Thesis-Dec1-2012

UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN - MADISON
Education Policies along
the Thailand-Burma
border
How the Past affects the Present
December 1, 2012

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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

21
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

22
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

23
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).

24
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.

25
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

26
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

27
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

28
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

29
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

30
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

31
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
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.

32
nearly 100% was not true. The first British census of Burma, taken in 1872, showed literacy
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

33
handpicked British officers who were serving in the Indian Department of Education to design
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

34
missionary schools were based on different school characteristics, including teacher
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.

35
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
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

36
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.
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

37
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
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

38
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).
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

39
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
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

40
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
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

41
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
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

42
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
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,

43
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
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

44
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
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.”

45
(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
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

46
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
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

47
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
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

48
ethnic group leaderships had signed with the US-backed KMT (Chinese anti-communist forces)
in first half of the 1950s (Smith, 1991, p157-160).
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

49
“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
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

50
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;
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

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