One key finding of the CESR 2012-13 rapid assessment (mentioned yesterday) was that there is very little preschool provision in Myanmar. This is the relevant sentence on page 21 of the report: “Preschool classes that support Basic Education had been opened in only 6.7 per cent of Basic Education schools by academic year 2011-2012.” Major structural change will be needed to deal fully with this problem. In parallel, though, smaller initiatives can be taken to trigger quick change in educational attainment. An ideal candidate is Bookstart.

Bookstart was created chiefly by UK charity Booktrust, which has a history stretching back to 1921. In the early 1990s, it partnered with British academics and local authorities to launch a programme focused on early childhood learning. Today, it prioritizes working with children, as the greatest opportunity to change lives is there, and with families, as they are the social units with greatest impact. In the UK, Bookstart offers free books to all children at two key preschool ages: one year old, and three to four years old. It also provides support and guidance to parents and child carers. Since 1992, it has distributed 52 million free books.

Booktrust’s stated aim is simple: “to inspire a love of reading that will give children a flying start in life”. Independent research commissioned by the charity indicates that early reading increases life chances and improves social mobility. It also cites an OECD report from 2002: “Enjoying reading is more important for children’s educational success than their family’s socio-economic status.”

In little more than two decades since its UK launch, Bookstart has been adopted in many other jurisdictions. In Asia, it was introduced in Japan in 2000, South Korea in 2003, Thailand in 2005, and Taiwan in 2006. Typically there are also linked programmes for older children. However, given the almost total lack of preschool provision in Myanmar, and the huge importance of early childhood learning, it would make sense to begin here.

Moreover, it would surely be a relatively straightforward matter to introduce Bookstart in Myanmar, and generate immediate improvements in a system that will clearly take years to reform. At least some of UNICEF’s $87,000 a month rent could certainly be more productively channeled in this direction.

Education has been in the spotlight a fair bit recently in Myanmar, and by and large that’s a good thing. On four successive days last week, the Irrawaddy carried important stories. The first was favourable: launch of an education reform website linked to the Comprehensive Education Sector Review. The second was also welcome: announcement of a $100 million World Bank education project. Thereafter, however, the news took a turn for the worse. The third was scandalous: confirmation that UNICEF is paying $87,000 per month to a former junta stalwart for its Yangon office. The fourth was dismal, but not entirely unexpected: affirmation that in Yangon many top state schools are effectively demanding fees for supposedly free schooling.

The CESR is led by the Ministry of Education and supported by a Multi-Donor Education Fund. Its work is guided by a predictable reform-era motto adopted by the MoE: “Building a modern developed nation through education.” Only once before has Myanmar’s education system been comprehensively reviewed and that was more than 20 years ago in 1992, so the current exercise is a major undertaking. It was agreed in February 2012, begun in Yangon in August 2012, and officially launched in Naypyitaw in October 2012. It opened with a first phase of rapid assessment from August 2012 to January 2013, and is now moving through second and third phases. Linked to an Education Promotion Implementation Committee (with 18 working groups), it currently features fortnightly consultation sessions in Yangon’s Diamond Jubilee Hall, and a weekly progress report sent to the President’s Office. The CESR website boasts a 425-page consolidated report on phase one, though the core analysis amounts to only 25 pages and is filled out with annexes and general padding. The most interesting part is the basic quantitative survey. On the downside, there is very little preschool provision. On the upside, middle school enrolments have latterly increased considerably. Mixing good and bad, gender disparities are low throughout the system, but territorial and socioeconomic disparities are high.

The World Bank project represents a first for the organization. Never before has it worked on education in Myanmar. Its $100 million investment is funded mainly by the International Development Association ($80m), and partly by Australia through the MDEF ($20m). The aim is twofold: to provide direct support to MoE schools and thereby improve the quality of education for more than 8 million children; and to extend financial assistance to 100,000 underprivileged students. Since Myanmar’s national budget for 2013 allocated only 5.4 percent of public spending to education, this cash injection is much needed.

