Transcript: Episode #309: Unbroken Lessons
Below is the complete transcript for this podcast episode. This transcript was generated using an AI transcription service and has not been reviewed by a human editor. As a result, certain words in the text may not accurately reflect the speaker's actual words. This is especially noticeable when speakers have strong accents, as AI transcription may introduce more errors in interpreting and transcribing their speech. Therefore, it is advisable not to reference this transcript in any article or document without cross-referencing the timestamp to ensure the accuracy of the guest's precise words.
Host 00:18
Mingalaba for any Burmese language speakers tuning in today, we wanted to let you know that our better Burma mission has launched three Burmese language podcasts, Myanmar, revolutionary tales, dark era of Burma and Myanmar, peace, women and security. These programs can be found on our website as well as on any of your preferred podcast platforms. We invite you to take a listen. But for now, let's get on with This episode.
Brad 01:40
And welcome back today I'm joined by two guests, Chan and Moe, who are both based in the United States and trying to find novel ways to tackle the difficulties that are faced by Myanmar, people who are trying to access even what we might consider to be one of the most fundamental and basic human privileges, and that is education, especially now, during the difficulties that the coup has represented so
Chan Lwin 02:21
Thank you. My name is Chan Lwin. I am a program manager at the Asia Center at Arizona State University. I'm also a PhD student in innovation and Global Development Program, IgD program, and I am currently working on this diversity and inclusivity scholarship program or DISP administered by USAID.
Maw Maw Tun 02:46
Hi. My name is Maw Maw. I'm a graduate student at Northern Illinois University. I'm a graduate student from Education Department, and I'm also currently working on these ASU the ISP project together with chat,
Brad 03:05
Okay, excellent. And so just to spell out, because there are a lot of acronyms and and I want to make sure that people, people know. So what is, what exactly does ASU, D ISP stand for?
Chan Lwin 03:18
ASU stands for Arizona State University. The ISP is diversity and inclusivity scholarship program.
Brad 03:26
Okay, so I think that's a good place to to look at this. So what? So when we think of diversity and inclusivity within the context of a university, I think what comes to mind for most people is looking at the people who are applying to that university, looking at the local people who are hoping to attend the university, live in that university, and making sure that the university is reaching diversity and inclusivity targets by not only admitting typically white people to those universities, making sure that there is a bit of a cultural mix, but mix. But you're not, it seems. You're not focused on people who are there in the United States trying to attend the university, traditionally. So what, what really is the sort of the scope of the D ISP?
Chan Lwin 04:16
So the D ISP is, is actually a bigger project administered by International Institute of Education, Iie, and so this is part of the $43 million funding that United States aids department, the USAID has provided so but the one that will focus on at Arizona State University is teachers training. So this is just one of the grants under contract. It's a smaller project. It's a one year project we are focusing on providing teachers with the skill. Supposed to be able to teach online and also in blended learning settings. But in this context, with the teachers training, we wanted to make sure that we are including all the ethnic minority institutions, so the teachers who are teaching there. You know, with diverse language backgrounds, also gender, we also make sure that we have non binary gender teachers who are also participating in these program so that has a very wide range of participants, people from all over Myanmar and also people from IDP camps, both in Bangladesh and Thailand.
Maw Maw Tun 05:50
Considering our country political situation after the coup, I think this is really important time to promote diversity in education, to give these kind of resources, assets, trainees, to educators from all the diverse backgrounds. So that, because right now, education in Myanmar is a really complex and in a way difficult for educators as well as learners. So it's also very good time to provide this other training for the diverse group, rather than focusing on people who live in our area, who have more resources and more assets to different type of training.
Brad 06:39
And so I want to focus on a specific thing that you that you said channel because you were talking about teaching the teachers how to teach, which very understandable. You know, I myself am a teacher, and I had to get a qualification in that as as as I needed to. But you, specifically said teaching in an online context. And what's fascinating there is that, you know, I was in Myanmar, prior to COVID, and before COVID, online teaching seemed to be from from what I experienced, at least in Yangon, it was quite a rarity. Like internet was almost exclusively done on phone. There wasn't much of a setup for high tech teaching opportunities and and I understand during the COVID period, obviously, things had to change very rapidly. But it also seems that now in the coup period, the very nature of Education has changed. The medium through which education is most likely to be provided has changed. So I'm wondering if, if you can give us a little bit of an insight into how has the way in which education is being done changed through COVID and through the coup and sort of what does it look like now to be a teacher in that context?
