much the same as the way that specific languages are culturally variable instantiations of the general language capacity” (p 231).

Triandis (1996) characterizes both individualism and communalism in terms of how

people relate to each other, their goals, and the motivation for their behaviors. He defines

individualistic societies as those in which the members are autonomous and independent from

their in-groups. They prioritize their personal goals over the group’s goals, and their attitudes,

not social norms, direct their behaviors, with exchange theory predicting their social behavior.

In conflicts, individualists prioritize justice over relationships. Individualistic cultures tend to be

more tolerant of variation in behavior and more heterogeneous in population. Triandis defines

collectivist societies as societies in which people are interdependent. They give priority to the

goals of their in-group, shape their behavior primarily on the basis of norms, and behave in a

communal way. Collectivists are especially concerned about relationships, and in disputes, they

tend to prioritize relationships. Collective cultures tend to have highly dense, relatively

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homogenous populations and strongly enforced social norms. Burmese cultures highlight a more

communal unit of analysis, with relationships and the welfare of the community taking

precedence over the individual. British cultures highlight an individualistic unit of analysis,

foregrounding justice and the individual over community. This results in different

understandings of the meanings and implementation practices of educational policy.

Citizenship. The understanding and embodiment of the concept of citizenship along the

Thailand-Burma border has changed over both space and time. This thesis explores the

historical meanings of citizenship from Western and Asian points of view and uses these

understandings to illuminate the present controversies and negotiations among and between

Thailand, Burma, and third countries. These negotiations, regarding state citizenship, global

citizenship, statelessness, and the sense of belonging, take place in the context of the

international mandates including the Millennium Development Goals and Education for All,

which operate exclusively from the Western understanding of citizen and state, in which the state

is a politically sovereign and geographically bounded entity and a citizen is one who is a member

of that state, either by birth or by naturalization. As virtually all territories on the planet are

bounded and belong to a state government, ideally all people are members of at least one state.

However, due to conflicting ideas of what it means to be a citizen and how one acquires

citizenship, there are a number of stateless people, those who are not recognized as members of

any state, living along the Thailand-Burma border.

Methods

This study uses a vertical case study approach to discover how local, national, and

international policies are shaped by each other and the influence of state-level policy makers in

policy interpretation and implementation (Varvus and Bartlett, 2010). Whereas some data were

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collected in Thailand’s major cities, the bulk of the data were collected in Reaproy province.

Reaproy province has a high concentration of undocumented migrants from Burma in towns

such as Kan, one site of data collection. Furthermore, the Educational Administrative

Department in the area (EAD-R), which is actively engaged in setting policies for undocumented

migrant education, is based in Kan, as are a number of NGOs that focus on migrant education.

I spent the June-August 2011 and 2012 volunteering with NGOs in Kan. The NGOs had

all been in operation for over ten years, thus were established and well known. The NGO staff

members were well-connected in the education circles of Kan and Reaproy provinces and were

willing to introduce me to key policy makers along the border. I interviewed the ministry liaison

to the MLCs, NGO country and project, and program directors and heads of multinational

education committees. The policy makers were either Thai or Western, and most were mid-

career professionals. During my time with the organization, I met a number of other people

volunteering with education NGOs. The volunteers ranged in age from 21-65+, were female and

male, and most were Western, although a few were Karen ethnicity. I was also able to interview

and spend time with student teachers who had come from Burma to receive teacher training.

As the physical area surrounding Kan is relatively small, the number of international

actors working in education is limited, which allowed me to access the EAD-R staff, including

Thai staff and international volunteers seconded to the ministry. The category “NGO staff

member” is broad, encompassing Burmese, Thai, and other NGO staff members, including those

seconded to the MOE as well as MOE officers whose salaries are paid by international donors. I

conducted a total of 13 interviews with NGO staff members, university professors, and

researchers, and Thai MOE officials in Reaproy, Sawadee, Kha, and Alloy provinces. The

interviewees were selected by their positions/titles, including MOE officials and NGO staff and

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volunteers.  There are many NGOs in Kan, and I used a snowball approach to identify NGO staff

that worked in the education sector.

As a second form of data, I collected documents, including standards and curricula,

organization mission statements, syllabi for teacher training courses, and public documents about

the location and size of registered MLCs from NGOs, the MOE, and from several scholars.

These documents served to provide information about the official content taught in schools and

the official policies regarding access to education. I compared and contrasted these documents

with reports of what actually happens in schools to illuminate the strategies used to ensure

compliance to both the written policy and unwritten expectations stemming from the Royal Thai

Government's (RTGs) use of governance to allow undocumented children access to education in

Thailand while safeguarding Thailand’s national identity and sovereignty. My third form of

data included participant observations in MLCs, at the market, at an NGO policy meeting, at

MLC-NGO meetings, and at numerous teacher trainings conducted by a variety of NGOs.

In order to examine the dominant group's understandings of the purpose of education for

Burmese migrant children along the Thailand-Burma border, chapter 2 examines the design,

implementation, and the outcomes as perceived by the ethnic minority and ethnic majority

Burmese of the education schemes put in place by the British in lowland and highland Burma.

This chapter provides the necessary background for understanding the present educational

situation of ethnic minority people from Burma living on the Thai side of the Thailand-Burma

border. The third chapter examines policies surrounding Burmese migrant access to education.

As the migrants are undocumented, they have no “right” to be in Thailand or to a Thai-funded

education, however pressure from the international community calls for the Thai government to

facilitate education for all. This chapter examines the policies, both written and “understood”,

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used along the Thailand-Burma border to allow Burmese migrant students to access education

yet preserve Thailand’s sense of sovereignty.

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Chapter 2: Pre-colonial and Colonial Burma

The purpose of this chapter is to examine societal changes in Burma facilitated in large

part by Burmese reactions to imperial Britain’s education and governance policies, which were

grounded in the British conception of “religion” and “secularism”. This chapter examines the

impact of Western imperialism, using British education and governance policies to explore

methods of social control and forms of ethnic group resistance.

The British conceived of the world as divided into a religious-secular binary, and their

worldview reflected a belief in individualism and scientific rationalism, privileging the secular

over the religious. The ethnic majority Burmese perceived the world without such a binary thus

without borders or distinctions between the religious and the secular, the sacred and the profane.

The Burmese worldview reflected the belief in a complex cosmology, characterized by an

economy of merit as related to karma and rebirth (Turner, 2011; Viswanathan, 1989). Using this

as a foundation, the chapter argues that by attempting to reify the separation between church and

state, the British facilitated a shift in the dominant worldview in Burma which subsequently

caused a shift in Burma’s social structure.

Section 1 examines the social structures and beliefs found in many of the ethnic groups

living in the Burmese Kingdom prior to the British conquest. Section 2 examines how these

social structures and beliefs combined with education reform policies to facilitate a modification

in the politically and economically dominant Burmese worldview that resulted in mechanisms of

governmental control over the general population. Section 3 examines the role of education in

modifying relationships amongst and between ethnic groups living along the Thailand-Burma

border.

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Section 1: Pre-colonial Burma: Traditional Burmese social structure

During the 11th and 12th centuries, large portions of Asia experienced political upheaval

and a decline in Buddhism. The area that is now considered Burma, however, remained stable in

terms of royalty and in 1044, the king introduced Theravada Buddhism to the people of the area

and used it as a mechanism for nation-building (Myint-U, 2007; Fink, 2001). The royal elites

and subsequent kings were devout believers in Buddhism, and over time, it became a religion

associated with the elites and the peasantry living in the areas controlled by the monarchy

(Myint-U, 2007; Keown and Prebish, 2010).

Organization of the kingdom

Scott (2009) and Winichakul (1994) describe the relationship of the village with the

kingdom as being one in which political influence flowed outward from the center. The center

of the kingdom was sacrosanct, and was often demarcated by a wall surrounding the center of the

city. Borders and sovereignty were considered to be gradients, with land and people located

further from the center city being more autonomous. This concept of borders and sovereignty

was used by both the Thai and the Burmese, thus the land along what is now the border between

the two countries were considered to be relatively unimportant to either kingdom’s sovereignty

(Winichakul, 1994).

In the Irrawaddy delta and other lowlands between the mountains bounding the eastern

and western edges of the kingdom, the village headmen were called thugyi. The thugyi were

charismatic men who inspired confidence in others, and their role was to provide leadership in

matters that affected the community. Thugyi were given the authority necessary to be

responsible for the community in terms of mediation, tax collection, protection, rice production,

marriages and membership, etc. The village as a whole was responsible for paying its annual

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revenue demand to the king, for rectifying fines if stolen property was traced to it, and was liable

for compensation if a serious crime was committed and the perpetrator was identified as a

member of the village. Each village occupied a fixed geographical area and was surrounded by a

bamboo or thorny-bush fence with two to four gates. No one was allowed inside without the

consent of the thugyi (Nisbet, 1901, p 168).

In the highlands to the east, north, and west of the Irrawaddy delta, village life was

somewhat different from that in the delta. Village leaders had similar authority and

responsibilities to those of the delta villages, however the villages did not occupy a fixed

geographical area. As swidden agriculture was the dominant form of agriculture, communities

changed locations regularly to accommodate their agricultural needs (Bamforth, 2000, p.48).

Due to the sparse population in both the highlands and the lowlands, people were

considered to be subjects of the kingdom based on their lineage, not based on the location of

their residence, and until a lineage became a member of the kingdom either by their own desire

or by being conquered, they were free to pay tribute to any kingdom(s) via the village headman

that they felt needed to be placated or would provide them protection from invasion. The

villages appear to have followed a similar pattern to the kingdom, with those living closest to the

center being considered members of the village and those living away from the center able to

pick and choose the monarch(s) they felt were most responsive to their protection and other

needs (Winichakul, 1994, p.82; Bamforth, 2000; Nisbet, 1901, p.171; Scott, 2009). This led to a

network of political affiliations of varying strengths that shifted regularly depending on the

strength of the leaders.

Social roles in the village

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The nature of the social hierarchy in Burma was determined first by age, with elders

being the most respected members in the community, then by gender and leadership roles in

society (Fink, 2001, p. 14). Socially above the average villager was the king, his family and the

thugyi. The social hierarchy also included monks, whose status was determined by

accomplishments in Buddhism, with different accomplishments leading to different states of

enlightenment (Rahula, 1974). Thus the most accomplished monks, who were typically older and

more experienced, were considered to be senior to the younger, less experienced, novices. The

monks’ role in the village was to serve as the moral leaders of the community. The head of the

monastic and royal hierarchies interacted and influenced each other, each drawing on his own

expertise and experience to ensure village prosperity. Outside of the leadership, however, the

social hierarchy was relatively flat. “Apart from the royal house of Alaung Paya [village head]

there was no aristocracy whatever in the country. Owing to the monastic schools, all were about

the same low level of education; owning to the fear of oppression, there were no rich men; and

owing to the sparseness of the population, there were no poor” (Nisbet, 1901, p.167).

Virtually every village in the lowlands and most villages in the highlands had a

monastery, with the resident monk(s) providing moral and ethical leadership to the village as

well as education to the boys. Monks did not contribute to the revenue collection as it was

considered a sin for monks to touch money, nor did they contribute to the defense of the village

as violent acts were prohibited. Boys entered the monastery when they were about 7 years old

and remained there for several years. A boy could choose to remain in the monastery for life, or

he could disrobe and enter mainstream society again. Men had the option of becoming monks

for a month or so at a time throughout their lifetimes, so the individuals within the monastery

fluctuated, however the overall number was fairly constant. When the men disrobed, they were

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once again members of the village and were expected to contribute to the revenue collections, to

the village defense, and to daily life (Eberhardt, 2006; Hansen, 2004).

The purpose of education was to sustain sasana, often translated as “Buddha’s

dispensation” or “religion”, and in the process to assist the boy along his path toward a higher-

status rebirth by allowing him to earn merit. Sustaining the sasana and earning merit were

accomplished by the physical act of learning including reciting and copying sacred texts.

Education was important as a means of practicing and preserving Buddhism, not as a direct

means to knowledge. In order to be considered human, a boy was required to attend school and

to learn the scriptures. Typically a boy entered school with a ceremony called Sang Long, or

ordination, which marked the initial period he would spend as a monk learning to read the

scriptures. He would remain in the monastery for anywhere from a few months to many years,

depending on his aptitude for scripture, his desires, and the desires of his family. Boys without

family often chose to remain in the monastery until they were adults, as it provided a sense of

family and belonging in addition to shelter and food (Eberhardt, 2006, p.137; Turner, 2011, p.

231-2).

Conceptual framework

While pre-colonial society was far from static, the above section uses primary source

documents to briefly describe the situation as perceived by the British upon their arrival, and as

reported by subsequent anthropologists to describe the situation as perceived by the ethnic

groups in the Burmese Kingdom. Using this as a starting point, the next section will use post-

colonial and post-secular-religious frameworks to examine the methods and results of change

and resistance in British-Burma.

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A post-colonial critique combines elements of a Marxist focus on economic dominance

and social power, in the context of subaltern resistance to domination, thus requiring a

reconsideration of history from the point of view of the colonized and a subsequent defining of

the impact this perception of history has on present social and cultural worldviews. Postcolonial

theories attempt to answer the question of whether or not colonialism was a system that allows

for critique, resistance, and predictions. Examination of this question requires two things: 1.

Distinguishing between imperialism and colonialism by articulating the positionality of the

author and 2. Examining the multiple modernities possible for a given population (Young, 2001

p4, 17-19; Young, 2001, p 341).

Positionality. As Young (2001, p19) points out, while there is great consideration for the

reasons and rationales of various actions taken by the colonialists, it is only the actions and their

(un)intended consequences that the subaltern experience and react to. In this critique, I use a

broad array of primary and secondary sources to describe and analyze the position of the

Burmese people vis a vis education and focus on the outcomes of the colonial education reforms,

as opposed to the British perspective, which would focus on school reforms as a means to

modernize Burmese society.

Imperialism and colonialism. Imperialism and colonialism are methods states use to

control foreign territories and populations and both of these methods serve to increase the

influence of the mother state. The difference between them lies in how the colonizers perceive

the intended consequences, and the strategies used to achieve these goals (Young, 2001).

Colonialism is pragmatic. It is a practice that arises from attempts to solve problems of land

and/or resource shortages. These problems are typically identified by citizens or industries of the

mother country, rather than by the government itself, and as such, governments tend to relegate

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the colonizing solution to these problems to a side-project status. The lack of governmental

focus on the colonization can lead to difficulties controlling the new colony. Colonialism asserts

itself by the resettlement of a large number of people, both men and women, to the colony in

search of more land and resources and/or by the (re)formation of societal institutions found in the

colony. There is an expectation that the colonists will trade with the motherland, and that the

balance of trade will favor the motherland and the industries from the motherland. Bluntly

stated, colonialism comes down to settlement and/or exploitation (Chludzinski, 2009, p56;

Young, 2001 p17-18; Stoler, 2002).