UNICEF’s seven-year rental contract at $87,000 per month from October 2013 secures 33,000 square feet on Inya Myaing Road in the part of Bahan Township known as Golden Valley. The grand total of $7.3 million paid by 2020 will further swell the coffers of former General Nyunt Tin, known always to be close to Than Shwe. In responding rather tardily to the flood of criticism unleashed by the revelation, representative Bertrand Bainvel argued that the deal was the best the organization could strike in an escalating Yangon property market. That may be true. But to deliver on its educational objectives UNICEF does not have to be based in downtown Yangon. Much that is known to be bad about the global aid business is exemplified by this episode.

Then finally there are Yangon’s leading state schools, which allegedly invite parents to make a “donation” of, say, $500 when lodging an application to register a child. Much that is known to be bad about Myanmar in reform is exemplified by this episode.

In the late 1990s, the academic consensus was that military forces faced declining political power across Southeast Asia. In fact, subsequent years saw soldiers in the Philippines extend their socio-political privileges under the Arroyo administration, and in 2006 and again last week witnessed military coups in Thailand against governments led by Thaksin Shinawatra and members of his political dynasty. However, an important exception is the case of Indonesia, which has experienced a waning political role for the armed forces over the past 15 years. The Political Resurgence of the Military in Southeast Asia, edited by Marcus Mietzner and published in 2011, examines the region in some detail. For Myanmar, the Indonesian case is particularly instructive.

Led by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono since 2004, Indonesia has sought to establish incremental civilian control over the armed forces, while also safeguarding military interests. In the executive, only the military commander retains active service status, and the number of ministers with any military association has declined. In national and local legislatures, provisions which gave the armed forces 38 seats in the national parliament and 10 percent of the seats in each devolved assembly were phased out. Several hundred middle-ranking officers were thereby withdrawn from the political scene. At the same time, military interests have been protected by preserving a territorial command structure – the network of military units that expands from Jarkarta to the village level has been a significant power base since the 1950s. Moreover, the collapse of the armed forces’ formal business empire has been mitigated by a range of informal activities ranging from illegal logging and mining to gambling, drug trafficking, prostitution and even weapons sales in combat zones.

In Myanmar, the tatmadaw is neither willing to withdraw from politics, nor prepared to accept civilian supremacy in the political system. It thus remains unclear how the balance of political power will evolve. One possibility is that as domestic civil society expands and the country becomes more open to the world, the military-commander psychology that has long conditioned national politics will start to diminish. Slowly, what was a dominant cohort of generals will be replaced by, or at least have to cooperate with, other actors in the civil service, the business sphere, and the wider society. However, another possibility is that the tatmadaw will retain significant power. It still has considerable numerical strength, and has kept most of its traditional chain of command throughout the country. Furthermore, regional military elites continue to oversee a wide range of informal business activities, particularly in areas with abundant natural resources and mineral deposits as well as in some frontier combat zones dominated by ethnic nationality armed forces.

The Indonesian case indicates that a productive way forward would be to unite these two possibilities in a strategy that reduces formal military power while at the same time safeguarding military interests. As Mietzner points out, in Indonesia there is no guarantee that Yudhoyono’s successor will be able to maintain the delicate balance of the past decade, especially in the sphere of military reform. In the same vein, Myanmar’s dependence on President Thein Sein’s reform skills and his charismatic leadership style may have made the state vulnerable to uncertainties generated by the 2015 general election. Nevertheless, there remains much for Myanmar to learn from Indonesia’s transition to democracy.

Dulyapak Preecharush is a PhD candidate at the University of Hong Kong.

Talking about Burma on film, one major source of newsreels is British Pathé. Last month the archive uploaded its entire set of 85,000 films to its YouTube channel. The collection is also freely available on the British Pathé website. Shot across an 80-year period from 1896 to 1976, the films are an incomparable record of twentieth-century history, and especially of the Second World War.

A Burma search turns up 215 newsreels distributed across the archive’s 10 overlapping categories. Overwhelmingly, the films focus on war in Burma in the 1940s, generating superb documentation of ebbs and flows in the conflict. They also follow events leading up to independence in 1948. From earlier years, they provide footage of the visit to Burma of Lord Reading, Viceroy of India, in 1924, and of funeral rites for senior Buddhist monks in 1925 and 1927. From later years, there is sporadic coverage of Prime Minister Nu’s overseas trips.