Maw Maw Tun 07:58
Like you have mentioned in not only in Myanmar, but also in the United States, a different part of the world, online education, before COVID, it is still there, but it's not as doesn't take much of an important role in education. People always focus on the the face to face part of the education, especially in higher education. But since COVID happened, the world has like rapidly transition to online education, and some people even found it, oh, it's more, if not more, equally affected we can create if we have resources and techniques or proper trainings. Then, similarly, in our country before that, no one's no one gave much attention to online education. But after the coup, plus the coup, plus the COVID, we have transitioned to initially, I think that a areas like Yangon mentally mostly private school, they transition to online pretty quickly. And later, some of the public school, try to not totally online, but like, try to create, for example, giving online resources to the students in some way. Try to incorporate online part of learning when we realize that it's inevitable to in this kind of complex situation, because a lot of teacher quit their jobs to do CDM like civil disobedience movement, and they're not working for the physical school anymore. Then online education become alternative to materialize, a solid education, diverse from the military government, and that's when I think all of the teachers started to look for the trainings or techniques or methods and how to not copy the Western way or online learning. If I'm not wrong, because we have very limited resources. We are teachers are trying to come up with, how can we adapt? Back to our situation. How can we give education? Saw that online education, but still with the limited resources.
Chan Lwin 10:07
One thing that I have seen is this revolution, I guess, of the way that learning, or even teaching online, has changed, which is, I think when the COVID started, Moe. Moe has mentioned how everything was trying to switch to online and on Zoom. And what I remember, what I remember is it was very chaotic. You know, people come in, not muting their microphone, right? So people coming in and out. But I think after a while, after the coup as well. I think the landscape has changed a lot. So you also have, you know, the institutions like spring University, Myanmar, that were able to adapt to this online education system for higher education. And they did it very well. You know, they were able to expand exponentially, right within a very short period of time. And I totally agree that, you know, in Myanmar, the context is completely different, because you have these areas that have access to internet and maybe even electricity, but you also have these, you know, stratified areas that don't always have access so, but I think the areas that have access to internet and stable, you know, access to energy, I Guess electricity. I think learning environment for students are pretty much similar to the Western environment, meaning a lot of these students, the kids, the younger generation. This is their, you know, their bread and butter, their digital generation, right? They grew up with online learning platform. They grew up with, you know, always on the internet, the younger generation. So I think this is, you know, like fish in the water for them.
Brad 12:10
And I do wonder about that, because when, when I was I actually lived on, on BA and sword and land, there are a couple of schools there, I would see them when I walked past. And one thing that I noticed about a lot of Burmese public schools that I saw was a design that probably was necessary for, you know, space reasons and and planning reasons, but the design for me as a teacher was was absolutely unthinkable, right? These classrooms where you had a relatively narrow, very long room, students seated at wooden desks, one behind the other, behind the other, behind the other, and the room typically made of a hard material, like concrete, and you'd have the Blackboard at one end. And, and I heard anecdotally that people were saying like, look, you know, if you're at the back of that room, the echo is bad enough that you can't clearly hear what the teacher is saying. The Blackboard is far away. And, and if you have any sort of eyesight problem that hasn't been diagnosed yet, then you have no hope of being able to read what's on the blackboard. And a lot of people are suffering not because they're not capable, not because they don't work hard, but simply because the the physical layout of a classroom in a lot of public schools is is not conducive to learning. It seems that in a zoom setting, for a lot of people, it may have actually been an opportunity to receive the type of education and be able to engage in in discourse with their with their teacher in a way that they previously just couldn't for for pragmatic Reasons. And I'm wondering whether you have any anecdotal information, or whether or any actual sort of research information that that indicates whether there were were improvements in outcomes for students simply because of the transition to online teaching.
Maw Maw Tun 14:15
I haven't read any of the extensive publication on the issue. It's it's a really good point, but also difficult to give, like definite answer, like you mentioned in the past, the physical resource is limited. It might have happened different impact on students because of the school resources infrastructure at the same time, Zoom also have a similar problem. Some students might have a good internet access. Have having a using a laptop to join some other might be using a cell phone, my tiny cell phone with a shaky internet so basically, it might also, I was wondering, might have. Those kind of issue I have students, when I was teaching giving these summer English causes, some students say, I'm really sorry, because my internet is not stable and I don't have the data anymore. I will join. Can you send me the video later on? I will join next week. I'm really sorry. So I think in terms of that, like, not a like in a different way. I think it still have an impact, but that limited resources to have an i mpact on the students, regardless of the format change.
