Freedom is the Lesson
Coming Soon…
This episode returns to Mae Sot, a border town where exiled teachers, students, and activists try to piece together lives divided by war and flight. Their stories emerge from the tension between survival and collapse, revealing endurance as the only possible response. Each voice speaks from exhaustion, tracing how daily effort—work, study, persistence—has turned into a form of resistance.
Moh Moh works in teacher training and mentors teachers who continue teaching through Myanmar’s crisis. Her work began before the coup and shifted to remote and community-based models afterward, with regular check-ins on attendance, student well-being, and classroom constraints. She describes how many of the teachers she works with continue to teach with little or no pay, driven not by hope of recognition but by duty to their students and communities. She also notes that the more time she spends with these teachers, the more trust grows between them. “The more I talk to them, the more they feel closer to me, and the more open they are to me, talking about their struggles—they also feel empowered.” Her reflections reveal how her training work has become something deeper than instruction—an exchange of strength that sustains everyone involved.
On occasion, Moh Moh admits, the slow pace of progress leaves her uncertain. “Sometimes I feel like, ‘Oh, I’ve been doing teacher training for six years! And it hasn’t been improving.’” Yet as she continues, her tone shifts toward quiet clarity: “Maybe I’m not just doing teacher training. I’m also working with teachers like me, who are really on ground, helping their students grow, and at the same time they also trying to grow. So I feel like even though we are not in the same place, we are growing together somehow.” For her, that sense of shared growth is its own form of success.
Moh Moh has been working with Mote Oo, where she focuses on training social science teachers in post-secondary community schools. Her sessions emphasize inclusive, student-centered teaching and critical thinking—approaches that move away from rote memorization toward reflection, analysis, and awareness of multiple perspectives. She references Mote Oo's publication Histories of Burma, a textbook written from multiple ethnic viewpoints (hence the plural of histories), as an example of how education can reshape identity. Moh Moh, who is Bamar, describes learning from ethnic colleagues who teach in Kachin, Shan, Karen, and Mon regions: “Everyone has the struggle, but what I learned more was how they overcome them," she says. "They don’t want that struggle to be passed on to the newer generation of ethnic minorities.”
Hein is a CDM student whose academic path was upended by the coup. When the military seized control, he and his mother (a college professor) joined the Civil Disobedience Movement together, leaving their government housing and refusing to resume studies under the junta. In those early days, he shared the optimism many others felt—that CDM would succeed quickly. “A lot of people thought that [CDM] would last only for a few months, and the dictatorship will end,” he recalls. “But things didn’t come out as we thought.” Months turned into years, and Hein began to rebuild his education from scratch. He trained under a senior in a medical clinic to gain hands-on experience, then continued his studies through an online program. His goal, he says, is to surpass what he might have achieved had the coup never happened: “If the non-CDM people get one degree, then I will get two degrees!” he exclaims For him, studying has become an act of defiance, a declaration that perseverance itself is resistance. Today, Hein divides his time between his online studies and working at a migrant dental clinic in Mae Sot, where he treats displaced Burmese workers and refugees.
Haymin, a Yangon University Student Union organizer, was elected General Secretary in 2019. Before the coup, his work focused on student rights, academic freedom, and democratic education. After February 2021, he helped coordinate demonstrations in Yangon, working with other university unions to mobilize students across campuses. “We worked for student rights… we collaborated with other universities’ Student Unions… we opposed the internet blackout in Rakhine and also the Rohingya genocide,” he says, recalling the cross-university campaigns that became a hallmark of their activism. When the military began arresting organizers, Haymin and his peers realized how dangerous their visibility had become. “Our fellow executive members from the University of Yangon Student Union, they were arrested during the strike,” he recounts. “After that time, we needed to hide… there were a lot [of] military check-points… if they can’t find you, they can arrest your family member.”
Forced into hiding, Haymin continued his activism from safe houses before eventually crossing into Thailand. From Mae Sot, he works with CDM educators, professors, and international researchers to create academic pathways for students who refuse to attend junta-run universities. He now helps coordinate hybrid learning models, online courses, and cross-border collaborations that allow displaced students to continue their education. His commitment to academic solidarity reflects the same conviction that has guided him since his university days—that education and resistance are inseparable.
Together, these voices form a portrait of persistence under siege. Moh Moh trains teachers who refuse to abandon classrooms; Payne studies and practices medicine as defiance; Min builds educational networks that outlast oppression. None of them speak in terms of victory. Instead, they embody the quieter truth that endurance—sustained, disciplined, and shared—is the only form of freedom available for now.