A couple of days ago I crossed the campus to attend a screening of a documentary recently produced by the University of Southern California’s US-China Institute. It’s part of Assignment: China, a 10-film series on the work of American journalists. The sequence opens with the late civil war years at the end of the 1940s, looks at China watchers in Hong Kong in the 1950s and 1960s, deals with President Richard Nixon’s historic trip and the end of the Mao years in the 1970s, profiles the first generation of bureau staffers following the normalization of US-China relations in 1979, and moves on through the 1980s to the June 4 “incident”. The driving force behind it is Mike Chinoy, CNN’s Beijing bureau chief in 1989.

Sometime back I watched The Week that Changed the World on Nixon’s extraordinary 1972 visit. This time the story had moved on a little more than 15 years to Tiananmen Square and the events of 1989. In both films, American reporters assigned to China were interviewed about the issues they faced in their work, and the judgments they made. As USCI’s website notes, this is critical historical analysis: “From the barriers of language, culture and politics, to the logistical challenges of war, revolution, isolation, internal upheaval, government restrictions and changing technology, covering China has been one of the most difficult of journalistic assignments. It’s also one of the most important. For over sixty years, what American correspondents have reported about China has profoundly influenced U.S. views of the country, and the policies of successive American governments.”

The Tiananmen film is outstanding. Told mainly through the eyes of the dozen or so US reporters based in Beijing in 1989, and also picking up on the impact made by some 60 additional American journalists flown in for Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev’s landmark visit in mid-May, it presents a very clear picture of US coverage of the Beijing student movement. With the wisdom of hindsight, many reporters acknowledge that the story beamed across the world as events unfolded had too much of a “made in America” democracy bias, generating false expectations of a happy ending. Clearly this shaped both US and global reactions to the brutal clampdown imposed on the night of June 3-4. Undoubtedly, the documentary thereby makes a significant contribution to the historical record.

Coming away from the screening, I couldn’t help but return to the points I made last week about capturing key aspects of Myanmar’s modern history. The 8-8-88 uprising is of course a close parallel to China’s 1989 student movement. More distant parallels also exist. Certainly none of Burma’s history was covered anything like as fully as China’s by western journalists. Nevertheless, some reporters were present at key moments, and the stories they told were critical in shaping global responses to circumstances on the ground. I know it’s been very difficult to finance Assignment: China. It would be even harder to fund Assignment: Burma. But it would be good to think it could happen.

Excellent news for Myanmar watchers – Wendy Law-Yone has taken up blogging at wendylawyone.com. The author of a series of novels situated in key phases of the country’s modern history, Wendy has also published an acclaimed memoir of Burma viewed through the life of her father. As proprietor of The Nation, Edward Law-Yone was a leading newspaperman in Burma’s fragile parliamentary years. Arrested and jailed by Ne Win in the early 1960s, he subsequently joined U Nu’s quixotic attempt to raise a force on the Thai-Burma border capable of reclaiming a premiership abruptly and unjustly ended in March 1962. In this passage from the prologue to Golden Parasol, Wendy describes the scene at 290 40th Street in the 1950s, one of the happier decades in her father’s remarkable life: “I remember as a child wandering into The Nation‘s printing room, on nights when I was allowed to stay up late at my father’s office. I remember the uneasy thrill of watching one of those monster machines in action, wheels turning, levers pumping, cylinders spinning, trays shuttling back and forth. Alarm bells rang and rang, unheeded, while a river of newsprint went streaking past, spewing out printed sheets that required urgent folding and stacking. The floor buzzed, it shook, it sent a steady shock up through my feet, all the way to my fingernails. The roar was so deafening that the pressmen only spoke in sign language. I could never bear it for very long: I had to get out of the way, before I too was sucked up, chewed up, and spat out as pulp by that insatiable, unstoppable giant.”

Following up on yesterday’s post, I draw today on my article “Addressing Myanmar’s Citizenship Crisis”, which was published online by the Journal of Contemporary Asia about three months ago. The hard copy will appear later this year. It notes that while multiculturalism (Multikulti in the German shorthand) has often been pronounced dead by western politicians, the policies that define it live on. Furthermore, they offer rich comparative experience which Myanmar might study in its quest for meaningful national reconciliation.