Chan Lwin 15:31
Yeah, I think regarding access, you know, you will still see these differences. And I honestly don't have any empirical data on it. I haven't done research on it, but I was trying to think of my own experience as a student in Myanmar, and comparing it to, you know, being a student on Zoom. I think something that that is missing, obviously, I think Moe, Moe has said, not only the internet assets, but this face to face interaction with the teacher, right? So a lot of the time on zoom session, you will see students, you know, muting their microphone, because they always have these background noises, you know, in their family, a member in the background, people cooking, you know, whatever it is. And you also have students who turn off their camera, either for security reason, or again, because they're not in an environment that allows them to turn on their camera. So that, you know, it's not always a good solution to kind of replace this face to face interaction that you would normally have with the teacher. And another is this side conversation on Zoom. I think, you know, once you start speaking, you know, the other people are muted, and you can really hear the other person anymore, right? And but in real, in reality, in these classroom that you're describing, I actually went to a school in Bahan, and the best part about school was, you know, having these little side conversation with your friends right next to you, your right your desk, and then, so this, this kind of friendship commodity, and even talking about homeworks, right? So, you know, sometimes, even though you don't have access to the teacher, if you don't have access to tutor you, you can always come early to school and ask your friend, uh, poke them, and say, Hey, how do you do this problem? Yeah. So I think those kind of component are still missing, um, and I don't know if we have, we have actually came up with, you know, a better solution for these kind of issues.
Brad 17:49
I think, I think it's quite fair. And so before we get sort of too deep into into that, I want to go through with you and understand what exactly it is that you guys do, because, as with everything, it sounds simple on the surface like, Okay, we take the teachers from Myanmar who need the teacher training, and then they go and they get the content from the Arizona University, and then they can learn to be better teachers. But what does this look first of all, how do you find the teachers in Myanmar that that that are going to come into this course, and then what is it that those teachers are actually doing? How are they studying? What is it that they're learning? What language are they consuming their content in? What what is the actual process like, and how long is the training?
Chan Lwin 18:40
So when we started this project, or when we actually pictured this project, conceptualize it, I guess we already have a bunch of contact people inside Myanmar, one of them is partner institutions, ethnic institutions like Moe national college or even spring University in Myanmar, who we have MOU with. So when we're talking about these organization and talking to them and asking, what kind of things do you need? And they were saying, well, we kind of want teachers training, how to teach online, and, you know, lesson design and classroom management, how to engage with students. So we decided to pursue this project. So it has to face phase one is where they take these courses at ASU with weekly zoom session that Moe Moe is leading. And the second phase is for them to be able to develop their own curriculum that suits their own local situation in their own language. So from the recruitment. Perspective, we wanted to make sure that we have, you know, again, diverse ethnic groups, diverse, you know, gender groups and also language groups. So the end goal is to have the curriculum that also have diverse, you know, language groups, where resources will have different languages based on the curriculum that they will learn at ASU.
Brad 20:29
And I wonder, can you, can you give a rundown on what languages are currently being offered?
Chan Lwin 20:35
We are not offering languages, so the main language that we use when we're conducting these zoom session or even courses, right? So these are not courses that we're teaching. These are courses that are designed by Arizona State University professors who are you know, this is your specialty. And so these are already designed by those and they are already pre recorded videos and interactive, you know, learning platforms. They're already done. It's all online. And these are asynchronous courses. And then we have a component that Momo is leading, which is these zoom sessions where we discuss these content, right? Because a lot of these courses are designed for Western education system, but these zoom discussions is where we talked about, how do you adapt it to your local situation? You know, Myanmar situation, and the main language that we try to use is English as well, because we have, again, ethnic teachers who doesn't speak Burmese as their first language or even second language, right? So we wanted to be able to accommodate to these ethnic teachers. Also we have Burmese teacher. So if we are needed during the Q and A session, if we are needed to be switched to Burmese, we can do that. And also my Moe can speak another ethnic language. So if you know, we have a participant who wanted to speak that language, we can also do so.
