One mantra of higher education in the new Myanmar is student-centred teaching and learning – and that’s terrific. But there are two distinct ways of placing students at the heart of the learning process and, from what I can see (which is no more than a very small fragment of the full system), Myanmar is currently adopting only one of them.

The first approach is to make students central to learning inside the classroom. No more teacher talk – at least not all the time. Instead, students become the focus of attention. After decades of very formal, traditional teaching characterized by deification of the professor, Myanmar’s classrooms are now starting to experiment with fresh ideas – chiefly through the use of student presentations in tutorials. There’s a lot more to do, but this is all to the good.

The second approach is to make students architects of their degree programmes. Clearly certain basics must be covered if graduates are to claim expertise in an academic discipline, and sometimes the necessary minimum will loom large – notably in professional programmes such as dentistry, law and medicine. Beyond that, a student-centred approach should aim to give students considerable choice through a broad range of majors and minors, and large sets of electives. For sure there will be resource constraints, but to the fullest extent possible students should have options. To date, I can see little movement in this direction on Myanmar’s campuses.

I’ve said it before (and doubtless I’ll say it again): MOOCs can be part of the solution. Making online courses available to students registered at universities across Myanmar, and thereby vastly expanding student choice, would be an ideal way to deliver more fully on the agenda of student-centred teaching and learning to which growing numbers of policy makers and educators are committed.

These days education reform is deeply contentious inside Myanmar. Last week the Irrawaddy reported that more than 200 civil society groups have joined the National Network for Education Reform in rejecting the National Education Bill – which, though scheduled for further parliamentary debate, seems likely not long from now to pass into law largely unchanged. Among many key issues is ethnic groups’ demand that greater provision be made for mother-tongue instruction.

In this context, I was intrigued to read an interview conducted by Samantha Michaels, and published in the same issue of the Irrawaddy. It’s with Law Eh Moo, secretary of the Karen Education Department, which manages more than 1200 schools in Kayin State. The main point: between the national government and ethnic minorities, there’s a complete divergence of views about values, history and politics. “For example, they call us rebels or terrorists, and we also call them the same.” Moreover, in some areas it’s hard to see how any compromise might ever be made. “We are in a position to negotiate on some contents of our education – for example, the textbook subjects, how we treat geography, how the whole system operates, where we can integrate and meet with the government system, how to handle accreditation or recognize different levels. There are also things that are not negotiable, like how to treat language.”

Ultimately, in this area as in so many parts of the wider peace process, the central problem is a lack of trust generated by so many years of conflict and violence. “I think they don’t want us to get involved, and also we don’t want them to work in our areas. The work that we have been doing over decades does not exist in their knowledge. What they mean by ethnic education is the work of the government in ethnic areas. But they know nothing about the ethnic education work.”

Just a quick shout-out for Zwe Yan Naing’s second solo show, which opened at Yangon’s Pansodan Scene on Saturday, and closes on Wednesday. The title is “To Value Something”. His first solo exhibition was also at the Pansodan – Gallery rather than Scene, though. That took place in mid-February 2012 and focused on the strong women he often uses as subjects. Aung San Suu Kyi? Yes and no seemed to be the answer then. By contrast, the poster for the current show has no hesitation in focusing squarely on the NLD leader. It’s no secret that I’m a big fan of Zwe Yan Naing’s work. I wish him every success with the show.

Kenji Nagai, the Japanese photojournalist known for his work notably in Iraq 2003, Palestine 2006 and Myanmar 2007, was shot and killed by state military forces on the streets of Yangon seven years ago tomorrow – September 27, 2007. He was 50. Lying wounded on the ground, he continued to take photos with a camera that has never been released by the Myanmar authorities – last year the Irrawaddy carried a story about this. In Burma VJ, it’s hard to tell whether footage of a man gunned down close to Traders Hotel near Sule captures Nagai’s death. The narration is not clear, and cross-checking with other videos available on YouTube does not sort things out either. In 2009, the Burma Media Association established the Kenji Nagai Award to acknowledge individuals who have reported the truth about Myanmar.