In order to be sustainable in the medium and long run, colonialism for the purpose of

resource extraction, or dominionism, requires either military force or the use of military and

governmental power to inculcate the population into an ideology that is advantageous to the

colonizing power to ensure the cooperation of the colonized population. The use of military

force can be expensive and politically difficult to maintain, thus inculcation is often a more-

feasible option. This inculcation in the form of imperialism is driven by ideology and economics

and is justified as a “project” implemented by the colonizer under the auspice of the colonizer’s

moral obligation to “save the savage”. Imperialism can be defined as a process of building an

empire for the purpose of expanding ideological and financial power and influence by

bureaucratically controlling the external territories and peoples. It can also be understood as a

matured form of colonialism (Chludzinski, 2009, p56; Young, 2001, p18).

Post-secular-religious framework. A post-secular-religious world view challenges the

assumption that religion as defined by the West is universal. Prior to colonization, Burmese

culture had no concepts of “religion” or “secularism” as defined by the British; the concepts of

“religion” and “secularism” are Western, not universal, concepts. (Turner, 2011; Dressler and

21

Mandair, 2011; Viswanathan, 1989). The category of “secular” is characterized by a positivist

epistemology, one that was considered “neutral” and one that was different from the

epistemology of the dominant Burmese society. Creating a category of “religion” implicitly

creates the category of “secular”. By destabilizing the assumption of religion as a universal

component of human cultures, post-secular-religious world views reject the idea of a secular-

religious binary. Removing the boundaries between religion and secularism allows us to

examine the impact of the imposition of the category “religion” on a society in which it is a

foreign concept (Dressler and Mandair, 2011 p19).

Section 2: The formation of British-Burma: Acquisition and Administration

Between1824-1885, the British fought and won three wars with the Kongbaung Dynasty,

rulers of the Burmese Kingdom, for the right to extract natural resources (MacKenzie, 1995).

The East India Company advocated strongly for the acquisition of the Kingdom of Burma in

order to expand its commercial influence. Politically, the British were anxious to prevent the

French from using the Burmese harbors (Myint-U, 2007). As India was already a colony, the

British had ultimate control over the Indian armed forces, thus the Indian military forces were

used to invade several sections of the Kingdom of Burma. Despite heavy losses on both sides,

the Indian military was successful and over the course of three wars, the Kingdom of Burma was

annexed into India. The use of military force and the exile of the king left no doubts as to the

end of the Konbaung Dynasty and the Burmese Kingdom’s new status as a British dominion

(Hunter, 1881). What was surprising to the Burmese, however, was that they were not only

dominated, but they were annexed into India; they were not considered a colony in their own

right. From 1886-1937, Burma was ruled as a province of India, and from 1937- 1947, it was

ruled directly by the British as a separate British colony. Burma, as defined by the British, was

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created in 1893 by drawing borders based for the most part on geographical features and the

logistics involved in territorial administration. While the British were aware of the differences

between the various ethnic groups living in Burma, when it came to designing administration

procedures, they relied solely on their observations of societal organization in the lowlands to

design administrative systems for the different ethnic groups living in the highlands, as the

highlands were physically difficult for the British to access.

Despite the differences in ethnicities, traditional worldviews, and in the topography and

resulting agricultural practices between the highland and lowland people, many of the British

administrative systems were developed for the lowland people and also implemented in the

highlands. In the highlands, they were received with confusion and misunderstanding caused in

part by the fact that the highland people were largely unaware of the incorporation of their land

into the British Raj and the subsequent changes to their “citizenship” (Imperial Gazetteer of

India, 1908; Nisbet, 1901, p169; Winichakul, 1994).

Organization of Society

State territories do not necessarily correlate to ethnic group territories, which often leads

to tensions between states and ethnic groups. Weber and Durkheim provide the foundation on

which Fassin builds working definitions for ‘border’ and ‘boundary’, concepts used to describe

these state and ethnic group territorial edges. “(B)orders were generally viewed as territorial

limits defining political entities (states, in particular) and legal subjects (most notably, citizens),

whereas boundaries were principally considered to be social constructs establishing symbolic

differences (between class, gender, or race) and producing identities (national, ethnic, or cultural

communities)” (Fassin, 2010, p214).

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The concept of borders and boundaries is useful in defining various units of governance.

The “nation” is a socio-cultural, rather than a political, entity with the population culturally

identifying with each other. Prior to colonization, the linguistic groups along the Thailand-

Burma border formed numerous nations separated by the shifting boundaries that corresponded

to the agriculture needs of the ethnic groups in the area. The “state” is a body defined

geographically by its borders, has a population living within its borders, and has a governing

body that is recognized by both the population and by foreign states (Leuletta, 1996). Britain, in

its quest for resources and territory, was concerned with state borders, as these represented

political entities with which they could interact and not with ethnic boundaries, as these were

unimportant when it came to resource extraction.

The British Empire, then, was a compilation of territories and their populations

conquered by and subsequently ruled by Britain. By the late eighteenth century, Britain had

shifted from dependency colonialism, characterized by settlements, to dominion colonialism, or

dominionism, with the primary goal of expanding its empire in order to increase its sphere of

influence, expand markets for manufactured goods from Great Britain, and place itself

strategically on the international stage (Skinner, 1978, vol. 1, p8-12).

In the mid-19th century, the British negotiated with the Thai government to decide on

borders between British-Burma and Thailand. Due to the steep mountains and fast-running river

that lay between Thailand and Burma, the British were not interested in conquering Thailand as

the problem of resources was solved, at least for the moment, by the colonization of Burma.

The British were eager to establish a friendly relationship with the Thai government by

establishing mutually agreeable borders between Thailand and Burma as a way of ensuring the

sovereignty of its dominion and access to its resources.

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In 1826, the British approached the King of Siam and requested a meeting to negotiate a

border. When the borders between Thailand and Burma were drawn by the British, the terms

and concepts of border and boundary were conflated, resulting in confusion and

misunderstanding. It is likely that this conflation resulted from unarticulated assumptions made

by both sides during the negotiations between the Thai and the British authorities (Winichakul,

1994, p74). To the British, the border of a country was generally understood as “located at the

interfaces between adjacent state territories, international boundaries have a special significance

in determining the limits of sovereign authority and defining the spatial form of the contained

political region.” (Winichakul, 1994, p74). To the Siamese, however, the “interface between

adjacent state territories” was not a two-dimensional plane that rose from the earth to the sky, but

rather a three-dimensional area of varying width in which local people lived. Given the history

of governance in the area, the thought of demarcating an actual interface was not interesting to

the Siamese king nor was it his duty, and if the British were so inclined to do so, it was up to

them to work with the locals in the area to determine where a line of sorts might go; borders of

this sort were considered a matter for ethnic groups and local residents to decide. The land

between the present Thailand-Burma border was considered unimportant to both the Thais and

the Burmese, and it was precisely this land with which the British were concerned. The

traditional Southeast Asian conception of sovereignty viewed territorial concessions at the

margins of the kingdom to be routine expenses incurred to maintain peace within the region. As

long as the essence of sovereignty (the “capital city”) was unimpaired, such concessions were a

legitimate policy instrument (Winichakul, 1994, p79; Bamforth, 2000, p 27; Hansen, 2004).

During the border negotiation in the late 1870’s-1880s, Thailand’s monarchy and sangha

were involved in transforming the interpretation of traditional Buddhist scriptures and stories

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from a cosmological and mythological interpretation to an interpretation based to some degree

on scientific rationalism. The separation of science from religion began with King Mongkut

(1851-1868) and was fully adopted by King Chulalongkorn (1868-1910) as a result of

interactions with scientists, scholars, and politicians from Europe. King Chulalongkorn was

fascinated with the western science of astronomy. Chulalongkorn believed in the rationality of

science itself, and he was eager to gain acceptance from the Western political elite, thus he

pushed his royal court and the sangha to adopt some of the ideas of scientific rationalism

(Hansen, 2004; Winichakul, 1994) which eventually led to a corresponding modification in the

worldview of the political and religious leaders throughout Southeast Asia.

This new worldview modified to accept scientific rationalism changed the Siamese

definition of modernity. Conversations between the British and the Siamese resulted in the

Siamese replacing their understanding of “boundary” with that of “border”, as described above,

resulting in the Thai government’s concept of border aligning with the British understanding

(Bamforth, 2000, p29; Winichakul, 1994, p95). This modification resulted in a change in the

socio-geographical nature of space and its political division for Siamese and Burmese people.

Borders were suddenly meaningful, and travel between the states was suddenly governed.

The British-Burma border bisected the land and settlements of a number of ethnic

minority groups living in the area now called the Thailand-Burma border. Prior to colonization,

these ethnic groups did not consider themselves part of either the Burmese or Thai Kingdoms.

The administrative structures of the Burmese Kingdom did not have a presence in the area and

treaties signed by the ethnic minority leadership and supported by the administrative structure

located throughout the area established the independence of ethnic minority groups from the

principality of Chiang Mai. These absences and presences form the basis for claims of

26

independence by the Karen, Karenni, Mon, and Shan ethnic minority groups (Bamforth, 2000,

p27; Fink, 2001).

The conversations between the British and the Siamese took place in Chiang Mai (the

Siamese capital city) and people living along the border were not involved in the creation of or

even informed of the changes that had taken place. The map became the ultimate weapon against

indigenous knowledge and culture as the hegemony of cartography produced the border between

Burma and Siam (Winichakul, 1994). The scientifically rational discourse that surrounded

cartography defined maps as scientifically accurate representations of reality, thus lending an air

of naturalness to the unnatural borders drawn by those in power (Winichakul,1994, p131;

Karenniphe, 2012).

Political administration.

Prior to the Indian Rebellion in1857, the East India Company had taken the lead in the

colonization of Burma for the purpose of extracting resources. After the rebellion, the British

re-organized the Government of India to allow it to have more power and influence in its own

governance. To expand the Indian influence, the British designated British-Burma to be a

province of India. In doing so, many of the duties necessary for colonizing British-Burma were

“subcontracted” to the Indian military and junior officers. British officers served as the

Commissioner in Chief and Commissioners of Divisions (i.e. Commissioners of Provinces), and

Indian officers served in many of the administrative posts within the bureaucratic structure

(Fryer, 1867; Chisholm, 1910). Thus colonization was to be accomplished by the Indian officers

under the direct supervision of the British. It appears as though the British government had no

real interest in directly colonizing British-Burma; the colonization began as a tip of the hat to the

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East India Company and was completed by the Government of India, as a concession by the

British in exchange for the continued dominance of the British in India.

The British considered the ethnic minority tribes to be “nomadic” and “blood-thirsty”,

especially in comparison to the settled Burman ethnic majority of the delta (Nisbet, 1901, p169),

and developed separate administration systems for the lowlands and the highlands. The

lowlands, settled largely by ethnic majority Burmans, were relatively easy to access, and were

the source of exportable quantities of rice. The highlands, on the other hand, were settled largely

by ethnic minority groups, were difficult to access, and were the source of many of the

extractable resources such as gemstones and teak (Hunter, 1881). Due to their remote locations

and reputation for being “savages” the British decided to administer the highlands through local

administrative structures already in place with the local leaders, or thugyi, now required to report

to the Chief Commissioner of British Burma. This eliminated the need for British

Commissioners of Divisions in the ethnic minority states, and left the lower ranking officials

from the Government of India to administer them. This also relieved the British of the

responsibility for the departments of public service, including education, in the area (Bamforth,

2000, p28-30).

Social roles and relationships

The American Baptist missionaries who arrived in Burma as early as 1807 had limited

success in converting the Burman ethnic majority to Christianity. They were, however, much

more successful in preaching to and converting the ethnic minorities who lived in the highlands

region between Burma and Thailand (Bamforth, 2000, p30). One reason for this may be that

Buddhism was not considered a part of the ethnic minority people’s cultures and identity, thus it

was relatively easy to convert people who were not as committed to this worldview. The most

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effective method of conversion, according to multiple articles in the Baptist Missionary

Magazine (1881, 1885) was to offer education to the children. The education was based on the

bible and focused on literacy and morality.

The British were uninterested in Buddhist beliefs or practices, however they understood

the importance of Buddhism in the lowland Burmese society and they were anxious to gain the

trust of the sangha while limiting their role in political administration as much as possible

(Hunter, 1881, p471; Nisbet, 1901, p251). To limit their role, the British promoted a separation

between religion and secular content in schools. Students who chose to focus on secular content

were prepared for advancement in the secular world and those who chose to focus on religious

content were prepared for advancement within the sangha.

The British and the Buddhist Burmese perceived the role of education differently, despite

the fact that on the surface, the classrooms looked quite similar. The British believed that

education was a tool for civilizing the lower classes. By promoting a class of male native elites

whose education was theoretically based on a scientifically-rational education system, the British

felt justified in claiming their educational policies socially neutral (Bell, 1881, p584). This

scientific-rational, meritocratic education system was based on its corresponding worldview. In

contrast, the Burmese perceived education as a method of sustaining sasana and assisting boys

on the path to enlightenment. This education system was based on a worldview characterized by

merit, karma, and rebirth. There were some similarities between the British and the Burmese,

however. Students in both societies were indoctrinated into the worldviews of their cultures via

schools. These included the belief in meritocracy and the social purpose of schooling. The

British believed in a meritocracy based on science and logic. The Burmese believed in a

29

meritocracy based on one’s karmic status and the amount of merit earned in prior lives and the

present life.

Education

Lt. Col. Arthur Phayre, Sir Arthur Phayre as of 1862, was a highly respected Anglo-

Indian officer who served in the British Indian Army (aka the Indian Army) and was among the

first Chief Commissioners of Burma. He was appointed Chief Commissioner largely based on

his friendly relationship with the last king of Burma, King Mindon. His role was to act as a

liaison between the British and the Burmese (Laurie, 1887). In one sense, Sir Arthur was a

product of his times and strongly believed in the idea of education as a tool for civilizing colonial

subjects and lower class people in Britain. Popular consensus in Victorian society indicated that

education, literacy in particular, was necessary for proper moral development and social control

(Dressler and Mandair, 2011, p228). On the other hand, he was unusually devoted to Burma as a

nation and the Burmese as a people. He was impressed with the indigenous school system that

had preceded the missionary or colonial schools by centuries, and he noted that the literacy rate

of the Burmese was much higher than that of India, owing to the fact that the monastic schools

were located in virtually every village (Nisbet, 1901, p253). He perceived the Burmese as

having an extraordinary literacy rate. Such a high literacy rate, he reasoned, proved that the

Burmese people were not only intelligent but they were also capable of being “civilized”. Sir

Arthur wrote, “There was no doubt that Burma was one of the best educated countries in the

East. The people seemed anxious to learn; the monks taught them uncommonly well….not a

doubt there was a great future before them” (Bell, 1881, p584). This loyalty, combined with his

belief in education, led him to pursue not only a material aspect to colonization but also a moral

one, as he believed the Burmese had the ability to be civilized and thus “saved” from their

30

savage existence. As the Burmese had the ability to be saved, it was incumbent upon the British

to do the right thing and offer their assistance to the Burmese. With the additional emphasis on

education, Sir Arthur was instrumental in modifying the British colonization practices in Burma

from a focus on short-term resource extraction to an imperialization project with an additional

focus on long-term development of Burma.