Maw Maw Tun 22:31
So we run zoom session weekly. Before the zoom session, they have to So basically, we gave them a schedule, what kind of even though they are required to study six module and six causes, different modules in different causes. So we give them a schedule they have to follow which day they have to complete what part of the course, and to align, aligning with the schedules, we have the zoom session to discuss the topic. So for example, they're talking about blended learning, different type of blended learning. Then we'll discuss in zoom session their understanding, their perception of blended learning. And how does the West, in western context, blended learnings practice, and how can we adapt like in our context? Which part will it be? Not the whole model, maybe, which part and portion should we focus on, which is feasible, which will be obstacle? Then those sort of things we discussed, we have a breakout room. So we have like 100 participants, which is very large, grow, I have to say. So normally I'm putting into like five to four breakout room. Give them like 15 or 20 minute discussions. Then we come back together, one of the representative from the groups have to present, and then other people can chime in or type in the chat, those sort of things. So we have at least two to three discussion going on, running through those kind of topic based on the cost they have studied. So basically, the zoom session is not necessarily bringing new content or not necessarily teaching new content based on what they have learned. We come together what should be good for our context.
Brad 24:17
So did you say 100 participants? Yes, in a single meeting.
Maw Maw Tun 24:22
Yes. So this is not an ideal, but Chan and we have other two office, eight graduate students who helped me with this. So it's a lot of cooperation on our side who will put put to which row and who will be in. So we coordinate together. We even run through which the PowerPoint. So break it down into 20 or 30 slide, which part we will say, What? What part we will do this? And we have me and Chen together with they also have me with run the zoom session and two others, gratitude. Who work as office eight they come and so we each go into separate room. And when will we meet together? A lot of work to run through 100 Participant I have to also be thankful to the software we have run, like a three session. I have to thank to the participant. They're also very cooperative. Yeah. So phrase, a good stuff.
Brad 25:26
Okay, that's, that's pretty intense compared to what I was, I was thinking of. And so some, I know that some of the participants, as you say, are located in IDP camps, and I don't know much about what an IDP camp is like, but I imagine that it would be very difficult under those circumstances to be able to study, to be able to join in a Zoom meeting, to be able to get regular access to to Internet. So what is your retention rate like? Do you find that people tend to make it through the course and they and they are, they're pretty solid, or do people suffer a lot from circumstances beyond their control and they they simply lose access to internet, they lose the opportunity and run into problems like this. What has your experience been with this particular project?
Maw Maw Tun 26:18
We have run only three zoom sessions. So for we have like 90 over 90 participant out of 100, so all three zone sessions. So I couldn't say that's pretty normal for losing nine to eight people for out 100 and they also sent us like request letter in advance. Okay, I have this going on. I might not be able to join this week. The rain is so hard I have no connection. They let us know, let us short messages or anything in the bond. So we kind of expected some participant to miss the class. Yes, so so far, maybe because it's difficult to say definitely give definitely answer, because we are only three week in, but as of right now, we don't have a lot of retention rate. They are very motivated, maybe due to the situation. They want to get connected with other peers and talk about it. They're very excited. So not a lot of retention rate. We have over 90 participants joining e session.
Brad 27:22
Okay, that's pretty good news so far. So I want to go and start looking a little bit at the philosophy, the education philosophy and the methodology here. Before we do that, let's just sort of look at education in Myanmar, like even even pre coup, pre COVID, education in Myanmar seems to have had a number of issues associated with it. I definitely noticed an enormous disparity. The difference between public education, private education and international school education was Earth shatteringly large, much, much larger than the education disparities that I've seen here in the West between public education and private education, although obviously there is a significant disparity. But what? What do you guys think the education in Myanmar as as a philosophy, or as a culture or as just a an industry limited by pragmatics and funding and opportunities and logistics. What problems do you think education sector in Myanmar was was really facing in in trying to deliver high quality education, and therefore high quality life opportunities for students across the country.
Chan Lwin 28:48
I think thinking about education, education like as a formal education system, didn't really exist. You know, prior to the colonial era, we have these monastic educations, you know, that are Buddhist monks that are leading these sessions, and then, you know, it's usually education is for the court, right, if you really want to become someone who works for the king, then you probably go to these monastic education system. But I'm looking, I'm thinking about the education system doing colonialism, and maybe a little bit right after the British left, which was what I heard. I have, I didn't experience it. It was a pretty good system where you even have, you know, students from Nepal or these other countries that will come to University of Rangoon to be educated, get the degrees. So I think up to that point, we. Had a pretty good education system, although, you know, it's actually the British curriculum, but I think after the military coup in the 60s, it's completely changed. And you know, i i One of my research is about ethno nationalism, which, you know, the education was used as a tool. It's a weapon to shape the minds of the young generation to think in a particular way and not to question authority, right? So that strip away a lot of these friends, free thinking, critical thinking skills that you would normally have in the education system. So, you know, you have about 60 years of this kind of education system before the, you know, the reform in 2015 or 2016 but before that, it was a pretty rigid system where you have the curriculum that's designed by the Ministry of Education that you cannot straight form the textbook that they publish, and most of them are one sided, right, very Burma centric, or Burmese centric curriculum that you kind of shove it down, you know, into other ethnic area. So that's, you know, that the kind of over, I guess, a bigger picture, or the short history of education system in Myanmar.