Multiculturalism appears in many guises, and is by no means easy to pin down. Broadly, however, it corresponds to issues captured in the Multiculturalism Policy Index created by Keith Banting and Will Kymlicka at Queen’s University, Canada. The MPI tracks six policies for national minorities: federalism; official language status; political representation; funding for language training; political affirmation; international visibility. It tracks eight policies for immigrant minorities: political affirmation; revision of school curricula; media sensitivity; dress code and other exemptions; dual citizenship; funding for cultural activities; funding for language training; affirmative action. Under each heading, there are thus clusters of options available to policy makers in Myanmar. They generate ways of analyzing the existing policy stance.

Six questions taken from the MPI can be asked of Myanmar’s policies towards its eight major national races. On federalism: is a division of power between the central state and constituent units enshrined in the constitution or otherwise guaranteed, and at the same time do the territories of key national minorities correspond to constituent units of the state to generate some measure of minority autonomy? On official language status: are minority languages granted official status regionally or nationally, and do they have equal footing with the majority language? On political representation: have electoral rules been adapted to recognize or accommodate national minorities and ensure their representation in central government? On funding for language training: does the state finance bilingual education or mother-tongue instruction for children and/or adults? On affirmative action: does it have such a policy for national minorities? On international visibility: have minority nations been accorded an international personality through measures such as legislative competence on the international scene in areas of internal competence, authority to sign bilateral or multilateral treaties, representation on international bodies and/or overseas delegations, and representative teams at international sporting events?

Eight questions, again from the MPI, can be asked of Myanmar’s policies towards any immigrant minorities it may choose to acknowledge (as proposed yesterday). On political affirmation: does the state affirm multiculturalism, and does it have an implementing body? On revision of school curricula: does it include multiculturalism in its curriculum? On media sensitivity: does it write ethnic representation, inclusion, sensitivity or diversity into the mandate of public broadcasters and into media licences? On dress code exemptions: does it grant exemptions or accommodations on religious grounds? On dual citizenship: does it allow for dual citizenship? On funding for cultural activities: does it provide public funding on a core and/or project basis? On funding for language training: does it (again) finance bilingual education or mother-tongue instruction for children and/or adults? On affirmative action: does it (again) have such a policy for immigrant minorities?

It would be unreasonable to expect all of these questions to gain affirmative answers any time soon in Myanmar. The distance to be traveled remains vast. Nevertheless, such questions could help structure policy debate by signaling how other complex societies have sought to embrace racial and ethnic diversity through constitutional provisions and concrete policy initiatives.

I hesitated before posting this item. On one side, debates about citizenship are deeply contentious in Myanmar and verge on poisonous when the status of the Rohingya community is addressed. On the other, I’m honestly not sure whether what I have to say is of any value. In looking here at the issue of Rohingya citizenship, I therefore write tentatively, fully conscious that my proposal might be of no use whatsoever.

The starting point is the current state of play: the Burma Citizenship Law, passed on October 15, 1982 and still in force today. That establishes a cut-off point in 1823, the year before Britain’s first major military intervention. As is well known, it lists eight major ethnic groups that had settled in Burma prior to that date and therefore count as nationals. Separate schedules name 135 ethnic groups nested within the eight major national races. It also provides for associate and naturalized citizenship.

Additionally, the 1982 law allows for recognition of further ethnic groups (possibly informed by the fact that a 1972 list contained 144 groups). In the unofficial translation, article 4 says this: “The Council of State may decide whether any ethnic group is national or not.” Quite how this provision is to be interpreted when the country no longer has a Council of State is, though, unclear. The result is that there is currently much dispute about the designation of national minorities and ethnic groups. Particularly problematic is the Rohingya minority which, for varying reasons, is widely held to have no organic place within the society.

What to do about this? In November 2012, the ICG noted that quite a lot could be achieved on the basis of existing legislation. “If the 1982 law had been applied without active discrimination by local officials against Rohingya, the majority of them would have long ago achieved full citizenship.” In one of a series of recent analyses, Derek Tonkin made a similar argument: “Enlightened senior officials incline to the view that up to 90% of ‘Rohingya’ ought to be granted citizenship, but this view is probably not shared by some of their more conservative colleagues, or by officials in Rakhine State.” While these are valid points, they do not address the problem of finding a means to recognize the Rohingya people as an ethnic group. Meanwhile, the road to genocide remains open.