Given his connections in both India and England and his position in the Indian Army of

the British Raj, it is highly likely that Sir Arthur was familiar with Macaulay’s speech to the

Indian Parliament known as the Macaulay Minute 1 (1835). This speech expounded on

“intrinsic superiority” of Western literature and science and called for the implementation of the

modernizing projects including an expansion of the education system, the promotion of English

language as the language of instruction after primary school, and the creation of a separate class

of native elites to serve as translators between the British administrators and the indigenous

people. In the early 1860’s, the Commissioner General of Burma was required to begin

planning for a colonial education system in Burma. Sir Arthur proposed making a state-wide

education system, using the monastic and lay schools as the foundation for the system

(Macaulay, 1835; Fytche, 1878 p332-334; Bell, 1881, p 584; Viswanathan, 1989; Sachsenmaier,

2009).

Permission for Sir Arthur’s “experiment” was granted due to the British popular belief in

the notion of near-universal literacy rates in Burma (Bell, 1881, p583). It was true that the

literacy rates in Burma were much higher than those of India; however, the idea that they were

nearly 100% was not true. The first British census of Burma, taken in 1872, showed literacy

1 The Macaulay Minute was a report written by TB Macaulay in 1835 advocating for the creation of a class of Indian elites who could act as cultural and linguistic translators between the British and the Indian population. These elites would hold positions decidedly below that of their British supervisors and somewhat above that of their Indian countrymen. Translator positions were endowed with both economic and social capital not available to Indians who were not fluent in English.

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rates to be 24.4% for men and 1.4% for women, statistics that placed Burma literacy rates

between those of India and Great Britain. The mythology of Burma’s literacy was so strong,

however, that the census takers themselves disputed the accuracy, citing personal experiences as

anecdotal evidence of much higher rates (Turner, 2011, p228; Chisholm, 1910).

In colonies, education represented an investment in the dominated people and a long-term

potential link between the mother state and the colony. Colonialist education policies were and

continue to be created specifically to mould the dominated population into the dominating state’s

vision for the intermediate and long-term future of its subjects. From Phayre’s perspective, this

meant a modernization of the Burmese culture and people in the form of development. Chaterjee

discusses the role of the dominator as one of reproducing or facilitating the reproduction of the

dominating power, albeit in an attenuated form, of a native elite class. Thompson and Garratt,

referenced in Chaterjee, call this reproduction and facilitation of the production of power via

native elites the “permanent mark” of domination. In turn, the implementation of these policies

has lasting effects on the expression and understanding of nationalism, historicism, and identity

of the formerly-colonized people (Chaterjee, 1993).

Section 3: Education in British-Burma

Education Administration

In 1866, Sir Arthur formed the first Education Department of British-Burma with the

mandate to ensure access to quality education for both male and female students (Fytche, 1878,

p332; Bell, 1881, p584; Turner, 2011 p227; Nisbet, 1901, p254). Sir Arthur perceived the level

of literacy and the number of indigenous schools to be sufficient to form the backbone of a

provincial education system separate from but related to India’s education system. He

handpicked British officers who were serving in the Indian Department of Education to design

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and implement an education system for Burma (Bell, 1881, p583; Fytche, 1878, p332). In

addition, with the religious importance and prominence of education in the Burmese culture, “No

plan had any chance of success if it was likely to interfere with the time-honoured national

system of elementary instruction or if it tended to arouse suspicion or hostility on the part of the

monks or the people” (Nisbet, 1901, p255). To address the British understanding of the purpose

of education, the British requested the pongyi, monks assigned to teach in the monasteries, to

incorporate British education standards into the monastic schools and encouraged lay individuals

and Christian missionaries to provide access to education for girls (Hunter, 1881, p 471;

Dhammasami, 2004, p 2; Fytche, 1878, p333).

In 1867, the British colonial government in Rangoon passed the grant-in-aid rules, based

on a precedent set in Bengal. The grant-in-aid program was similar to the current-day matching

grant program: “In no case will the Government grant exceed in amount the sum to be

expended on a school from private sources” (Fryer, 1867, p543), with the explicit mandate that

the grants were to enhance the quality of public education, not to reduce the private cost of

education. In return for the grant-in-aid, the government reserved the right to inspect recipient

schools at any time to “judge from results whether a good secular education is practically

imparted or not” (Fryer, 1867, p544). Grants were subject to conditions of review every five

years. Accountability measures were left to the Commissioners of Divisions, who in turn hired

Deputy Commissioners and superintendents of schools. Grants-in-aid were awarded to monastic

schools based on both characteristics of the school (an average daily attendance of twelve or

more students and at least four months of classes) and school performance (a minimum of four

students who were able to read and write in the vernacular language). Grants awarded to

missionary schools were based on different school characteristics, including teacher

33

qualification, fees, and discipline records. Interestingly, missionary schools were not subject to

school performance requirements (Nisbet, 1901, p256), presumably because they were

considered to be of a “higher standard” in terms of the British evaluation schemes than the

monastic schools, thus the assumption that they would automatically meet the school

performance requirements with a clear division between secular and religious subjects.

In 1891, the education code was published in order to articulate specifically the British

government’s role in education, which was limited to assisting, regulating, and inspecting

schools. The British government specifically indicated that its role was not to found or manage

schools; the task of providing educational access to Burmese children was left to the pongyi and

the missionaries. To fulfill its managerial role, the British government would use the grants-in-

aid scheme as a mechanism to inspect and partially fund schools (Nisbet, 1901, p258).

The relative autonomy of education gives it an appearance of objectivity, neutrality, and

even of altruism, all of which serve to reinforce the dominant ideology (Bernstein, 1977). As a

result of the 1917 Imperial War Conference which established autonomy for dominion states in

the British Empire, Britain’s policy toward education in Burma shifted from one focused solely

on skills training for workers to one that worked to foster the legitimacy of British and Indian

colonial rule. The British examined the system of education that was currently in place to

determine the most effective and least costly routes for the imperial government to intervene

(GOB, 1917, p10). This can be interpreted as a shift from the British conceptualization of

education as a tool for development and modernization of Burmese society to that of a tool for

legitimization and overt efforts at psychological colonization of Burmese students.

The 1917 publication “Report of the Committee appointed to ascertain and advise how

the Imperial Idea may be inculcated and fostered in Schools and Colleges in Burma” called for

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active and conscious loyalty to the Imperial connection. The Imperial Idea was defined as a sense

of unity of the Empire, in which all peoples and nations, despite diversities, were bound together

by common beliefs in “justice and right”. The committee advised that the most effective path

toward national development was by way of self-sacrifice and co-operation for the sake of the

Empire. The report went on to explain that as there had been very little done to foster the

Imperial Idea amongst the Burmese, it was necessary to provide some recommendations for the

inculcation of the citizens into the British Imperial Way through the education system (GOB,

1917, p10).

Notably absent from British-Burma education documents are mixed-race children,

despite the fact that concubinage was commonly practiced (Chludzinski, 2009, p54). Due to the

fact that miscegenation in Burma was officially frowned upon by the British, the children born as

a result of these relationships were ignored by British education policies. It was important to

note that while miscegenation was a common practice, the British men involved were depicted as

neither willing nor culpable; Burmese women were reputed to be extremely beautiful, enticing,

and morally corrupt in their overt sexual behaviors, leaving the British men helpless and at their

mercy (Chludzinski, 2009, p58).

The British denounced miscegenation for two reasons: the belief in their own moral

superiority, and White supremacy. The idea behind imperialization was to ‘civilize’ the natives,

one particularly savage characteristic of which was their wanton sexuality. The moral

superiority felt by British men was expressed by their claims of inculpability for any mixed-race

relationships and lack of responsibility for the children produced. The children of mixed-race

couples posed a threat to the class structure in Burma, including threatening the idea of racial

purity and posing the uncomfortable question of White supremacy, morally and otherwise.

35

Mixed-race children were difficult to classify, and in Burma, most often they were given

derogatory names and were not classified at all in order to re-enforce the idea that miscegenation

was a foul and horrid thing (Great Britain, s.n.1854, p2-10; Stoler, 2002; Chludzinski, 2009).

Miscegenation produced a social heirarchy based on color, with lighter-skinned

individuals being privileged over darker-skinned individuals, even within the same family.

“Eurasian” children, with their lighter skin, were commonly doted on by their Burmese mothers

and siblings. Often, however, the “Eurasian” children rejected their Burmese families and

refused to attend monastic schools. They were usually rejected by their European fathers and

were not given access to education reserved for Whites. These multiple rejections left them

alienated from both Burmese and European society, rejected by those whom they desired and

desired by those whom they rejected (Chludzinski, 2009, p60).

The following sub-section examines the role of the education system in the formation of

native elites and the (re)production of western social hierarchies and structures. The strategies of

reproduction include the modification of traditional content and pedagogy, the initiation of

higher education, and the education provision and language policies used in the ethnic minority

areas.

British Educational Reform in Burma

Originally the technical assistance tied to the grants-in-aid program, which took the form

of curricula and teacher training, was offered only to monastery schools in the principal towns;

however, over time the British found that the monks were not implementing the new curriculum

and new teaching methods as quickly or as effectively as they had hoped. The British-Burma

Education Department decided that a parallel system of education, one lay (including both

Burmese individuals who were interested in increasing their own merit by teaching and Christian

36

missionaries) and one monastic, would be a better option (Nisbet, 1901, p251-257; Fytche, 1878,

p333; Bell, 1881, p584; Whitehead, 2007, p164).

The British drafted policies that specifically prohibited interference with what they

considered to be “religion” taught in schools. The policies Britain enacted allowed the inclusion

of “religious” content to continue, unabated, and specifically prohibited imperial administration,

including assessment and support, of these curricula. As part of their education policy

implementation procedure, the British awarded financial grants-in-aid based “only on the

principle of perfect religious neutrality”, which in theory would ensure a fair evaluation of both

the monastic and lay schools in the parallel system (Fryer, 1867, p544; Bell, 1881, p584; Nisbet,

1901, p255).

To entice the schools to accept the education reforms, the administration tied them to the

grants-in-aid program. To qualify for assistance, schools were required to have content

including mathematics, geography, and land-surveying, as the British perceived this as necessary

for the formation of a native elite class who understood and benefitted from the British

conception of borders and trade. Another requirement for receiving grants-in-aid was modifying

the pedagogy traditionally used (student chanting to memorize long sections of religious text) to

reflect the subject-specific methodologies, including memorizing isolated facts within each

subject, promoted in Britain. While the Burmese considered a classroom with noise and

movement to be an effective one, the British perceived a quiet, calm classroom to signify

effective teaching and learning. From an ethical point of view, the British believed that by

offering the new content and pedagogy, they were paving the road for Burmese social

development and modernization (Dhammasami, 2004; Nisbet 1901, p 255; Fytche, 1878).

37

Sir Arthur’s successor, Lt.-Col. Fytche (1878), noted several challenges to implementing

the education system that Sir Arthur had not addressed. While Sir Arthur focused specifically on

what he considered to be educational infrastructure, Lt.-Col. Fytche focused his attention on not

only the logistics of providing access to education but also on the intended purpose of education

as perceived by the British and by the Burmese. During the 1850’s, while Sir Arthur was

focusing on logistics, his friend, King Mindon, was involved in education reform in Burma. His

reforms included ridding the monastic schools of any curricula not explicitly leading to the

preservation of sasana (Nisbet, 1901, p253; Turner, 2011, p231; Fytche, 1878). Due to Sir

Arthur's singular focus on access and expressed disinterest in Buddhism, it is likely that he was

unaware of the type of educational reforms initiated by King Mindon.

The “religious neutrality” advocated by the British effectively created the category of

religion and by implication a category of secularism in Burma. The British did not intend to

create new categories; rather they perceived the addition of new secular content to the “religious”

content as a sign of their progressive, inclusive values and as adding both an ethical dimension

and civility to the educational process. The ethical, or meritocratic, characteristic of the

“secular” system allowed both boys and girls to participate and led to skill-based competencies

and eventually the possibility of salaried jobs with the accompanying economic and social

capital (Nisbet, 1901, p253).

The Buddhists perceived the new content in the context of King Mindon’s 1850’s

education reforms. This meant that the Burmese, in particular the pongyi, perceived the new

content as unethical and un-meritocratic, as it would not be help those who were born into a high

station in life and worked hard reach enlightenment any more than those who, due to karmic

deficits, were born into a lower station in life and did not work to preserve sasana. The pongyi

38

did, however, understand the importance of the new content to the British so when presented

with books of new content the pongyi placed them with the sacred Pali texts and acknowledged

their sacredness to the British as they paid homage to the Pali texts (Turner, 2011, p231; Fytche,

1878).

These conflicting perceptions of the role of education resulted in a second reservation to

the addition of the new content: some of the senior monks feared that if the junior monks were to

learn these additional content areas, they might decide to leave the sangha for a life in the lay

world (Dhammasami, 2004, p2; Fytche, 1878, p333; Macaulay, 1835, #22). The monks seemed

to be aware of the potential for the new content and pedagogies to facilitate changes to their

worldview, with the changes fostered by a newly-intensified capitalist economy. The monks

feared popular acceptance of a scientific-rational worldview would result in a loss in their social

status and a waning importance of their role of providing moral guidance for the community.

From a Burmese teacher’s point of view, teaching was meritorious and thus increased

one’s karma. From a Burmese student’s point of view, studying and memorizing texts was a step

toward enlightenment. While the vast majority of schools were monastic schools, there were

also a number of lay schools, administered by lay individuals. These lay schools admitted

female students, as the girls were anxious to move toward the possibility of being a male human

in the next life and the teachers were interested in earning merit, despite the fact that both the

karmic merit and the earthly support (e.g. food and clothing provided to the teachers from the

community) earned for teaching girls was negligible compared to teaching boys. This resulted in

relatively high rates of turnover for lay teachers. It also resulted in socially-acceptable access to

education for girls which was not found in other parts of Asia; “…and as it [female education]

forms the basis for all national development, it has naturally been more prominently considered

39

in Burma than in India, by all who have been interested in the future welfare of the people”

(Fytche, 1878, p335).