Maw Maw Tun 31:39
Yeah, Chan, sum up pretty nicely the history had is, how did went down our education system, yeah, since the military, since the 60, I think the systematic, the limit of the system, how the system focus on teacher front education, because they don't want to train the students to make a movement or to be critical thinker. So even the education designs to make the students to follow the rules, to know, to know, fads, those are the basic cause or the objective. But I have to say, like around 2006 16, or when the country started to open up that that the younger people, that generation, around that time, they started to have more assets, like especially with the help of the internet, and it has been changed tremendously during the around that time. So along with that, the education system has more transition to like, even though in public, public education, like, for example, like corporate punishment used to be a thing. When I was young, I went to Myanmar private school. But nowadays, even in regardless of private or public centers, you couldn't do that anymore. The society. There might not be a punishment by your workplace, but there will be a punishment by the public or find the society. So it has been this change has been here, but not much as much as we would like to be, probably because of the limit limited resources. But still, the change is happening like how we think our education.
Brad 33:35
And I think it's a very good thing, but I do remember being very shocked and surprised by by some of the things that that I experienced as as as a teacher, and I think going back to the point of the decline during the military dictator, the military period I did go, actually, I had the fortune of going to a PhD seminar by somebody she was, she was a US researcher, but at the time, US researchers weren't allowed to travel to Myanmar for some reason, so she she had to do it through an Australian university. And she interviewed teachers in in May so who had fled from Myanmar, and they were saying things like, well, the military tells us we have to teach these particular elements of Buddhist scripture. But because these elements of Buddhist scripture are so complicated and the language is so sort of archaic, when we teach the analysis and all of the Buddhist scripture that they would be talking about would be things about piety, loyalty, accepting the things that are beyond your control, so turning people into into just quietly accepting slaves of the military regime. And she was saying, well, the teachers would say that we can teach the analysis in our own way, so we can try to insert little pockets of free thinking and. Into the curriculum that the military has given us, which was specifically designed to prevent critical thinking from happening. But there were, there were ways for teachers to push back and and I remember reading about Khin shutting down the universities and spreading them out and trying to decentralize education. And I remember being told by my students that certain degrees were only allowed to go to the university on certain days, so that they didn't interact with each other and and you couldn't live on campus, and you didn't have, you know, proper, proper student campus life anymore, because they were afraid of student movements. I think, I think these are subtleties that don't necessarily come down to something as as clear cut as the curriculum itself, but but still have this terrible effect of of really limiting education opportunities, particularly the way that universities were handled and isolated from one another and and it seemed that the students really weren't interacting with each other as much as they would in in a western university context, and they were missing out on a lot of opportunities to to broaden their horizons and broaden their minds, but but that was the impression that I had sort of pre, pre, Pre coup, pre COVID. And I'm wondering whether these, whether you would agree with with the way that I saw it, and also whether you think these elements as well, are changing that there is pushback to try and change the curriculum, or change the way that the curriculum is being taught to feed people critical thinking skills, and whether there is a sense that students want to have a student culture and a student community, and want to to broaden those horizons, in spite of the government's previous efforts to to completely nullify that to.
