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Non-dominant languages in education in Myanmar: Grassroots efforts
Sun, February 19, 8:00 to 9:30am EST (8:00 to 9:30am EST), Grand Hyatt Washington, Floor: Declaration Level (1B), Declaration BProposal
Since the 1960s, education in Myanmar has been led by the Ministry of Education of the national government and ethnic basic education providers (EBEPs) led by ethnic armed organizations (Salem-Gervais & Metro, 2012; South & Lall, 2016). Though Myanmar is a country with over 120 languages and 135 officially recognized ethnic groups, for the past sixty years (Eberhard, Simons, & Fenning, 2022), the government’s education system has solely supported bilingual education in Burmese and English through a late exit model. Thus, the MoE has arguably provided mother tongue-based multilingual education (MTB-MLE) for its constituents, but only for Burmese mother tongue speakers. It is in this context that MTB-MLE for “ethnic languages” (i.e., languages used by non-Burmese speakers) has been led by EBEPs in mixed and non-governmentally controlled areas (Williams & Iwasaki, 2022).
There have been language-in-education discussions like the Comprehensive Education Sector Review (CESR) and the National Education Strategic Plan(s) 2016-2021 and 2021-2031, along with other EBEP and stakeholder partnership conferences with the MoE like the Language, Education, Social Cohesion Initiative (Lo Bianco, 2016). However, decision-making has been stalled due to political instability, leaving the future of ethnic rights and languages in education on the national scale unclear.
I apply Kosonen & Benson’s (2021) analytical framework to discuss the language-in- education policy and implementation roles of EBEPs as both below and side actors supported by their local and international non-governmental partners. EBEPs have been at the forefront of MTB-MLE policy and implementation, supporting thousands of students across the country. This paper analyses the practices through which EBEPs have raised generations of multilingual ethnic language speakers. By understanding their successes and challenges, this paper conceptualizes the future of their work locally and nationally and provides a glimpse of how local below and side actors institute change beyond their own ethno-linguistic community.