Despite noting the importance of female education for national development, the British

did not foresee the Burmese people taking part in global society. For this reason the education

offered in the state schools was in the Burmese language, with limited English language classes

available in the state-sponsored middle schools. The purpose of adding English to a limited

number of schools was to cultivate and nurture an elite class of educated Burmese who would

then serve as liaisons between the British and the Burmese people via the colonial

administration. However, the British did not deem it important to teach the majority of Burmese

students English language or to assist in the provision of education beyond that which the monks

and missionaries were providing (Nisbet, 1901, p256; Macaulay, 1835).

By 1881, the British-Burma education system was composed of a large number of

monastic and lay primary schools housing standards 1-5, middle schools housing standards 6-7,

and high schools responsible for standards 8-10, after which students were eligible to apply for

matriculation into Rangoon College. As accountability, hierarchy, and success were an integral

part of the education experience, annual provincial examinations were instituted in 1880 (Nisbet,

1901, p255; Bell, 1881, p584). Certain schools in urban areas were subsidized by merchants and

officials and thus were able to purchase educational equipment, such as a telescope, that no rural

school could imagine. The urban areas were located in the lowlands and populated largely by

ethnic majority Burmans. These schools were the foundation of the native elite, who would

begin to use education to form and maintain a political social hierarchy where none had existed

before (ABFMS, 1885; Whitehead, 2007, p164; Sachsenmaier, 2009). This political hierarchy

differentiated not only social classes within the Burman ethnic majority, but also highlighted and

40

enhanced the social class difference between the ethnic majority and ethnic minority groups who

lived in the highlands.

Higher Education

In 1901, professional schools in Burma reflected only the needs of the British

bureaucracy, which were limited to border formation and resource extraction to facilitate trade,

with Normal schools necessary to ensure a continuous supply of educated Burmese. The

opportunities for professional education in Burma included five Normal schools, two Land

Survey schools that were administered by the Director of Land and Agriculture, a forestry

school, and an “elementary” engineering school. All of the professional schools used English as

the medium of instruction, with the exception of the Vernacular Forestry School which was

explicitly “for the training of subordinates” (Nisbet, 1901, p247). By using English as the

medium of instruction for the professional schools, the British assured that the graduates would

be able to take on the role of translators and junior associates in the bureaucratic hierarchy. As

there was no medical education available in Burma, students who were interested in studying

medicine were obliged to attend Calcutta University.

In the early twentieth century, the options for higher education in Burma included further

religious study within the sangha to become a senior monk or academic study at Rangoon

College or Rangoon Baptist College. Rangoon College was the first institution of higher

education established in Burma and was affiliated with Calcutta University. Rangoon Baptist

College, an institute of higher learning affiliated with the American Baptist church, was a private

university that infused religion into all topics of further study. The medium of instruction at both

of these colleges was English, and both were eager to be regarded as first-class academic

institutions. The criteria for a first class institution appeared to be the ability of students to pass

41

the Calcutta University entrance exam, with both the Baptists and the Rangoon College

administration claiming that the scores on the university entrance exams were proof that the

Burmese ethnic majority and minorities were equal in intelligence to any other race (ABFMS,

1885; Nisbet, 1901).

The British Department of Public Instruction discussed developing a university in Burma,

however they decided that progress in higher education was slow and the institutions available

“…afford(ed) quite adequate facilities for all the existing needs in this direction” (Nisbet, 1901,

p259). Unfortunately, there are no data on the number of applications or acceptance rates

available. The Baptist Missionary Magazine indicated that in 1885, the Rangoon Baptist College

was progressing well and enrolled 110 students, but by 1901, the average daily attendance was

nine students. The decline may be due to deficit spending or to the numerous health problems

faced by the missionaries themselves (ABFMS, 1885, p220-222). Rangoon College had 89

students in 1901, however, no information is given to indicate whether this number is enrollment

or attendance. The limited amount of higher education may be reflective of Britain’s lack of

interest in developing the country beyond what was needed for resource extraction and public

order.

Baptist missionaries opened the Karen Theological Seminary (KTS), in 1845 in

Moulemein, and moved to Rangoon in 1859. Both Moulemein and Rangoon were dominated by

Burmans, and Burmese was the primary language used in both towns. The students at KTS came

from Karen state, where the medium of education was the Karen language, thus they were not

fluent in Burmese. Their language, Karen, was considered inferior by the Burmese majority,

making evangelism difficult for aspiring Karen preachers. These locations did have advantages,

however, as they situated KTS at a crossroads between Rangoon and the hinterland, so traveling

42

Western preachers were often present to give sermons and lectures to the students (ABFMS,

1885). Interestingly, the practice of traveling preachers stopping at KTS is a mirror image of the

traditional Buddhist practice of wandering forest monks preaching to villages along their way.

The students would have been familiar with the forest monks, as they had wandered the areas

along the Thailand and Burma border for centuries before the British arrived (Rahula, 1974).

Ethnic Minority Education

While the British imposed national borders on Burma that incorporated a number of hill

tribes and ethnic minorities, including the Karen, Karenni, Wa, and Shan, they did not assume

responsibility for the education of the people living there. The Shan, Kachin, and Chin

minorities were virtually ignored by the British Department of Public Instruction (DPI), due to

their remote locations. Baptist and Catholic missionaries experienced success in converting

ethnic minority groups living in the delta to Christianity via education, thus were content to be

involved in the provision of education for many of the other ethnic minorities living in the

highlands (Nisbet, 1901; ABFMS, 1885; Houtman, 1990; Bamforth, 2000).

Baptist missionaries initially worked with ethnic majority and minority members in the

lowlands, where communities initiated schools inside churches. The Burmese (both Burman,

the ethnic majority, and Karen, an ethnic minority) were willing to attend church only if it was

associated with school, thus one hour per day was dedicated to religious education and the rest of

the school day was reserved for secular subjects. This ratio of religious to secular courses was a

cause for concern by some missionaries that the cost of education was taking away from the

funds that could be spent on religious conversions. There was also contention between the

missionaries as to when students should be allowed into school: some missionaries believed that

attendance at mission schools should follow conversion, while others saw the value of allowing

43

attendance prior to conversion, in the hopes that the religious education would convince students,

and possibly their parents, to convert to Christianity (Nisbet, 1901; ABFMS, 1885).

The British government obligingly settled the dispute by offering education grants-in-aid

to mission schools that were located in remote parts of the Burma. The schools formed the basis

for the churches in the Karen areas, as opposed to the church and missionary work forming the

basis and reason for the school, as was happening in the Burman areas. (ABFMS, 1885; Nisbet,

1901; Whitehead, 2007, p164). The Karen were particularly open to the Christian schools, and

they were willing to leave the monastic schools and attend the Baptist church in order to go to

school. Many students were converted after spending time in Karen schools (Baptist Missionary

Magazine, 1885). Thus, the missionaries were content to move into the frontier and continue

their missionary work, as they felt more successful by converting more people in an area that

was less devoted to Buddhism and they were able to use their own funds exclusively for

missionary work as the British provided funds for the schools. “The Bible is taught daily and

preaching services kept up on the Sabbath, without the cost of a single pice to the mission”,

exclaimed Baptist missionary Dr. Vinton in his report published by Baptist Missionary Magazine

in 1885 (p216).

The symbiotic relationship between the missionaries and the government was further

evidenced by the Baptist mission printing press, located in Taungoo town, Shan state, adjacent to

what is now the Karenni state border. The missionaries had an agreement with the government

to print school books for the mission schools, including Bibles, while the government provided

the funds for education. “The Press is becoming more and more a great light in a dark land.”

(ABFMS, 1885, p221). Materials printed by the missionary press were printed in the vernacular

language, as the missionaries felt obliged to preach in the vernacular in order to convert as many

44

souls as possible. This being the case, the materials for and the medium of instruction in the

“jungle schools” was the dominant indigenous language in the area, with Karen being by far the

dominant language (Bamforth, 2000, p30; ABFMS, 1885).

There was very little in terms of education, either missionary or otherwise, in the other

ethnic minority regions. There were, however, two competing Catholic mission stations in

Karenni state, one from Paris and one from Milan. The Catholics also had a printing press in

Taungoo and produced religious materials in the Karenni language written in Roman letters, as

the language did not previously have a written form (Bamforth, 2000, p29-30).

Post-colonial Burma: the Thailand and Burma Border

Many ethnic groups were divided as a result of the spatially-defined border between

Thailand and Burma. This resulted in people of the same ethnicity being subject to the laws of

different countries. Given the spatiality of the border, it was not uncommon for families to be

split between Thailand and Burma, and as the focus on border security increased, their ability to

visit each other was increasingly limited due to government restrictions on immigration. This

section will examine ethnic identity and citizenship on either side of the border.

Burma’s military government

Burma won its independence from Britain just after World War 2. As the newly-

independent country began to face the challenges of demarcating its borders, the ethnic minority

groups living around the periphery began to call for their independence. While the Shan and the

Karen were actively negotiating with the Burmese government for independence, the Karenni

did not see negotiation as necessary, referencing the 1875 agreement between the king of Burma

and the British government “Agreement: It is hereby agreed between the British and Burmese

governments that the state of Western Karenni shall remain separate and independent, and that

45

no sovereignty or governing authority of any description shall be claimed or exercised over the

state” (karenniphe.com, 2012; Nisbet, 1901, p36; Bamforth, 2000). However, when the British

sent surveyors to determine the border between Upper Burma and Western Karenni, King

Mindon refused to send a representative, which was perceived as a tacit resistance to the

agreement and an indication that the king felt that Western Karenni belonged to Burma. The

British agreed to defend the Western Karenni against the Burmese,;however, after WW2 when

the British were driven out of Burma, the British did not make themselves available to assist

Western Karenni when it was annexed by Burma (Nisbet, 1901; Bamforth, 2000; Fink, 2001).

In 1948, the Burmese government ratified its first constitution, which included all of the

ethnic minority states but with the extraordinary provision allowing portions of Karenni and

Shan states (called Western Karenni) to secede after ten years, should they choose to do so.

During the following ten years, the Tatmadaw, or Burmese military, grew in power and

influence, and in 1958 it took over the governmental leadership of Burma. Due to the abundance

of natural resources in the ethnic minority states, the Tatmadaw was anxious to retain Western

Karenni as a part of Burma, so they included the ethnic minority states in their new constitution,

despite the fact that the states had not agreed to be a part of Burma. This resulted in one of the

world’s longest on-going armed conflicts between the Tatmadaw and various ethnic minority

splinter groups (Bamforth, 2000; Fink, 2001; Lintner, 1996).

The distinction and marginalization of the ethnic minority groups was not limited to the

Burmese side of the border. In Thailand, a campaign to promote nationalism had been in place

for decades. This idea was fostered by the belief in Thai exceptionalism, which was linked to

ethnic origin and Buddhist beliefs.

Thailand’s identification of the Other

46

Prior to delimiting the borders of Siam, the Siam royalty and those living in and near the

“capital city” used a Thai word, banmaung, a word meaning common origin and having no

spatial denotation, when referring to the kingdom. After the drawing of the map indicating the

border between Thailand and Burma, banmaung was replaced with chat, referring to territory as

physical space, when referring to the kingdom. The process of combining the concept of spatial

limitations with other communal identifications significantly complicated the meanings of

territory and ethnicity along the Thailand and Burma border (Winichakul, 1994, p135).

With the demarcation of the border, Thailand followed a nation-building scheme that

conceived of people of Thai extraction as part of the extended royal family and included

formalizing Thai language and Buddhist religion as official characteristics of Thai citizens. The

ethnic minorities along the border were considered “uncivilized” or “wild” and viewed as

childish and in need of the King’s care, protection and goodwill. This created a dichotomy

between Thai and non-Thai that proved to be a useful tool to identify “Thai-ness” as opposed to

“Other-ness” which were in turn important concepts in determining citizenship (Toyota, 2005,

p115).

The idea of “Otherness” was enhanced when, in 1959, the US Central Intelligent Agency

shared with the Royal Thai government (RTG), the determination that the ethnic minority

peoples living along the border were, in fact, communist sympathizers and thus a threat to the

Thai Kingdom (Toyota, 2005). This determination was arrived at via “ethnographic fieldwork”

in which the CIA interpreted people’s actions as opposite to the treaty the Karen and Karenni

ethnic group leaderships had signed with the US-backed KMT (Chinese anti-communist forces)

in first half of the 1950s (Smith, 1991, p157-160).

47

The RTG decided that the threat of communism took precedence over the treaties

between the ethnic minority groups and the anti-Communist group. This prompted the RTG to

initiate a highland development program aimed at integrating the ethnic minorities as new

members of the Thai nation. However the street-level bureaucrats in Thailand who implemented

this program believed the ethnic minorities to be wild, uncivilized, sub-Thai “Others”. This

common perception, along with the idea that only members of the extended royal family could

be truly “Thai”, resulted in the ethnic minorities being classified as subjects, not citizens, of the

nation, and as subjects who potentially threatened the kingdom, they were not eligible for

citizenship (Toyota, 2005).

The program also resulted in the entrance of a new phrase into the Thai lexicon, chao

khao, a direct translation of the British phrase “hill tribe” used to describe this population. The

category of “hill tribe” was used to identify those whose ethnic identities had historically been

ambiguous and transferable. Creating the concept of “hill tribe” reified borders at the expense of

boundaries. Put another way, people’s movements were restricted to the geopolitical borders

demarcated by those in power, even when borders separated families. The borders that bound

the hill tribe people include both international borders between Burma and Thailand and

provincial borders within Thailand. Starting in the late 1960’s the Ministry of Interior issued

hill tribe members a number of different identity cards, depending on their date of entrance into

Thailand, their ancestry, or their political affiliation, in order to restrict the movement of hill tribe

people (see appendix A). These cards are used for surveillance purposes only, and are not

indicative of any potential of obtaining citizenship; hill tribe members are not eligible for Thai

“citizenship” as commonly understood by ethnic Thais and the Royal Thai Government. Hill

tribe people were defined by what they were not-Thai-rather than by what they were. In order to

48

move from one district or province to another, hill tribe people are required to obtain a “pass”

from the Ministry of Defense. Movement without a pass may result in detention, fines,

imprisonment, or even deportation to Burma, where it was not likely that the hill tribe person had

ever lived. The Burmese colonial concept of “hill tribe”, language, and citizenship was thus

adopted to concretize the dichotomy between Thai and Other (Toyota, 2005).