Maw Maw Tun 36:53
So if you say these Things are still happening pre COVID, I have to disagree from from my personal experience coming from so I still work for a university till 2018 I came to us 2008 I used to work for a university in Myanmar. So these, the thing that you have mentioned, are totally correct for my university days. So when I was a university students, or even grad school students in Myanmar, these things are happening. We don't interact with other university or we don't have a lot of events going on. We just go to school, study, pass the test yearly. That's our main goal. And even when I started becoming a university teacher. 2,009th things are still the same, but before I resign my job, like things were changing, because I remember vividly, like we have the students election. They run by themselves. So in our university, we have the student election, and each major, they nominate themselves this kind of event. And we have the student led, like, say, fresh freshers welcome like for as a whole university, led by the students. And we have like Water Festival all led by the students. We have the beauty pageant led by the students. We have debating so things are progressing. But of course, after the COVID will turn back to know the previous situation. But before, like four or five years before, before, I just before, right before, I left to us, I think things are progressing tremendously. I was so happy. I always tell people I'm I'm used to, I went to the university because I read a lot of novel when I when I was in high school, romanticizing the college people like college t shirt, that's what I imagined to be, right? When I became teacher, it wasn't, it wasn't working that way. But at the end, before I resigned, it was working towards what I have imagined to be our university in Myanmar, how the students are leading them so, like, they're making their own poster. Like both for me, they have their own slogan. So that was very like, how shall I say? That was very nice to see that's kind of changed environment. The students taking initiated even a leadership role. Not only forget about critical thinking, they are taking initiative, like leading things. So, yeah, things has changed and will change. I think, I believe it will change if we can get a proper environment or resources to the students.
Brad 39:34
So it's really good to hear, because I remember I used to prepare students for university life in Australia. That was one of the courses that I was contracted to teach. And I remember trying to explain to them, you know, student politics, and that there are, you know, student political groups, and there are student elections that they had. I remember them being just so shocked, almost that, like no, like you would. And why would you publicly involve yourself in in politics? And I don't know what what that was. I assumed it was just this inherited sort of fear that if you're too openly involved in politics, then somebody might notice that, and somebody might, you know, punish you for that. And I assume that had been inherited from their parents generation before them. So I was, I was completely unaware that that things had progressed that quickly, that far on on University campus. So that's, yeah, that's that's really actually very, very optimistic and very boldening to to hear. So I'm happy about that, but I do, I do, then want to turn to something that I think, I think chan mentioned this actually very early on in our discussion, that one of the goals that you have is not just teaching teachers how to teach an online context, but you you specifically highlighted that you were trying to teach something that is different than the western style education, something that is much more appropriate to context. And I'm wondering if you can expand on that. What exactly is it that, if there is anything in particular that you see in western style education, Western style approaches to education that you think is not appropriate for the Myanmar context, or what is it that you think is lacking that the Myanmar context would benefit from?
Chan Lwin 41:32
One of the main issue is, again, when you teach online or blended learning environment, not everyone has internet. So then, you know, how do you adapt this sort of thing, right? Is it flip classroom, or is it something completely different? And I think that the second layer of it is that we're also trying to, kind of get the educators to think about, what are the values that we have as educators, which are different from, you know, from the west. And another thing is bias. I mean, one of the course that we have in this curriculum is avoiding bias. And as you probably know, bias in United States is different than bias in Myanmar, in the US you know, mean, one of the, I guess you know, biggest thing is race. You look at someone and you see some someone skin color or race, and then you have these prejudice that you know, consciously or unconsciously, right, that you know someone is making, presuming about this person, stereotyping the persons based on their appearance in Myanmar is a little bit different. You know, we were talking about in Myanmar. It's not just race, this ethnic groups, so that it's not skin deep anymore. It has to do with accent, right? So if you were one of the ethnic groups that are on campus in Yangon, you know you may get some teasing right about your accent, so things like that, and also bias, as in socioeconomic status, because, again, people have different assets, and it's not just money. Is also, you know, social hierarchies, that someone has connections, that people may have with certain people. I think Moe, Moe and I were discussing about this the other day. You know, when you when you are someone who grew up in Rangoon, you know people, and in Myanmar is one of those society where if you know someone, it's easier to get things done, right? So this is the kind of things that we were talking about. And even in education, it goes a long way if you know someone and and, you know, these are the type of elements we have to consider when we're thinking about having these curriculums that were designed for education in the United States, and try to kind of readjust, or, you know, transform it for the Myanmar context.
Brad 44:26
I want to go back to what you said about the accent, though I find that interesting, because we we think of accent in the West rather incorrectly, but for historical Reasons, we think of accents predominantly in terms of rigid elect and so, you know, the very stereotypical thing might be to say, Well, you've got the accent of the people from the city, and then you've got the accent of the people who come from the surrounding rural areas, and they tend to have a certain way of of speaking, even though, even now. The United States, there's a strong shift away from regional pronunciation towards a manifestation of a much more socially entrenched difference in pronunciation. So we have what we call socioecs and ethnoects as well, right different different ethnic groups tend to speak with with slightly different cadences and slightly different pronunciations. But I'm wondering what is it like in the Myanmar context? Because once again, we would anticipate that the pronunciation of people who go to a school where presumably they come from the local community would be relatively, you know, homogenous, like there are differences in Burmese pronunciation from say, you know, Mandalay region, Yangon region, but what sort of differences in accent would you be picking up? And what would those accents tell you about a person in a Myanmar teaching context?