In July 1991, when Aung San Suu Kyi was slated to receive from the European Parliament the 1990 Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, she published from house arrest an op-ed of varying lengths in many of the world’s great newspapers. “Freedom from fear” was the title she gave to it. In December 1991, soon after the Norwegian Nobel Committee conferred on her the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize, she issued through Penguin a paperback edition of more than 20 essays. Freedom from Fear was again the title. So it was that this became the signature political commitment of the incarcerated democracy icon.

One of the things I like about Burma VJ is how this theme surfaces in the narrative from time to time. “Fear is so deep in everybody,” notes Joshua near the start of the film. “Also in me.” Speaking of Aung San Suu Kyi’s role in generating the NLD landslide at the 1990 general election, he says this: “It was like she made the whole people forget their fear.” Later, at the height of the 2007 uprising, we get a glimpse of a man wearing a T-shirt with “freedom from fear” and a photo of Aung San Suu Kyi on the back.

Today we don’t hear so much from Daw Suu about the political slogan most widely associated with her. When we do, it sometimes stirs controversy, as in her October 2013 BBC interview. Asked about anti-Muslim violence, she responded in these terms: “I think the problem is due to the fear felt by both sides. Muslims have been targeted but Buddhists have also been subjected to violence. This fear is what is leading to all this trouble.” Again, Burma VJ reminds us of a more simple, even innocent, time in Myanmar politics.

Watching Burma VJ and looking back at 2007 from 2014, not such a great distance when all is said and done, you can’t help but wonder, again, how the monks of the saffron uprising became the monks of 969. In the movie everything looks so straightforward – get rid of the military junta and life in Myanmar will be good. Even when deeper thought – then, not just now – unearthed major challenges certain to stand in the way of political reform, it was hard to imagine monks taking the lead in a movement as chauvinistic and repugnant as 969. “Monks are not supposed to do political things,” says Joshua as narrator of the film. “But when the people are suffering and starving, sometimes they rise to give their support.” Today, though, Buddhist political engagement is aggressive, domineering and channeling – leading the people in ways that are hard to square with that statement. We thus need to know a lot more about politics inside Myanmar’s monasteries – something, fortunately, that Matt Walton is working on.

Burma VJ: Reporting from a Closed Country is Anders Østergaard’s 2008 documentary about Myanmar’s saffron uprising. It runs for a little under 90 minutes. An opening statement notes that the film “is comprised largely of material shot by undercover reporters in Burma”. Some scenes were also reconstructed to fill narrative gaps. The movie is an enormously effective depiction of events in Yangon during the six-week period from mid-August to late September 2007. It’s easy to see why it was showered with awards and nominated for an Oscar. Bathed in immediacy and authenticity, this is a really terrific piece of work.

The film is narrated by “Joshua” who, having been picked up and noted by police in Yangon in August, spends the whole of September coordinating undercover DVB video journalists from Chiang Mai, Thailand. That turns out to be part of the interest of the movie. In 2007, email was the main channel used to manage a network of reporters who captured footage in Yangon, smuggled it out to Thailand, and from there had it beamed by satellite to DVB headquarters in Oslo, Norway for onward transmission to the world’s major news organizations. It soon became the sole source for coverage of the saffron uprising on the BBC, CNN and a wealth of global outlets. It is also fed back into Myanmar through short-wave radio and satellite TV.

The early parts of the film are fascinating – Joshua’s bus ride to Yangon on August 15, the day it all started, and early protests in the city. But the most poignant sections come once the monks, mainly young, march for the first time in Yangon on September 18. From the outset, people gather on the streets to watch, and before long they are massing in deep crowds, peering from windows, balconies, rooftops – and always applauding. Officially, the monks are expressing solidarity with the people following the August fuel price increase, and seeking an apology from the government for maltreatment of some of their number earlier in the month – the reason why they hold their alms bowls upside down. But in this context, where really nobody was unaware of the mass movement in 1988, it’s impossible not to read into their daily marches a covert call for democracy. Indeed, the palpable euphoria of the people must have been driven by hope and desire for fundamental political change. Surely it was also to signal this that the monks filed past Aung San Suu Kyi’s gate on September 22.