Education

In Burma. The use of indigenous languages in the missionary schools can be implicated

in two important outcomes. First, as a result of linking education to churches, many of the ethnic

minorities continue to be deeply religious Christians. Minorities south of Karenni state virtually

all subscribe to the Baptist religion, and ethnic minorities in Karenni state are strongly oriented

toward Catholicism. Armed conflict between these two groups in the 1940s and 1950s

demonstrates the loyalty members of each religion have to these beliefs (Bamforth, 2000, p30).

A second outcome is the failure of the ethnic minorities to feel as though they are a part of the

nation of Burma. As a result of Christian education in vernacular language, language laid the

basis for a national consciousness. Once the idea of a national consciousness was taken up, the

ethnic minorities developed an even stronger resistance to the idea of appropriation into Burma

(Anderson, 2006, p44; Metro, 2011; field notes, June-August, 2012).

In Thailand. Since the reign of King Chulalongkorn, Thailand has asserted a national

consciousness that is embodied in the Thai language. Thailand has historically associated

education with national security. For example, prior to 1973, the Ministry of Interior (MOI) was

responsible for all primary education outside of Bangkok, including the schools that served the

Thai citizens living along the border (Fry, 2002). These Border Police Patrol schools housed

grades 1-6 and were geared toward teaching basic numeracy and literacy in Thai language;

49

however, the schools were not accredited and the students did not receive a recognized credential

for any academic accomplishment at these schools. In the late 1970’s, Thailand formulated

education policies based around the presumption that the ethnic minorities living along the

border were communists and needed to be indoctrinated into the democracy without being

indoctrinated into Thai citizenship.

Conclusion

This chapter has examined the shift from colonialism to imperialism via the use of the

colonial education system to impose a category of “religion” on the school system and thus on

society. The imposition resulted in changes to the organization of society, including the

emergence of a political and economic social hierarchy characterized by individualism. This

new class structure challenged the traditionally flat, communal social structure led by a monks

and thugyi, each of whom derived his power by earning the respect of the villagers. The new

class structure introduced a new economic class of individuals whose social power resulted from

both economic and social capital associated with British employment. In order to maintain their

power, the new native elite class became more involved and invested, both financially and

emotionally, in the formation of borders in order to facilitate trade.

The imposition of the categories of religion and secular resulted not only in class

differences based on economics, but also in class differences based on ethnicity and language.

As a result of their Burmese language competency and their location in the lowlands, ethnic

majority members were far more likely to have access to an education that would allow them to

access employment opportunities with the British than were ethnic minority members. This

50

resulted in ethnic majority members taking on the role of native elites and the ethnic minority

members being marginalized from the new social order inside Burma’s borders.

The importance of the inculcation of the Burmese into the ideology of the crown, or the

Imperial Idea, combined with the financial reasons for acquiring Burma, is indicative of an

imperialist empire. The British showed a modicum of respect for the lowland cultures of Burma;

they did not attempt to assimilate them into the empire. Paradoxically, this respect for cultural

differences took on the form of minimal educational policies and minimal assistance in nation-

building, as opposed to the French form of imperialism that worked to re-shape indigenous

cultures into French mimes via education policies (Young, 2001, p16). The lack of assistance in

nation-building was particularly problematic for Burma, as the British re-drew the map without

providing any reason for a sense of belonging. The one characteristic that was considered to be

useful for national identification, Buddhism, was actively broken down as the British encouraged

Christian missionaries to infiltrate the hinterlands, resulting in further distance between the

Burman majority and the ethnic minorities.

The 1917 report on the inculcation of the Burmese into the Imperial Idea is a striking

example of the moral arguments used to legitimate the Imperial Idea in the minds of the British.

This report also functions as a road map to the hearts and minds of the Burmese via education.

Imperialism is dependent on a moral component for legitimization, and the use of the schools

and colleges in Burma provided a reasonable venue in which to exercise this while at the same

time promoting loyalty to the crown and industriousness. Education was used to produce native

elite for the purpose of assisting the British in exploiting Burma. The native elite were also

necessary for the reproduction of western social hierarchy, which was understood by the British

51

to be the only logical way to organize a society. This reproduction was fostered both by the

British government policies and by the influence of the missionaries.

As Chatterjee (1993) and Winichakul (1994) point out, in contradiction to Anderson, the

idea of nationalism stems from European history and is not a natural phenomenon. Anderson

indicates that language groups and print capitalism were responsible for the rise of nationalism;

however Chatterjee and Winachakul argue that there are multiple explanations for nationalism,

and that dominion gave rise to nationalism in many non-Western settings. The creation of

borders between Thailand and Burma was a completely western process involving negotiations,

manipulations, and ultimately the domination of western thought over Southeast Asian thought.

The creation of borders and the effects of education, including the recognition of a

national consciousness of ethnic minorities and the creation of a new social class that highlighted

the differences between ethnic minority groups and ethnic majority groups fanned the flames of

conflict between the Tatmadaw and the ethnic minorities. While conflict was not new to the

highland areas, the idea of crossing an international border and the legal and political

consequences associated with it while fleeing conflict certainly was. As ethnic minority

noncombatants sought refuge in Thailand, the RTG began to assert itself with regards to border

sovereignty. In the early 1980’s refugee camps began to dot the mountainous area on the Thai

side of the border. The RTG, not being a signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention, offered

military “protection” to closed camps. All other services, including food, health, and education

were provided by international NGOs.

52

Chapter 3: Migrant student access to education

Thailand and Burma, like most other countries and like multilateral organizations, make

an important distinction between refugees and migrants. Refugee status allows individuals to

live in a refugee camp where they receive food rations, education services, and health services

from NGOs. However, because of the involvement of the military in determining status and the

restricted movement and employment associated with refugee status, not all, or even the

majority, of displaced people from Burma are considered eligible for, or even want, this status.

Absent from formal classification, they are, by default, classified as undocumented migrants. As

of 2005, the Royal Thai Government (RTG) stated that there was no longer a reason for people

to flee Burma and has classified all Burmese irregular migration as economic migration and thus

a deportable offense (Seng, 2004; NGO staff interview, 08/13/11). This chapter focuses on

undocumented migrants who arrive in Thailand for any number of reasons, including fleeing

from armed conflict, economic crisis, and environmental degradation. “Forced” and “voluntary”

migration is not a dichotomy but a gradation, one that is much more accurately determined by

the individual’s perception of need than by a definition decided upon by bi- and multilateral

organizations (Bartlett and Ghaffar-Kucher, forthcoming). The current social and political

context in Reaproy Province, Thailand,i is examined by using the historical context laid out in the

first chapter as a foundation for understanding the meanings attached to migration, ethnic group

membership, and education as perceived by ethnic minority group members, the RTG, and the

international community.

Background

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Refugees and migrants along the Thailand-Burma border. Prior to WW2, British and

Indian policies toward the ethnic minority people and their land in Burma shifted from a loose

affiliation to incorporation into Burma. After WW2, the Burman party in power, the Anti-

Fascist Peoples’ Freedom League (AFPL) led by Aung San, continued to push for incorporation.

In 1947, the Burmese constitution included the ethnic minority states as part of Burma, with the

right to varying amounts of autonomy, including secession, after ten years. This aspect of the

constitution, however, was not upheld, resulting in a civil war between various ethnic groups and

the Tatmadaw, or ethnic majority Burmese military (Bamforth, 2000; Fink, 2001; Lintner, 1996).

This resulted in continuous armed conflict along the Thailand-Burma border, displacing over one

million people. The displaced people are Burmese ethnic minority members, whose legal status

is tenuous as their states are calling for autonomy from Burma yet are not recognized as

independent or autonomous by any other governments. This leads to a large number of

“stateless” individuals, as they are not Burmese citizens, not citizens of Thailand, and not

citizens of a recognized ethnic minority state. The displacement of ethnic minorities has also

resulted in a severe lack of educational opportunities for displaced children.

An estimated one million Burmese ethnic minority people have fled armed conflict and

oppression inside Burma and are now living along the Thailand-Burma border. Approximately

15% percent of the displaced have refugee status and are living in one of the nine refugee camps

on the Thai side of the border (Proctor, 2007). “Refugee” is a legal status, indicating a “person

who is outside their country of origin and unable or unwilling to return there or to avail

themselves of its protection, on account of a well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race,

religion, nationality, membership of a particular group, or political opinion” (Goodwin-Gill,

2008, p2). However, neither Thailand nor Burma is a signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention,

54

and thus UNHCR has a limited mandate in both countries. Prior to 2004, UNHCR’s mandate in

Thailand had been to determine Burmese migrants’ eligibility for refugee status. However, in

2004, the deputy secretary-general of Thailand’s National Security Council announced that

UNHCR would cede this function to Thai Provincial Administration Boards (PAB), a wing of

the Ministry of Interior, which is tasked with, among other things, maintaining Thailand’s

internal security.

On the Thai side of the border, displaced people from Burma without refugee status are

classified as “illegal” or “undocumented,” and are subject to incarceration and deportation at any

time; on the Burmese side of the border they are considered “internally displaced people” and are

forced to move when armed conflict nears their villages or when the economy demands that they

move to find work. Because the border is quite porous, people’s legal status changes often as

they move to avoid armed conflict and to find work and food for their families.

Crossing the border involves different strategies at different places. Inside Burma,

moving toward the border is often done by paying a guide, as the areas on the Burma side are

actively engaged in combat, thus necessitating negotiation to pass and the need for a guide to

point out and avoid landmines. In areas where the border is a river, there are often systems of

boats set up by people on both the Thai and the Burmese side, where a migrant can pay a fee to

the boat owner and other required security personnel and be taken across. Once migrants are on

the Thai side of the border, they rely on friends and family to help them move about (field notes,

June-August 2012).

Multilateral organizations historically have not been allowed to provide education

services to undocumented migrants along the border because Thailand’s policy, until 2005, was

to privilege children’s residency status over their right to education, thus highlighting their

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“illegal” status over their right to education. Multilateral organizations have not provided

education services to internally displaced people (IDP) living inside Burma as the Burmese

government has not consented. In Thailand, Burmese children and their parents were subject to

detention and deportation if they attempted to access educational services in Thailand. Popular

Thai opinion held that schooling would attract more undocumented immigrants; thus many Thai

citizens felt it necessary to block migrant children from enrolling in school in order to secure the

borders. In Burma, education was poorly funded in registered villages and existed only in ad

hoc, informal, form in IDP settlements. As a result, many migrant students received no official

education (Foundation for Rural Youth, 2010; Proctor, 2009; field notes, 07/07/12).

Thailand continues to associate education with national security, and currently the MOI is

in charge of approving the educational resources and procedures used at the MLCs in order to

ensure that Thailand’s national security is not compromised. In the late 1990s, Thailand

underwent a number of educational reforms that moved the education system in the direction of a

Western-style system, even as it featured an equal amount of concern for cultural preservation

and education that would “promote pride in Thai identity [and the] ability to protect public and

national interests” (MOE, 1999, p3). Safeguarding Thailand’s sovereignty and Thai national

identity in the midst of the reforms became a social and political priority (Baron-Gutty & Supat,

2009). From the national government’s point of view, successful education included mastery of

skills and attitudes that would incite students to work toward the betterment of the state as well

as their own individual improvement.

The policies addressing access to education applied only to Thai citizens, leaving

undocumented Burmese migrants living along the border but not in refugee camps without

access to education except for the ad hoc education provided by parents or other migrant

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community members in the MLCs. Moreover, the RTG’s focus on Thai identity and security

actually undermined arguments for providing education to undocumented migrants, as education

was seen as a way of forming citizen-subjects, an outcome for undocumented migrants that, in

the mind of the RTG, was a threat to Thailand’s national security.

Migrant Learning Centers

In response to the lack of any type of educational opportunities, migrant families

developed an underground network of Migrant Learning Centers (MLCs). MLCs, including the

physical structures, the students, and the teachers, were, and continue to be, unofficial and

unrecognized, meaning that they did not and do not have permission to operate or even exist in

Thailand. Classes are held in a variety of spaces including migrant workers' homes and

buildings illegally “rented” to the school by Thai land owners. Since 2005, many (but not all)

MLCs have operated with the awareness and tacit approval of Thai immigration officials,

although they still do not have any documentation allowing them to legally exist in Thailand

(NGO staff interview, 06/17/11 & 08/04/11). MLCs serve Burmese citizens and stateless

students with a wide variety of ethnic backgrounds, most of whom speak a regional language as

their mother tongue and speak Burmese as a second or third language. The instructional medium

used in the MLCs is most often Burmese, although there are a small number of MLCs that use

the Karen language. MLC teachers are undocumented migrants who have been asked by

community members to teach; some had been teachers in Burma prior to leaving, and others

were simply individuals who graduated from at least one grade higher than that which they are

asked to teach and are not involved in day labor or a factory job in Thailand at the moment. The

curricula at the MLCs vary greatly as textbooks and other materials are in short supply. If an

MLC has a textbook from a school inside Burma, the teacher will often use this as a basis for a

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class lesson. If not, the teacher will use other resources available in the area, including books

borrowed from community members and any donations received from foreigners or others.

MLCs are plagued by a lack of physical security and resources and high teacher and student

turnover (Proctor, 2009; Metro, 2011, NGO staff interview, 08/08/11 & 08/05/11).

The number of MLCs varies, as their undocumented and under-funded status causes them

to close without notice, but estimates suggest that somewhere between 95 and 200 MLCs exist

along the border (Proctor, 2009; Foundation for Rural Youth, 2010; MFA, 2011; NGO staff

interview 08/05/11). The coursework completed at the MLCs is not recognized by Thailand, or

by any other country, and credentials from these schools cannot be used as the proof of previous

achievement needed to enter institutions of higher education. As the schools were historically

run covertly by community members, there was -- and continues to be -- great variety in both the

content and quality of the education.

International policies and policyscapes

Whereas there is near-universal agreement regarding the importance of education,

international organizations conceive of the purpose of education in different ways. On the one

hand, UNESCO, one of the lead organizations behind EFA, presents education as a human right,

thus focusing on both access to and universality of education (UNESCO, 2011; Proctor, 2010;

Oh and Van de Stowe, 2008). On the other hand, the World Bank, the lead funding organization

of EFA, and many bilateral funders, focus on access to and universality of education as a driver

of human capital development and thus of poverty reduction and/or national development (e.g.,

World Bank, 2009). Despite these somewhat differing conceptions of the purpose of education,

international development organizations through the 1990s and early 2000s largely shared a

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focus on universal access to formal schooling for primary school age children (Global

Partnership for Education, 2011; World Bank, 2009).

According to the 1989 Convention for the Rights of the Child, which was ratified by most

countries, including Thailand and Burma, access to quality education is the right of every child.