Maw Maw Tun 45:59
So it's not this kind of social or regional sounds. So let's say we have different, diverse ethnic groups. For me, Burmese is not my first language. This is my second language. So at home, my family still speak Rakhine, Arkansas. So even at school, growing up, we learn Burmese. I'm really good at writing, reading anything like novels, saying it, but we never speak. So the time I move to Yangon, that's the only time I properly speak Burmese in my life, like the whole conversation. So when I speak, I feel like I'm so good at writing, and my grammar is perfect. My vocabulary is a top notch, but when you speak, but you rarely have a chance to practice. Nobody speak Burmese in my home or at my school. So when you really speak, you have your mother tongue influence. It's kind of obvious, especially the first time or the first it depends on the type of people. So people smile at you. It's not as it's not a big day, but you know, like, Okay, I sounds different in my mind. It sounds okay, but like when I actually speak. So I'm speaking from my own experience, then at the ethnic group, maybe coaching. It's not like outright saying you have something you know, but still, people know you are not from the local region right away. So I think it's also interesting, like I include my essay within a year, pretty good, but, but my mom and dad still like every time they come into town like you talk, because once we speak, they know we are not from here right away, they feel a little bit embarrassed.
Brad 47:48
So, yeah. okay, that's interesting. So, so you went to, so you went through your your primary school and high school in a local area, yes, and, and, of course, you're so you're surrounded by relatively homogenous styles of speech. But then for your tertiary education, you had to make a move, and suddenly you're thrown in with a whole bunch of different people from different regions. Is that correct?
Maw Maw Tun 48:13
So even for university education, it depends also from basic education to higher education, any sort of education, if you go to local area, the teachers still teach the same tasks, but they use their own language, not Burmese. So we use our chemists in our Rakhine State, even at a university context, unless you are unless you have a teacher coming from Yangon or Mandalay areas, they will speak in Burmese, we understand that we don't respond in Burmese, we respond in our case. So also, this teacher also find it difficult for a couple of mom to adjust to the student replying back in the local language, but later they got used to it. But we never really formally speak Burmese, even regardless of any education context, if you're in the local area, only when you go to like Yangon, Mendeley or middle region where Burmese is the first language, or predominantly used. We use Burmese.
Brad 49:13
But so, so it's quite it's quite interesting, because with Rakhine, you know, like you call it a language, I don't fully see it about that, but either way, it has a relative degree of mutual intelligibility with standard Burmese. So you can have someone coming from Yangon, you can have someone coming from Mandalay who can learn to adjust to either they can attune the ear and they can learn to understand the Arakan is and and likewise, you obviously can, can understand the standard Burmese. But what if we had a situation, for example, in mon or a situation in in Karen or San where you can't just go to mon state and pick up Moe? On, you know, in a couple of weeks, and you can't understand anything that the student says, it's totally unintelligible. And same with San and same with, you know, chin and Kachin and so on, like in those cases where you where you have no intelligibility. Does that just mean that there is a very high degree of isolation between the people working in the education sector in these states and the people working in the education sector in in the central parts of the country. Or are they pushed from a younger age to do their education in Burmese because they know that they're eventually going to have to do their tertiary education in Burmese? Do you have any insight into into what their approach is in those regions?
Maw Maw Tun 50:46
I couldn't definitely say how the like you mentioned, even though we can argue at another day or either organism language or dialog, it might be the whole nother debate, but let's forget about it. But if we move to like you mentioned Kachina Moe. That's totally different language. So I think the basic thing is, we all can understand Burmese. So to the degree how many teachers or educators in the same school as a Burmese first language speaker and how the students decide to respond, or maybe, if they have most majority or local educator, maybe the T, the Suu, the students are not pushed enough. Or the students might think that, oh, we might not need to do so much. We don't have the need to. Or I don't know how this translates in the context. So yes, I couldn't really say, but I think in terms of like understanding literacy, everyone can understand read and write, but in terms of speaking might be slightly different degree how you practice, depending on how you grow up with school. Even in a chain, if I go to a school where half of the teachers are like Yangon or mentally, maybe I'm in response to it, then I got used to it. Or still, I love Burmese, but my areas there are local t shirt then I don't necessarily have to use the language. Might be a different scenario. I think it's very broad to generalize their experience.