Perhaps the only slight disappointment is that the crackdown, beginning on September 26, is not told as fully as it might have been. There is excellent footage of daytime military deployment around Sule on September 27. The narrator also states that thereafter there were no more monks on the streets, only students. When and how the saffron part of the saffron uprising was quelled, however, is not entirely clear.

Overall, this is a truly great documentary. Thankfully, Myanmar in 2014 is not the place it was in 2007. But it’s not totally different either, and this well-paced, compelling film remains essential viewing for anyone interested in the country.

I’m going to blog this week about Myanmar’s 2007 saffron uprising. It’s hard to put precise dates around a series of protests triggered on August 15 by a withdrawal of government fuel subsidies, launched on August 19 by former political prisoners from the 88 Generation (who were all quickly arrested), boosted from the middle of September by swelling ranks of Buddhist monks, and openly supported during those latter days by the general population. However, September 22 is the day when monks filed past Aung San Suu Kyi’s house and she stood briefly at her gate to pay tearful respect to them – the first time in years she’d been seen publicly. September 26 is the day when the government crackdown began in earnest. Pretty soon after that, it was all over bar the shouting.

It’s also difficult to agree on an acceptable name for what happened in Myanmar during just a few weeks in August-September 2007. The favoured term, now as then, is saffron revolution (often capitalized). For instance, the Economist‘s report from September 27, 2007 used this phrase (not capitalized). Against this, there are objections that neither part is satisfactory. The monks’ robes were typically not saffron, but ochre. Their movement was not revolutionary. The first point strikes me as unimportant – to the wider world, saffron is the descriptor that will go down in history, and it really doesn’t matter that the exact hue was slightly different. By contrast, the second point is important. To me, this was not a revolutionary moment sweeping up much of the nation in insurrectionist fervour. It never had time to become that. Rather, it was an uprising focused mainly on Yangon, Mandalay and a few other urban areas and rapidly quelled by the state. Without doubt, 1988 was a revolution – but 2007 was not.

This is of course not to say that the saffron uprising was insignificant. Burma VJ, which I’ll look at tomorrow, opens with some excellent footage from 1988. In a voiceover, the narrator says this: “These people were so brave, but sometimes I feel they died for nothing. There is nothing left from ’88. It’s like everything has been forgotten.” We now know that’s not the case. The courageous, defiant movements formed in both 1988 and 2007 remain decisive episodes in the country’s modern history.

Part of the agenda for higher education reform in Myanmar, maybe too large a part, focuses on making both the University of Yangon and Mandalay University world class. But how to do that? A few days ago Times Higher Education released a formula for a world-class university drawn from an analysis of the top 200 institutions in its annual ranking exercise – and making all the necessary noises about there being no single model of excellence. For what it’s worth, this is what it came up with:

Annual income: $750,000 per academic
Annual research income: $230,000 per academic
International academic staff: 20%
International student body: 19%
International research co-authoring: 43%
Student-staff ratio: 11.7:1

How, then, might this kind of intelligence help shape higher education policy in a country like Myanmar that is way off the pace? Rankings supremo Phil Baty makes three main points. There does need to be investment. There does need to be great teaching. There does need to be an international outlook. If the right strategies are adopted, all three could be realistic medium-term policy objectives for Myanmar’s leading two universities. Crucially, in my view, the global engagement that is now starting to unfold needs to be pursued with great commitment and determination.

It’s not that I want to trawl back through history compiling a full inventory of things that happened on this day – those lists can easily be found on the web. Rather, I want to draw a contrast between what is taking place in Britain today, September 18, 2014, and what took place in Burma 26 years ago today, September 18, 1988. In Burmese history, of course, the marker is the SLORC internal coup – making this “a date which will live in infamy”, as US President Franklin D Roosevelt famously said of Japan’s December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. In British history, by contrast, the marker is the referendum on Scottish independence – making this a date which will surely always have at least some positives attached to it. This is the question, just six words, to which resident Scots are being asked to respond: “Should Scotland be an independent country?” Certainly there are reasons to believe the exercise could have been handled better. Nevertheless, my own feeling is that whatever comes out of the referendum, it’s good in and of itself. It helps give real substance and even a new participatory identity to British democracy. It also clearly separates it off from the kind of pseudo-democracy found in Myanmar, and from the still more disciplined political systems found in places like China and Russia.