In 1990, Thailand hosted the first EFA conference and signed the resulting agreement, which

reiterated the right of all children to have access to education. Interestingly, the word “all” was

interpreted differently by human rights advocates and organizations like UNICEF and UNESCO,

and many of the governments who signed the agreement, including Thailand. Human rights

advocates interpreted “all” to mean every child. Many governments interpreted “all” to mean all

legal and documented individuals within the geo-political borders of the state. The first

interpretation of “all” indicated a human-rights based approach to education; the second

interpretation was based on the origins of state resources and the need to justify their use to the

polity of the individual nation-states, as well as the notion that citizens develop their own states

through their human capital development, and thus make public investment in education

worthwhile. The word “all” seemed to take on the function of a sliding signifier, allowing both

state representatives and non-governmental organization representatives to become signatories of

the 1990 agreement.

Policyscapes are the mechanisms used by international governing bodies to facilitate state

uptake of political economy ideologies (Carney, 2009). There are multiple policyscapes related

to economic, cultural, and political well-being, and the educational policyscape was brought to

the forefront by the EFA conferences. The discourse surrounding its origin is embedded in

western political liberalism, which centers the individual in relation to the state and is

operationalized through a rights-based framing of individuals and their relationships to the state

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and global polity. Conferences such as EFA are designed to standardize the flow of international

ideas about education and to encourage universal best practices for policy implementation

(Samoff 2007; Carney 2009).

International conferences and the process of creating policies via local contextualization

of global “best practices” assume the nation-state as the legitimate unit of measure and body of

action; they explicitly call on state governments to implement policies to address the documented

population(s) living within their borders. These conferences do not explicitly assign

responsibility to state governments for addressing the rights and needs of the undocumented

populations living within and/or moving between the geo-political borders of nation-states, and

most global policies, such as educational quality, do not address undocumented populations,

either. Although UNHCR functioned as a surrogate state for the refugees in camps in Thailand

prior to 2004, it is not within UNHCR’s purview to work with individuals who do not have

documentation entitling them to refugee status. Nor have the many global development

conferences highlighted the needs of this group, thus effectively removing them from the

educational policyscape.

Education and economic reforms

In 2001, the billionaire Thaksin Shinawatra was elected Thailand’s first post-financial

crisis prime minister. Given his business background and the neoliberal policies put in place by

the IMF, it is perhaps not surprising that his version of democracy was guided by a firm belief in

neo-liberalism and nationalism. The People’s Constitution and the 1999 National Education Act

both promote local Thai wisdom and decentralization of education. Thaksin implemented this by

instituting a policy of decentralized education that resulted in the establishment of Educational

Administrative Departments (EADs). EADs are defined as both geographical areas and

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administrative units located throughout the kingdom. They allow for local education

administration and implementation of the national standards.

This economic context allowed for the initiation of neoliberal educational reforms.

Neoliberal education reforms include the governmental encouragement of private education

providers, with the government’s role limited to oversight and management. Primary education

is understood to be a public good, as society benefits from high literacy rates, however secondary

education is considered a private good, as it leads to employment with increasing capital

rewards. Determining which individuals are able to go on to secondary education is done via a

meritocratic system which involves a value-neutral curriculum, and the social inequality that is

formed by the varying levels of education is a positive characteristic for society, as individuals

receive what they deserve. By promoting a knowledge economy and working to allow access to

education to migrant children, the education reforms put in place by the Thaksin government are

reflective of his neoliberal ideology.

Fifteen years after the first EFA conference, in 2005, Thailand initiated several

significant education reforms with the aim of developing Thailand into a knowledge-based

society. This was considered a pre-requisite for becoming a knowledge-based economy as it

would “enable [Thais] to acquire knowledge and capital to generate income and to eventually

pull the country out of the economic and social crisis” (MFA, 2005, para1). Additionally, in

response to a list of concerns raised by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, the Thai

Cabinet passed a resolution requiring the MOE to provide appropriate forms of education for

children from neighboring countries who have fled armed conflicts, including undocumented

children (ICRC 2012; MFA, 2011). Finally, several bilateral funders gained permission from the

RTG to fund social service projects, including education for displaced people from Burma. It

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seemed as though Thailand was making an effort to blend concerns for economic development

with a human rights approach, with national security being addressed by the MOI oversight of

education for displaced people from Burma.

In addition to education reform, Thailand was also experiencing tremendous economic

growth. In 2003, Thaksin initiated the Economic Cooperative Strategy, a strategy aimed at

increasing trade between the Southeast Asian nations. In 2007, a Special Economic Zone giving

financial incentives to investors along the Thailand-Burma border was announced. Thus, two

years after Thailand’s goal of becoming a knowledge economy was declared, a number of border

towns received an influx of low-skilled, low-wage jobs requiring a modicum of literacy and a

rudimentary vocabulary in Thai and Burmese languages. Thai citizens were not interested in

most of these low-skill, low-wage jobs. (NGO staff interview, 08/05/11; Dawei, 2011; Bangkok

Post, 2011; EWEC, 2012). The shift in Thai educational policy toward the production of a

knowledge economy in Thai schools, coupled with the influx of low-skilled jobs gives rise to

speculation about the impetus for education policy shifts toward increased access to limited

education for displaced people from Burma.

Logistics surrounding the implementation of Education for All

The 2005 Cabinet Resolution on Education for Unregistered Persons provided the right to

all levels of education for all children in Thailand, regardless of citizenship status. Accordingly,

all children were theoretically permitted to enroll in public schools (MFA, 2011). However, the

number of students eligible to enroll in school and the number of students who actually enrolled

are different to due structural barriers. Some of the barriers to children entering Thai schools

include: a lack of awareness among undocumented families about their children's right to enroll

in Thai schools; a lack of awareness or a lack of willingness on the part of some Thai schools to

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register non-Thai children; a lack of language support available in the schools; parents’ concerns

about the cultural relevance of the curriculum; the direct and indirect financial costs involved in

attending schools; pressure for undocumented children to work; the itinerant lifestyle of many

undocumented families; and security concerns for undocumented family members that result in

an unwillingness to assert their rights (Htaw, 2010; Proctor 2009; Weng 2010). Although the

RTG and large NGOs adamantly deny that there are any social barriers such as discrimination to

entering Thai schools, MLC staff and community-based organizations offer evidence to the

contrary (Interviews, 08/05/2011; 08/07/2011; 08/09/2011). As such, a vast number of

undocumented students were not accessing any formal education.

Given the social difficulties, in addition to the financial, political and logistical challenges

of integrating an estimated 60,000 undocumented children into Thai schools along the Thailand-

Burma border, the Ministry of Education adopted a multi-pronged approach. The MOE began

working with a variety of third party actors, including multilateral funders such as UNESCO and

UNICEF, several bilateral funders, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) originating in

Burma, Thailand, and in the West. This resulted in several educational options for migrant

children. These options included going to a public Thai school, attending a registered MLC, or

attending a non-registered MLC.

The articulation between the MLCs and the Thai education system has not yet been

decided. For the past several years, a draft of the Ministerial Regulation on the Management of

Education for Persons with no Status has been pending approval by the Cabinet. The draft calls

for standardized management of education in the MLCs, including the use of the same standards

as those used in Thai schools. If this regulation is passed, it could further help students who

graduate from MLCs to be able to transfer to public schools or accredited classrooms for higher

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education (MFA, 2011; NGO staff interview, 08/05/11). For the time being, however, students

who attend MLCs will not receive credit for their education and cannot matriculate into Thai

schools. Only students who begin their education in a Thai school will be able to continue on to

higher grades, whereas students who have completed several grades in an MLC must repeat all

grades in Thai school.

Local meets global

Within the structure of EFA, a complicated relationship has evolved between the

Ministries of Interior and of Education, NGOs, and MLCs. The Ministries have been tasked with

developing a scheme that will allow a large number of undocumented children to access

education in Thailand with a relatively small increase in budget. NGOs, in particular

inter/national NGOs with funding from bi-and multilaterals, have resources to spend educating

these children through MLCs, as long as the MLCs and the Ministries are amenable to the

stipulations and requirements related to access to education, including pedagogy

recommendations and suggested school administrative procedures. The MOI, which views

schooling of these children largely as a security issue, is tasked with ensuring Thailand’s

security; for this reason, all resources proposed for use at the MLCs (curricula, teacher training,

and stipends) must be approved by the MOI. The MOE oversees primary and secondary

education in all schools in Thailand, except those in the refugee camp (. Given the MOE’s

political and technical capacity and lack of resources, their role has developed into being a

liaison between the MOI and the NGOs. Given the political sensitivities of the work, multiple

NGOs stressed the importance of informing the MOE of every planned activity and waiting for

permission from MOE before actually beginning. The MOE, in turn, consults and negotiates with

the MOI prior to granting approval for the NGO plans (Researcher interview, 05/27/11; NGO

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staff interview, 08/05/11). As per international emergency education best practices and MOI

request, resources and technical assistance are supplied by bilateral funders and implementing

partners to limited-resource Thai schools in the area to ensure equal access to resources for both

Thai and undocumented migrant students (INEE, 2011; NGO staff interview, 06/17/11).

Relationships between the local, state, and international stakeholders.

Ultimately, the MOI has the final say regarding what can and cannot be included in

educational resources intended for undocumented migrant children (MOE, 1999). According to

people I interviewed, MOI has expressed four main categories of concern. The first is

surveillance, meaning all undocumented people receiving education inside Thailand must be

known to the MOI and subject to MOI conditions. A second concern is founded in the belief that

undocumented people living along the border should be discouraged from remaining in Thailand

any longer than necessary. This leads to non-integration policies designed to ensure the migrant

students are not integrated into Thai society. Third, MOI expressed the need for assurance that

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the MLCs would not be used to negatively characterize either ethnic Thais or ethnic Burmans or

to train students to engage in the armed conflict inside Burma or to engage in anti-Thai activities

in Thailand. Finally, undocumented people must not receive education or skills training that

would enable them to take jobs away from Thai people (NGO staff interview, 06/17/11 &

08/04/11 & 08/05/11). The overall goal is to allow undocumented Burmese migrant children to

have access to education, but to make certain that the education does not encourage or enable

them to remain in Thailand.

The great compromise

To address the first concern regarding surveillance, MLCs are required to register with

the MOE. This registration requires information such as the location of the school, the number

of students, the number of teachers, and the level (primary, secondary, tertiary) of the school.

There are roughly 37 kindergarten to grade 4 MLCs, 36 grade 5 through grade 10 MLCs, and 7

post-secondary registered MLCs, serving approximately 15,000 students in Reaproy Province

(MOE, 2011). Registering an MLC can be done either by the headmaster contacting the MOE

directly or by the headmaster contacting one of the NGOs, who will then work with the MOE on

behalf of the MLC to ensure registration compliance. The MOE then turns the data over to the

MOI, which, in effect, gives MLC students and teachers the complicated status of registered,

undocumented migrants, or migrants who are known to the MOI and who are without documents

but who are involved in schooling. In return for registration, the approximately 75 registered

MLCs receive four major incentives. First, they receive financial and technical assistance from

the NGOs in the area who are cooperating with the MOE. This financial assistance is often the

only assistance an MLC receives, and thus allows the school to continue. Second, they receive

leniency with regards to the physical structure requirements placed on Thai schools, including

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size of the building, state of building repair, and physical resources such as desks, whiteboards,

and chairs. MLCs have less-stringent requirements regarding the physical state of repair of the

building and the ratio of school furniture (e.g. desks) to students than do public schools serving

Thai students. Third, by registering, MLCs can offer their students residing at the schools

relative safety from immigration raids, as long as the students remain on the school grounds.

Fourth, MLC teachers receive “identification cards” issued by the MOE. The MOE has no

purview to issue ID cards, and the cards are, in reality, meaningless. However, in and around

Kan, the MOI and the local police have agreed to accept the cards as identification and registered

MLC teachers are, for the most part, free to move around town without fear of deportation. The

ID cards allow a teacher to pass through police check points in and around town rather than

hiding, taking back roads, or paying exorbitant bribes when s/he wants or needs to leave the

school. Without an ID card, they would be forced to walk miles through paddy fields and forests

in order to skirt the check points. In return for this acceptance, the MOE provides monthly

updates of the ID cards issued to the MOI, and representatives from the MOI have begun

attending and participating in monthly meetings for the MLC lead administrators hosted and

sponsored by the MOE (MOE, 2011; NGO staff interview, 06/17/11 & 08/05/11).

In an effort to prevent migrant students from taking jobs from Thai people, there is a lack

of recognition or accreditation of any education acquired at an MLC. This lack of accreditation

prevents migrant students from qualifying for jobs or entering institutions of higher education.

Several NGOs have established relationships with the MOE at the national level and advocate for

accreditation of the MLC curricula. This advocacy has gone on for at least five years and

whereas the MOE agrees with the theory of MLC accreditation, the cabinet resolution has yet to

be signed into law (NGO staff interview, 08/05/11). Given Thailand’s reluctance to accredit the

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education received at the MLCs and the dramatic changes taking place inside Burma as of

November, 2010, there may, at some point, be a push to accredit the curriculum inside Burma.

Accreditation from Britain was explored for a different curriculum used in a similar situation and

it was decided that this was not a possibility due to the costs of complying with the British

requirements for curriculum implementation by teachers with particular credentials and exam

administration by authorized personnel. (NGO staff interview, 08/05/11).

The curriculum is used to address the second and third concerns of the MOI, which are to

discourage undocumented migrants from living in Thailand any longer than necessary and to

ensure that the MLCs do not teach content that contains any anti-Thai or anti-Burmese

sentiment. One condition of registration is that the MLC must agree to use a standardized

curriculum designed and “contextualized” by educators and several NGOs in the area for 70% of

its total curriculum. This curriculum, taught in either Burmese or Karen, includes math and

science; English and Thai languages are also taught. These subjects are perceived as being not

politically or culturally sensitive. The math and science curriculum is based on a donated

version of the General Certificate in Secondary Education curriculum, a curriculum used in

Britain. The publisher gave the NGOs permission to modify and translate the curriculum for use

in the MLCs. This curriculum was chosen for use along the border as it is “professionally done,

…the math and science are integrated…and it is all developmentally sound” (NGO staff

interview, 08/05/2011).

