How I realized the problem of education in Myanmar (Burma)
Scratching the Surface
“Tata, do your work!!!”
This four letter phrase was a staple of my childhood as I would often neglect my schoolwork, leading to a scolding by my mother. She would often tell me how I wasn’t taking advantage of my first world education and all of the opportunities available to me. But as a 6 year old, I didn’t really understand or, honestly, even care about that powerful word she was talking about: privilege.
Though, as I grew up, I would occasionally get a chance to step outside of my upper-middle class bubble. I distinctly recall a family trip to Myanmar. Like many, we were there to visit the tourist sites in rural areas; however, I couldn’t help but notice the eerie similarity, yet disparity to my home country of Thailand. The houses were alike, the small family-owned shops had the same comfortable feeling, even the city sprawling out across the land was familiar. Yet, I also noticed how the roads had cracks and holes in them, how some of the villagers didn’t have shoes, or how many kids even younger than me were working in the fields. Ignoring my internal discomfort, a young me disregarded all this.
A couple of years later on a school trip to Vietnam, we were donating computers to a school in an impoverished farming village, and I noticed it again. The whiteboards were old and scratched, the walls were tainted with age, and the students had virtually no books. I remember being deeply disturbed — even more so when I found out that those kids walked kilometers to be able to get an education I wouldn’t even consider mediocre.
A couple months later, a certain youtube video caught my attention: “15-Yr-Old Kelvin Doe Wows M.I.T.” Here was a 15 year old who built a makeshift radio broadcast station from scratch, let alone in rural africa where the only source of electronics would have been from salvaging long broken appliances. I was utterly stunned.
So then it hit me. Why were people like Kelvin so exceptionally rare? And more importantly — why weren’t there more people like Kelvin from East Asian countries such as Myanmar?
Curiosity
I wanted the answers to my questions, thus I did some googling. I found out how one of the most important drivers of a country’s development is education. In fact, one of the leading causes for some British colonies like India and Singapore being so successful nowadays is because they opted to maintain the British education system as opposed to abolishing it like, my ancestral country, Myanmar did. Hence, I decided to learn more about Myanmar’s education sphere.
First, I did some research and found statistics from the Myanmar Ministry of Education, which revealed that the overall pass rate for Myanmar matriculation exams hovered at around a mere 30%. This meant that a large majority of Myanmar students weren’t going to go to college, let alone graduating high school. This translated to the fact that, every year, over 300,000 Myanmar students would fail to have a future.
After analyzing the demographics of the pass rates, I found out that the low pass rate primarily comes from more rural, impoverished districts. I recognised this as a socioeconomic problem — something I remembered seeing firsthand when I visited Myanmar as a child. To worsen the problem, the government seemed to be diverting education funds from rural areas and giving more funding to education in the capital. I identified that the root effect of this lack of resources is a severe shortage of teachers, as reports show that some have to teach not only multiple subjects, but often also for multiple grade levels in overcrowded and underfunded classrooms.
Though, perhaps the one glaring concern about this issue is the lack of effort to solve it. The government has only recently noticed the poor quality of education as an issue. In fact, published proposals show that they’ve only started to work towards a solution a year ago, and they expect it to take two decades to make any significant progress.
My Motivation
Clearly, there was a problem here, and one with no end in sight. All the data pointed towards a terrible education situation in Myanmar, with rural schools being neglected and urban schools having, at best, mediocre teachers and curriculums.
Having studied at an international school for most of my life, I was deeply shocked by the disparity in educational resources available for these students. To me, this problem violated the principle of equal opportunity for all, which I had always assumed was true from my bubble of privilege.
But, was it actually possible for me to fix this problem? Could I even mitigate it in any minor way?
To determine this, I would try to gain some firsthand experience by visiting several rural schools in Myanmar. Luckily, my father, who often goes on business trips to Myanmar, has agreed to let me tag along.
Photo credit: UNICEF