As I said before, I truly don’t know what to suggest as a way forward. However, one possibility might be to make use of a distinction between national and immigrant minorities employed in examination of multicultural western states. National minorities are historic sub-state groups with distinct ethnic identities. Immigrant minorities are groups with a more recent presence inside the state. Myanmar already categorizes its eight major national races as national minorities. In principle, it could also open up a category of immigrant minority, and allow the Rohingya minority (and possibly other groups too) to bid for recognition within it. Critically, individuals in this category would have identical citizenship to everyone else.

I acknowledge that this proposal is unlikely to garner much support. Existing national minorities will object to an extension of equal citizenship to a group broadly viewed as having no place in the society. Rohingyas will be extremely wary of abandoning historical claims to national minority status. Moreover, this latter concern is well founded, for if not handled carefully this pathway could in practice lead directly back to second-class citizenship. The reason for nevertheless floating the idea is that a grand bargain of this kind, in which all major players make key concessions, could be necessary for Myanmar to manage one of the most difficult political challenges it faces.

In the education system now being reformed in Myanmar there will hopefully be room for the core values of a liberal education. Certainly many other demands will be made on schools, colleges and universities as policy makers seek to plug the yawning skills gap that has opened up in recent decades. Clearly, though, there is more to education than training, and the liberal tradition has always sought to address that.

Writing from the commanding heights of the presidency of Wesleyan University, one of America’s leading liberal arts colleges, is Michael S Roth. In a recent op-ed, he notes that two intertwining strands have always characterized liberal education in the US. One is “critical inquiry in pursuit of truth”. The other is “exuberant performance in pursuit of excellence”. He argues that in the past half-century a narrow form of critical thinking has become dominant, to the detriment of the tradition as a whole.

Partly the problem is that students have become very good at picking apart texts, but too often have limited ability beyond that. Partly it is that there is today too much detachment. “The inquirer has taken the guise of the sophisticated (often ironic) spectator, rather than the messy participant in continuing experiments or even the reverent beholder of great cultural achievements.”

Roth makes a case for true engagement with ideas and issues. “Creative work, in whatever field, depends upon commitment, the energy of participation and the ability to become absorbed in works of literature, art and science.” Or, in the short form: “Liberal learning depends on absorption in compelling work.”

Smelser’s Theory of Collective Behavior is altogether different from the book Scott published close to 30 years later. Extending across nearly 400 quite technical pages, it is in some ways a difficult read. The basic position is clear, though, from the opening 20 pages. Anyone wanting to understand the thrust of the argument can find it in the analysis presented there.

Smelser defines collective behaviour as “mobilization on the basis of a belief which redefines social action”. To theorize it, he adopts from economics “the logic of value-added”, breaking collective action into a series of developmental phases analogous to the stages in a production process. Crucially, “the earlier stages must combine according to a certain pattern before the next stage can contribute its particular value to the finished product”. As this happens, some options are closed down.

Smelser distills all this on page 14 of his book: “Many determinants, or necessary conditions, must be present for any kind of collective episode to occur. These determinants must combine, however, in a definite pattern. Furthermore, as they combine, the determination of the type of episode in question becomes increasingly specific, and alternative behaviors are ruled out as possibilities.”

The task is, then, to work out what are the important social determinants of collective behaviour, and how they must fit together. This is Smelser’s list:
(1) Structural conduciveness – in a broad sense, collective action must be permitted.
(2) Structural strain – there must be “ambiguities, deprivations, conflicts, and discrepancies”.
(3) Growth and spread of a generalized belief – a shared narrative must emerge.
(4) Precipitating factors – usually a specific event will spark action.
(5) Mobilization of participants for action – the role of leaders is extremely important.
(6) The operation of social control – counter-determinants can work both to prevent the occurrence of an episode of collective behaviour, and to respond to an actual outburst.

This systematic framework can be used to analyze any instance of collective action anywhere in the world. In the Myanmar case, there are of course many candidates stretching back across decades and decades of history. Undoubtedly, though, Burma’s seismic 1988 movement for democracy calls out for initial examination. It would be good to see the country’s reviving universities undertake a study of this kind.