The contextualization process involved teachers from the MLCs, members of the MOE,

and NGO staff members meeting monthly to examine and adapt the textbooks in terms of

language, but not the topics or recommended pedagogical approaches, to the MLC context. The

ultimate decision regarding contextualization was left to the teachers, who grappled with content

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and translation concerns. Given that there are at least five different regional languages spoken

by the children in the MLCs, translation issues are significant. The content and the values

associated with the original texts, though, remain intact as the contextualization process, which

continues today as modifications are made for the third edition of the curriculum, consists largely

of debates about relatively superficial concepts and very little discussion of the ideology behind

them. For example, the contextualization process consists of debates about whether to remove

“snow” from example problems and replace it with something more familiar to students or to

leave it in, as it is important to know some facts about the West (Baron-Gutty & Supat, 2009;

NGO staff interview, 06/17/11 & 08/05/2011). This hesitation to change the curriculum may

reflect two factors: 1) the fact that international organizations considered “experts” are

providing the curriculum for displaced people and 2) a desire on the part of the implementing

NGOs and the EAD-R to show the MOI that the curriculum is “proven effective” and is non-

controversial.

Organization of the curriculum. NGOs are completely free to foster the pedagogy and

organization of MOI-approved content they deem most effective. In the MLCs, content and

teaching methods are organized according to the system of Understanding by design (UbD).

UbD is a pedagogic method that was designed and published by Association for Supervision and

Curriculum Development (ASCD, 2012) a United States-based professional organization for

educational leaders. UbD is a standards-based framework that emphasizes the teacher's role in

developing learner-centered experiences that will result in improved academic performance.

When designing an experience, the teacher must keep in mind all aspects of a complex task to

ensure the students an opportunity to have authentic opportunities to explain, interpret, apply,

shift perspective, empathize, and self-assess. Each unit is arranged by enduring questions, which

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are overarching concepts all students must know. These are investigated via the essential

questions, which pose questions that can be answered by experiences. There are a number of

facts students are expected to know, and these are listed. Finally, the lessons are organized

around a section called “do”, which lists a variety of activities and experiences the students are

expected to have in order to fully comprehend the enduring concepts and essential questions.

Students are assessed based on their ability to perform various skills demonstrating their

knowledge and understanding of the enduring concepts (MLC science standards). MLC teachers

receive ongoing teacher training designed and implemented by a variety of NGOs, with the

trainings from different organization supporting the UbD methods to varying degrees. These

trainings are organized and implemented independently by the NGOs and, while the NGOs have

expressed a desire to coordinate the trainings so that all teacher receive trainings. To date, the

trainings continue to be unrelated to each other and to serve an overlapping population of

teachers and schools (field notes, 06/16/12). When the UbD methods were proposed to the local

MOE, they requested that a workshop on these methods be provided for their (Thai) teachers and

a week-long workshop, including foreign presenters, was organized for Thai administrators who

were expected to pass on what they learned to the teachers with whom they work (NGO staff

interview, 08/05/11).

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The subjects are treated as discrete entities ideally taught by teachers who were trained in

that specific content area. The subjects are broken down into “units”, which are further broken

down into “standards”. Grade level indicators of student achievement accompany each standard.

As the MLCs indicated they are not interested in using any of the Thai curricula, the NGOs have

provided an adapted version of the New Jersey state standards for use in the MLCs. These

standards were chosen to accompany the UK curriculum as they were developed by centering the

Understanding by Design method. The repetition of units and standards allow for a “spiraling

effect” of the curricula, in that each year the students will experience increasingly complex

content and thinking skills centered on the standard. The selection and organization of content

are determined by NGO “experts” and approved by the MOI, thus teachers are discouraged from

straying too far from the prescribed curriculum (field notes, 06/06/11; NGO staff interview,

08/05/11 & 07/16/12). Teachers are expected to teach all of the units in their subject by the end

of the academic year. The pacing and timing theoretically allow the NGO to inform the MOI of

the content being taught on any given day (NGO staff interview, 8/5/2011).

The amount of time allocated to various subjects at the MLCs is indicative of the

priorities in content. An example from a representative MLC timetable shows that classes are

scheduled for a total of 25 hours per week, with language training accounting for 15 hours. The

language training can be further divided into 11 hours of English language, and two hours each

of Thai and Burmese language per week (field notes, 06/13/2011).

Language classes reflect some of the complexities of development and state sovereignty.

English is considered “neutral” in terms of state sovereignty by all stakeholders: the Thais, the

ethnic minorities, the Burmese government, and the NGOs. As such, it is perceived as non-

threatening and thus appropriate for MLC students. In terms of development, English is

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considered an economically valuable skill, and MLCs are often requested (i.e. required) to share

their English teacher with the near-by public Thai schools, sometimes, though not always, in

exchange for a Thai teacher. This sharing process requires the Thai school and MLC

administration to negotiate access for their students to English classes. English class is often

taught by a parade of volunteers helping out anywhere from one week to one year from a variety

of different countries, including Hong Kong, Japan, the US, Canada, and Eastern and Western

Europe. As these volunteers typically don’t speak Thai or Burmese and are not trained in TEFL

or education in general, common planning between Burmese-speaking MLC faculty or Thai

school teachers and the volunteers very rarely occurs. Foreign volunteers, regardless of training

or credentials, are considered inherently “better than” ethnic minority teachers, and many ethnic

minority teachers attempt to hide what they feel are “deficits” in the schools in an effort to save

face (NGO staff, interview, 08/09/11). This myth is further strengthened by the belief that

English language is necessary for modernization and that the volunteers are more “modern” than

those from the area. Not speaking Burmese is an expected and accepted characteristic for

volunteers (field notes, June and August, 2011 & June-August, 2012; NGO staff, interview,

08/09/11).

The NGOs in the area worked with the MOE to develop a curriculum for teaching Thai as

a foreign language. This curriculum is based on the strategies used with TEFL, and native Thai

speakers are the only people (at this time) qualified, in the sense that they actually know the

language, to teach it. There are no trained Thai as a Foreign Language teachers in Thailand yet,

and as the salaries paid by the MLC are quite low compared to other employment and there is

somewhat of a stigma to working with Burmese refugees, most MLCs cannot find Thai teachers,

or, if they do, the teacher does not relate well to the students (NGO staff interviews, 08/09/11 &

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07/31/11). Interestingly, while Thai language classes for foreigners are plentiful in Thailand and

abroad, this curriculum represents the first efforts made to teach Thai to undocumented

immigrants (NGO staff, interview, 08/05/11). In 2007, there was an attempt to teach Thai

language in the refugee camps along the Thailand-Burma border, but this was short-lived, due to

not finding native Thai speakers who were willing to travel to the remote areas where the camps

are located. Additionally, the refugees themselves expressed only limited interest in learning

Thai (field notes, 07/16/2011).

The remaining 30% of the curriculum is to be designed by the MLCs. However, the MOI

requires that the MLCs not teach Thai history, religion or culture. This “requirement” is not a

written policy; rather it is an understood policy, one that needs no active enforcement as the

MLCs have not expressed any interest in teaching the banned content (NGO staff, Interview,

08/04/11 & 08/05/11). This absence will, according to the 1999 National Education Act, prevent

many migrant students from being imbued with a sense of “Thai-ness,” thus they will not feel a

connection to Thailand beyond that of a temporary safe haven. This policy also suggests that

adults who did attend Thai schools were imbued with the sense of “Thai-ness” and recognize the

lack thereof when interacting with someone who attended an MLC (MOE, 1999; Winichakul,

1994). This use, or withholding, of content is directly aimed at influencing individual and

collective behaviors, reifying the categories of “Thai” and “Other”.

Pedagogical practices in the MLCs. A significant aspect of pedagogical training

involves NGOs strongly encouraging “correct” relationships between teachers, students and the

curricula. Along the border, a teacher’s role is to “guide, facilitate and manage high quality

learning for each student equally” (Teaching Skills, 2011. p 3; field notes, 06/17/11), which is

typically summed up by teacher-trainers as the “student-centered learning” approach (field notes,

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07/25/12; NGO staff interview, 08/07/12 & 07/14/12). In some of the teacher-training courses

along the border, this approach is summarized in the Learning Framework, which is often

represented by a graphic explaining the five areas a teacher needs to consider every day and how

these areas are related to each other. “These are formatted with “Student” in the center and this

can be used as a template for organizing and thinking about child development and teaching.

There is a cross logic to it as methods cut across all as does assessment. Discipline goes under

learning environment, and lesson planning though placed under content is actually the

foundation to the whole thing” (NGO staff interview, 07/13/12 & 07/16/12 and field notes,

07/11/12).

Learning Framework

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ACTIVE LEARNING

LEARNING ENVIRONMENT Notes 1 2 3 4

Positive

teacher

behavior

Promote success for all students by using

different teaching, ideas ( songs, movement,

games )

Teacher moves around the room, engage

with students ( play games with children,

ask questions )

Engage a fun learning environment

Positive

students

behavior

Work well indifferent situations

(individual, pair, small group, class group )

Practice fully in learning tasks ( play

learning games, group discussion )

Develop positive relationship with other

students

Feel OK about making mistakes

Organization

of the

Organize class according to activity ( move

outside, move furniture to make space,

77

environment group children )

Preparation of lesson and resources with

time consideration

CONTENT

Connected to

students

Learning expectations are clear to students

Links to students level of understanding and

knowledge

Relevant

content

Adaptable to the individual needs of

students

School context, using available resources to

support learning experiences

INSTRUCTION

Engage

students

learning

Use variety of strategies cater of provide for

different learning styles

Teacher is enthusiastic about the activities

and joins in with students

Build Instruction is focused on understanding not

just memory

Give clear examples and instructions and

78

allow students the opportunity to practice

ASSESSMENT

Frequent Use variety of assessment techniques

( questions, role play, observation )

Teacher continually checks on students

understanding throughout each lesson

Formative Encouraging students to learn

Encourage students to self-assess

Chart taken from teacher observation checklist found in the teacher training center training manual.

This is quite different from the traditional role of a teacher in Thailand and Burma in

which teachers take a more teacher-centered approach and focus on content, rather than on the

student. Generally teachers along the border require several training sessions to understand and

feel comfortable with the concept of “student-centered learning” (field notes, 5/30/2012; Focus

group discussions, 07/16/12 & 07/21/12). Teacher trainings are offered by a variety of NGOs

along the border, amongst whom there is universal agreement that this type of teaching requires a

specific set of knowledge, attitude, and skills (field notes, 6/5/11 & 5/30/12; NGO staff

interview, 08/07/12). The prescribed knowledge, attitudes, and skills embodied in student-

centered learning are perceived by NGOs, the MLCs, and the RTG as neutral, with no

ideological aspects whatsoever, and they can be learned and perfected with enough training (field

notes 07/04/12; 06/27/12; NGO staff interview, 08/03/11 & 08/05/11 & 08/07/12; Researcher

79

interview 05/28/11). These teaching skills are those considered to be “best practices” by

international education in emergency settings organizations such as INEE and MSEE and by

many Western universities (INEE, 2010, p87; Carlton College, 2011). Additionally, this type of

teaching and learning is understood to be appropriate for all instruction, regardless of the age of

the student or the content being taught (NGO staff interview, 07/20/12 & 07/14/12).

Chart used at the teacher training center.

The signs are in English and Burmese because the English words/concepts do not

translate directly into Burmese. The trainers make approximations in Burmese and also write the

English words as Burmese is the second or third language of the participants and the trainers,

80

thus translations and understandings may vary. Classes are conducted in Burmese, however

some trainers use the English words as seen on the chart and others use the Burmese

approximations during discussions (field notes, 07/25/12).

This picture is the continuation of the chart previously. This picture represents the “skills” needed to teach. The previous picture represents the “knowledge” and “attitude”.

Discussion

All of the compromises described above reveal multiple contradictions in the

intersections between national and international policyscapes. Whereas EFA calls for education

for all, there is a distinct gap in the international frameworks with regards to the provision of

education for children who are living in a country in which they do not have a documented

81

status, leading to differing definitions of “all” and differing opinions regarding who is the

responsible party for the provision of education. This disjuncture stems from the intersection of

the state-level concept of sovereignty and the international appeal for participation of all in the

global economy and in global human rights.

To maintain its sovereignty, it is necessary for the government to address and distinguish

between the population(s) living both inside and outside its borders, as sovereignty is a function

of external recognition (Philpott, 2010). To address this, the RTG uses both governance and

governmentality to maintain Thailand’s physical and cultural sovereignty. Traditional methods

of governance include use of the military and the education system to enhance security inside

and along the borders. For the MOI, the compromise, however tenuous, of trading deportation

leniency for enhanced MLC surveillance in the form of registration, demonstrates how sub-

provincial level authorities are attempting to work in the contexts of national security and the

global educational, political, and economic policyscape. Negotiations at the sub-provincial level

resulting in ID cards for undocumented migrant teachers indicate the compromise between the

needs of the international education funders and the security needs of the RTG. Traditional

governance in the context of EFA is also evidenced by the MOE’s advocacy for a quality

education and its steadfast refusal to allow accreditation of the curriculum, barring students from

achieving jobs that require a credential. Certainly, there are a number of illegally employed

individuals, but the lack of credential helps to reduce the migrant competition for jobs with Thais

who do have credentials.

Governmentality involves strategies whereby governments manage state communication

apparatuses and non-state organizations, such as religious organizations and NGOs, to create

discourses that foster the public’s uptake of the ideology advocated by the global political

82

economy. The ideology promoted by the state seeks to shape individual and collective behavior

to further the interests of the state (Foucault, 2007; 2000). Citizens, having been imbued with

the epistemology of the political economy and the ideology advocated by the state-level

government, are invited to use the delimited spaces created by the government to exercise

choices regarding daily activities and to determine individual long-term goals (Lemke, 2000).

However, as Appadurai (1996) contends, although the individual is positioned as an agent, s/he

is often less an agent than a “chooser” of alternatives set forth by political and economic leaders.

Governmentality is a method of managing a state by suggesting to the polity “the right

way forward” and creating spaces for the citizen-subjects to act in ways they believe will move

them and the nation in the suggested direction. By discouraging the teaching of Thai culture in

the MLC curriculum, the RTG discourages undocumented migrant students from feeling as

though they are members of the polity. By discouraging identification with Thailand, the RTG

encourages students to identify as Burmese, Karen, or undocumented migrants. This form of

nationalism and governmentality is agreeable to the MLC headmaster and parents of MLC

students, as they are anxious to retain their own culture and do not associate school outcomes

with a desired legal status. The lack of sense of belonging to Thailand is meant to facilitate the

undocumented migrants’ desire to leave. In addition, the lack of “Thai-ness” is likely to be

noticed by Thais, thus reinforcing the perception of “other”. According to the initial paragraph

in the Directive of the MOE, number 293/2551, there “…are also urgent needs for inculcation of

awareness of Thai-ness, self-discipline, concern for public interest and adherence to a democratic

form of government under constitutional monarchy…” In this way, techniques of

governmentality connect state formation with subject and non-subject formation (Foucault, 2007;

Fassin, 2011).

