Education as Resistance: How Myanmar’s youth turned education into a key battleground between young activists and a military regime

• In Event: Highlighted Session: Social Movements, Ideology, and Resistance: Thailand, Malaysia, and Myanmar

Proposal

In the wake of the February 2021 coup, Myanmar students have made education a cornerstone of their activism and resistance against the junta-led State Administration Council (SAC). Higher education reforms began in 2012, which saw Myanmar universities opening to international education and included memorandums of understanding with foreign universities for student exchange programs, as well as further centralized control of universities in the state ministry. However, any progress that had been made quickly came undone following the compound impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2021 coup, which saw extended closures of schools and universities. Students are unquestionably caught between COVID-19, a coup, and conflict. When schools under SAC control re-opened the following year, students and their families were faced with altered and controlled curriculums, a reduced and under-qualified workforce, and suppression of rights and freedoms on campuses. They also faced increased barriers to accessing education, including daily security threats, significant financial barriers, administrative hurdles, as well as a lack of infrastructure typically used to help facilitate learning (such as internet blackouts).

The ongoing volatility of power struggles jeopardizes not just the learning outcomes of an entire youth generation but also the livelihoods of teachers and educators. The coup prolonged the closures, made school premises unsafe, politicized education, and pushed teachers and academics out of their professions. Education and learning have been severely disrupted, causing many young people to make drastic changes to their education plans and redefine their priorities. Despite the re-opening of all arts, science, and education degree colleges in May 2022, student enrollment remains low in state-run universities. Only 312,299 students signed up for university entrance exams for the 2021-2022 academic year, as compared to 970,759 in previous years.

The Myanmar Analytical Activity (MAA) provides fast, responsive, analytical support to the USAID/Burma Mission, supplementing its portfolio of democracy and governance activities. Through a series of small, rapid qualitative studies, MAA has largely focused its efforts of the past two years on the pro-democracy movement and activism in Myanmar, where education has become a key battleground between young activists and Myanmar’s State Administration Council (SAC), the country’s military regime. MAA researchers discovered that in the wake of the coup, a new wave of activists emerged among Myanmar’s youth — the first generation in Myanmar’s recent history to have grown up through a period of quasi-democracy, with more education opportunities, global access to information and technology, and increased (though still somewhat constrained) space for freedom of expression. This exposure from a younger age has generated a fundamental understanding of human rights and justice that has shaped youth’s resistance ideals and brought them to the forefront of the pro-democracy movement in Myanmar. Youth throughout the country continue to engage in activism, including boycotting junta-affiliated schools.

Through the youth-created Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM), a cornerstone of nonviolent resistance, students, teachers, and others have supported various strikes across different economic industries in the country and boycotted junta-affiliated schools, refusing to enroll and attend classes in schools at all levels. Over 90% of students and over half of university and college professors staff joined the CDM at great personal risk. Teachers and students rejected the military regime and refused to return to their universities as long as Myanmar’s State Administration Council (SAC), the country’s military regime, controlled them, and shared with MAA researchers that in doing so, they aimed to undermine the SAC’s ability to provide public services and thus undermine its legitimacy.

Providing public services is a central component to CDM activism, as it can delegitimize essential SAC goals and institutions, including in the education sector. For this reason, the majority of youth efforts in public service provision have focused on developing independent and alternative education initiatives for university students and children in rural and urban populations. Youth have stepped in to help fill the need for learning platforms amid the widespread boycott of the SAC education system under the CDM, such as providing offline learning options, establishing alternative schools, and bringing educational programming to camps of refugees and internally displaced persons—all to reinforce the CDM efforts and to provide Myanmar students with opportunities to continue their schooling. Ultimately, MAA’s research demonstrates how education can not only be leveraged, but also utilized in many different ways as a form of protest—be it through civil disobedience and boycott, or through creating innovative alternatives in an effort to discredit existing regimes.

Authors

• Amber Moffett, American Institutes for Research

• Ella Hutzler, American Institutes for Research