83

The combination of governance and governmentality works to increase access to

education for all children while promoting and highlighting the perception of difference. The

national educational policyscape uses a naturalized and surveilled notion of “border” as a

meaningful feature of the environment. This stands in sharp contrast with the international

educational policyscape, which works to promote and highlight the perception of sameness, or

homogeneity, among ethnically different populations by promoting best practices throughout the

world. The international policyscape does not engage with the central tension created by the

expectation that states will serve their citizens and the call to educate all students, regardless of

nationality or ethnicity.

Implications

The homogeneity of ideology promoted by the international educational policyscape can

be interpreted from a reproductionist point of view. According to Bernstein (1977), the formal

transmission of educational knowledge and dispositions play an integral part in creating,

maintaining, and modifying one’s perceptions of experience, identity, and relationships. Formal

mechanisms for the transmission of knowledge include the content, the pedagogy, and the

evaluation. The use of these mechanisms implicitly legitimizes what is transmitted and, by

default or omission, de-legitimizes what is not transmitted. The foundational principles on

which content, pedagogy, and evaluation rest are social principles that regulate the bounding of

the content, and transmission of acceptable classroom behavior vis-à-vis pedagogy which in turn

shape the structure of evaluation schemes (Waters and LeBlanc, 2005; Bernstein, 1977).

Many scholars highlight the importance of decisions regarding content and pedagogy

(Escobar, 2008; Tabulawa, 2003; Bernstein, 1977; Apple, 2011). In addition to what content is

taught, how it is organized also plays a part in developing a hierarchy of knowledge. This

84

hierarchy is created by the relative amounts of time spent on each subject and the denotation of

subjects as “high status” or “low status” knowledge. Increased amounts of time indicate an

increased importance and value of the subject, as does the classification of “compulsory”. In

addition to content, pedagogy also has a social dimension, and this social dimension allows us to

access public forms of thought and the various social realities they make possible (Tabulawa,

2003; Bernstein, 1977). Pedagogy is linked to the development of various types of relationships

between teachers and students (Tabulawa, 2003; Bernstein, 1977), thus affecting the way

students understand socially-appropriate relationships with supervisory figures both in and out of

school.

The modernization theory of development combined with the human capital theory view

education as a practical art form. This practicality, particularly in a meritocratic and capitalistic

context, is essential for democratization as a means to economic development, thus is far from

being ideologically neutral. Learner-centered pedagogy, with its democratic characteristics,

then, has been promoted by international aid agencies as a way to facilitate democratization,

economic development, and modernity in “developing” countries. As Tabulawa (2003, p 7)

notes, “…pedagogy is an ideological outlook, a worldview intended to develop a preferred kind

of society and people. It is in this sense that it should be seen as representing a process of

Westernization disguised as quality and effective teaching.”

“Democratic attitudes” are introduced through the schools, both in teaching practices and

school structure. The traditional authoritarian style of pedagogy used in developing countries

does not produce the attitudes necessary for free markets. On the other hand, learner-centered

pedagogy, and other UNESCO best practices do help to produce these mindsets, hence the

insistence on adoption of these “best practices”, culturally appropriate or not (Tabulawa, 2003).

85

These attitudes are grounded in the idea of meritocratic system and maintained by the

evaluations that focus on skills and “proof” of competency This proof of competency, then

justifies a stratified society, with those who have the preferred skills and attitudes gained from

access to an education that is theoretically available to all, forming the top of the hierarchy.

Given the global nature of aid to education, it is tempting examine the relationship

between educational decisions and a global-level class structure. A stratified class structure may

be formed by differential access to quality education, which in a global economy, is determined

by one’s citizenship and economic status. A meritocracy based on the ability to prove

competency can, theoretically, trump limitations set by citizenship or lack thereof. These

limitations, however, act as safeguards for the dominant group, ensuring that they keep their

position. The ideology behind universal access to a meritocratic education conflicts with the

desire for the assurance of continued dominance for the economic and cultural powers. Given

the potential contradiction between ideology and desire, the structural relationship between

education and economic and social capital garnered from employment is mediated by content

and pedagogy decisions made by NGO workers and host governments. Bernstein points out that

the relative autonomy of education gives it an appearance of objectivity, neutrality, and even of

altruism, all of which serve to reinforce the dominant ideology. Along the border, the host

government is influential in defining the content, as this is the content needed for efficient and

effective workers. The NGOs, then, are concerned with pedagogy, or the principles of social

control underlying the pedagogic transmission. By concerning themselves with pedagogy, NGO

are responsible for shaping and controlling the dissemination of the educational knowledge and

symbolic control allowed by the host country government.

86

The discussion presented above draws on arguments put forth by African, Latin

American, and Western scholars. Is this discussion appropriate, or even relevant to, Southeast

Asia? I argue that it is relevant to the Thailand-Burma border for three reasons. First, the

potential for employment in both the SEZs and in NGOs is dependent by and large on language

skills. One’s ability to prove proficiency in a language is enough to trump citizenship

requirements, as evidenced by NGO hiring practices and SEZ labor negotiations. Second, the

content allowed in MLCs is sufficient to allow ethnic minority people to qualify for low-skill

employment or possibly for work as Burmese-English translators; however it does not allow

them to compete for employment with Thai or Burmese factory managers or Western NGO

program managers. Third, the pedagogy promoted by the NGOs is rhetorically grounded in

democracy (ambiguated with capitalism) but actively grounded in meritocracy, both of which

serve to foster a worldview accepting of the model of modernity put forth by the economically

and socially dominant groups.

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Chapter 4: Conclusion

Looking at Burma’s pre-colonial and colonial past helps to illuminate Burmese ethnic

minority and majority groups’ reactions to imperial education policies and how these policies

worked at odds with the state-building policies put in place by the British. The result of these

policies was to create a geographical territory with borders that were ostensibly tasked with

creating and naturalizing a “national culture” (Vertovec, 2011, p 246). This national culture,

however, was initiated without the consent or interest of the ethnic minority groups (Winichakul,

1994; Chatterjee, 1993; Scott, 2009). As a result, a social hierarchy was formed, placing the

ethnic minorities at the low end. The borders drawn by the British and Thai leaders transected

the ethnic minority territory, leaving those who lived on the Burma side of the border suddenly

considered “subjects of British-Burma” and those on the Thai side of the border suddenly

considered “subjects of the Royal Thai Government”.

Given the abundance of natural resources found along the Burma-Thailand border, both

the Thais and the British worked to inculcate the ethnic minority groups into the dominant

group’s social hierarchy, albeit at a lower station, thus ensuring the dominant society access to

natural resources found in the borderlands. The ethnic minority groups, however, were not

interested in conforming or belonging to the dominant societies. On the Thai side of the border,

this led to surveillance of minorities by the Border Police Patrol, which consisted solely of ethnic

majority members. On the Burma side of the border, the different education policies for the

highlands and lowlands facilitated the formation of a social hierarchy that included ethnic origin

as a significant determinant, which in turn led to violence and armed conflict. The armed

conflict forced the minority group members to flee their villages and take refuge in Thailand,

88

where they were neither welcomed nor wanted. So began the decades-long situation along the

Thailand-Burma border that has resulted in the current refugee and migrant education policies.

Access to education has historically been important to ethnic minority people living along

the Thailand-Burma border. Monastic and Christian schools were welcomed into highland

communities. Most of these communities understood the purpose of education to be fulfilling a

human right and did not associate it with citizenship status or employment, which explains the

existence of the MLCs once the communities were forced to seek refuge in Thailand.

International pressure to allow Burmese migrant children to access education resulted in the

RTG interpreting the rhetoric of Education for All as meaning access to an education for migrant

children that would fulfill the right to education and not be associated with citizenship status or

employment. The irony of the RTG allowing for the provision of education that meets the

historical goals of education inside Burma is that the NGOs who work with the RTG to provide

support for the MLCs are not content with an education that does not address economic

participation issues.

Visions for the future

NGOs understand education to be a human right that functions as a means to a future in

which global social hierarchies are based on the right to participate in the global economy at a

level related to one’s achievements in a meritocratic education system. However, the right to

economic participation is grounded in one’s citizenship/immigration status, with these rights tied

to documents recording one’s legal status and eligibility to participate in the global economy. As

noted in Chapter 3, most Burmese migrants living in Thailand do not have documents

authorizing them to participate in the global economy. NGOs perceive one of the functions of

schooling as enabling students to qualify for legal participation in the global economy by way of

89

achievement in a secular, meritocratic system to which all individuals have access. In other

words, NGOs believe that achievement in a meritocratic system should be rewarded with

documents allowing graduates to participate legally in the economy. Graduating is a function of

individual effort brought about by morally-correct decisions. Access to documents authorizing

economic participation, then, is ostensibly determined by a meritocracy, which is in turn a

function of individual morality embodied by academic success and industriousness. If morality

leads to merit which leads to the right to economic participation embodied by documentation,

transitively speaking, morality then leads to documentation and a social position higher than that

of undocumented people in a modern society. This allows for rhetoric regarding human rights

but reacts solely to capitalism and scientific rationalism for proof of morality and thus merit.

The NGO’s recommendations of “universal” access to quality education with its emphasis on

“value-neutral” content and pedagogy are reflective of the neoliberal idea of individual

responsibility and meritocracy.

Themes

The argument that British education policies in Burma facilitated a change in Burmese

social hierarchy and worldview can be understood by examining these changes in terms of the

social structure championed by the British. The individualism promoted by the education system

was infused with secularity in terms of both a scientifically-rational evaluation of meritocracy

and by the capital, both social and economic, available to those who succeeded in the system.

The second argument, that undocumented children and families are effectively removed

from the discussion of access to education for all, is made by examining the governance

strategies used when defining “all”. The lack of access and voice undocumented people

90

experience is a result of the interface between the global education policies and state and local

level governance around education and immigration.

The argument regarding the values associated with the pedagogy promoted by NGOs

along the Thailand-Burma border is reflected by the assertions that pedagogy in the classroom

shapes relationships outside the classroom. The idea of competition where the winner is more

meritorious based on a value-neutral assessment is clearly realized by employment in the SEZ

and/or with NGOs based on accomplishment in English language skills.

The compromises made by the NGOs, the RTG, and the MLCs are, on the surface, direct

reflections of governance (surveillance and prohibition of accreditation) and governmentality

(non-prescribed, restricted curricula for the MLCs). The math and science curricula approved

for use in the MLCs is a translated and contextualized version of the British General Secondary

Certificate Education curriculum. As it remains inside the bounds of acceptable content set by

the RTG, the MLCs that choose to use it and submit to enhanced surveillance are able to provide

access to education for migrant children. Many migrants consider this access a moral

imperative, thus the compromises made and the self-governance used in retaining, teaching, and

modifying the curricula within the permitted boundaries is evidence of RTG governmentality

strategies used to provide migrant families with a means to fulfill their moral obligation to their

children yet convincing the families and the MLCs to police themselves in ways that foster

cultural and political security within Thailand.

That the migrants and the NGOs both perceive education to be a moral imperative is

reason enough for these two partners to cooperate. The use of human rights rhetoric by

international bodies has allowed the RTG to support educational access for migrant children

without supporting access to documents authorizing economic participation. The NGOs have

91

used this initial access as a negotiating tool to pave the way for access to economic participation

by working with the MLCs to foster a curriculum that is self-governed to the point of being

acceptable to the RTG and secular, “neutral”, and scientifically rational, thus allowing for the

ongoing argument for accreditation or other official recognition based on the merit of the

curriculum and the choices migrant students must make in order to successfully complete it.

All that being said, the situation along the border is complicated. To state that MLCs

view education only as a moral obligation of the community to their children and that the RTG

sees access to education only as necessary in order to achieve their national goals in the

international arena is simplistic and incorrect; the actual situation is much more nuanced. First,

MLC headmasters and parents are eager for their children to have legal access to the global

economy, and by taking courses offered by the MLC curriculum such as English and Thai

languages, opportunities for employment naturally arise, as Thailand faces a low-skilled labor

shortage. Second, the RTG is not reacting only to international pressure, but also to its own

economic needs. With an unemployment rate of 0.7% (Wade, 2012) and a number of Special

Economic Zones (SEZ) proposed to enhance industrial production within Thailand, the RTG

instituted a number of policies that allow immigrant labor to work legally in Thailand, assuming

they have the required skills e.g. numeracy and basic literacy in Thai (ILO, 2005; mcot.net,

2011; Weng, 2010; Dawei, 2007). These policies, in effect, tie the education received in MLCs

to a form of legal, documented residency in Thailand.

Finally, to argue that the NGOs perceive education as only a pathway to modernity (i.e.

capitalism) is to dehistoricize and simplify the goals of the NGOs working with MLCs. Most

NGOs working with Burmese migrants in Thailand are grounded in the principle of human

rights. NGO have focused primarily on physical access to education for migrant children. When

92

asked about the reasons for the focus on education, NGO officials routinely indicate that

education is a right. If the students were able to find employment or to qualify for documented

immigration status, that would be great, however, the primary concern is access (NGO Staff

interview, 5 August, 2011). Following access is a concern for quality education. The universal

definition of “quality” is reflective of the idea that all individuals have a right to participate in the

global economy. When viewed from an individual student’s perspective, the ability to find legal,

documented employment is associated with the ability to secure an individual's basic needs, an

increased dignity from the legislated ability to use governmental social services (e.g. education

and health schemes) and, importantly, unrestricted movement within the Kingdom of Thailand.

A tension related to rights-based discourse in this situation can be found in the

understanding of individual rights versus collective rights. Seen from a collective perspective,

the education scheme that allows individual migrants to access documented employment is one

that actively works to vitiate the sense of solidarity within the migrant community, as a

meritocratic education by definition produces competition between peers. As Nandy (1988)

points out, “Modern colonialism won its great victories not so much through its military and

technological processes as through its ability to create secular hierarchies incompatible with the

traditional power [structure]” (p9). These “secular hierarchies” reflect the notion of “quality”

education put forth by the British and NGOs. Using Nandy’s rationale, it would seem as though

both the British and the NGOs were involved in a certain degree of imperialism, yet without this

imperialism, an alternative modernity must be imagined and implemented within the context of

the global economy.

There is an urgent need for research seeking to understand the forms of modernity

perceived by Burmese ethnic minority groups. As Escobar (2008) points out, the desire for

93

development comes from the creation of a collective consciousness of marginalization. This

paper shows how international policies were used to create and enhance a collective sense of

marginalization, the remediation of which can be accomplished by education policies that foster

one specific version of modernity promoted by multi-nationals such as the UN without giving

voice to other possible versions of modernity as put forth by those who have been marginalized

in the first place.

94

Appendix A

95

Appendix B

96

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i The names of all towns, provinces, and administrative structures have been changed.