Chan Lwin 52:18
Yeah, I think you know, some of the NGO that I worked with has kind of, you know, some of the issues that Moe, Moe is mentioning, which is, you know, having Burmese as a first language, as a national language, causes issues in some of the regions. Exactly, let that you mentioned where, you know, Burmese isn't really a close language of their regional dialect. It's just something entirely different. But at the same time, they're kind of being forced to learn this language, and you know, most of the time, because they don't have teachers that are qualified to teach, you know, in in their own language, in this public school situation, then you have these teachers from, you know, mainland Burma fly out they're not fly out there. I mean, trans transported there to teach, and their their approach was, you know, sink or swim. You either, you know, swim in this burmanized curriculum where everything is being taught to you in Burmese, or you sing. And I think that's one of the the main friction that that we have in education system is that this, and even, I guess you can call it access, or even the lack of mother tongue based curriculum, is causing a lot of issues. And I I'm guessing one of the the outcome of it is that, you know, right now you'll probably see a lot of the ethnic organization have their own colleges and universities, right where the their language, their mother tongue, is the the language that they're being taught in these universities. Not even Burmese anymore, so we're starting to see these shift. And again, you can always look at the main cause is this kind of forced burmanization in education.
Brad 54:37
Okay, that makes sense, and that seems to have been like a very long standing policy of the military, but one that was always kind of doomed to fail, I think, fortunately. But I want to also focus on another element here, because, because you specifically mentioned gender diversity as well. Them, and that's one that we don't quite think about as much, I think, especially within the Myanmar context, we think a lot about ethnic tension, for obvious reasons, but we don't really think about gender and diversity, and my impression has been post coup, from what I've seen and from people that I've spoken to within the LGBT community, that there has been a general trend towards increased recognition of and increased respect for people who are gender diverse. But I also very much get the impression that it has historically been quite difficult for people who have sort of LGBT identities to if they're known, if it's known that they have this identity, it's difficult for them to get into teaching, because teaching has such a peculiar position within, within Myanmar society and Myanmar culture, that there would be this, I don't know, a bit of a clash of saying, Well, you know, we don't necessarily feel it's appropriate, you know, for someone who might be gay or might be trans or whatever, to be to be a teacher. So I'm wondering what you can what insight you can offer us into gender diversity in in Myanmar education previously, and also whether you have seen any changes to that happening more recently.
Chan Lwin 56:37
I think in the education sector, not only, you know, I think what you just said, the teachers are not non binary, right? I remember I went to school in, you know, public school in Rangoon. This is the capital, so we're not, I mean, compared to other regions, you can say progressive, but not really progressive. I remember I had a classmate who uses male pronouns. So as you know, you know Burmese, we have gender pronouns, and referring to yourself as male pronouns, which is pretty common. I mean, I refer to myself as not because of my identity, it's just sometimes some regional stuff to you just say your general right, the male pronouns. But when you respond to a teacher, like, yes, that respond is also gendered. So there's only two gender, right, male and female. And I have a classmate who was a, you know, it's kind of, you can kind of tell that she was a non binary, but at the same time, you don't say these things, right? Her response was a male response, and the teacher would not let her come into the classroom until she changes her response to female. Wow, and that was a very tense moment that I remember. And, you know, it was an embarrassing, you know, situation for her and and it was a very awkward situation, like, because I myself again, I refer to myself as a male pronoun, Gen, but I, you know, when I respond yes or no, then I respond in female but when you don't conform to these, you know, I guess, categorized pronouns, then you get discriminated publicly. You get shamed publicly. So this is, you know, 90s, early 90s, maybe mid 90s, but you know, nowadays, like you said, that people are more accepting of these, you know, non binary identities, but at the same time, I think it's still marginalized, you have, you Know, LGBT communities, but I think a lot of the I guess gay communities are represented, more represented than lesbian communities. And I and still hear these cases where lesbians, women are bullied, you know, sometimes even sexually abused in communities. So, I mean, I won't say that, you know, things have completely changed. I mean, it has progress. I mean, it progressed a little bit, but I don't think it's is still an ideal situation yet.
Brad 59:59
Okay? Yeah, okay. And so do you think because of the, because of the position that teachers have, like we hear this thing, the three categories, you know, the parents, teachers and monks, because of this, maybe pseudo religious, cultural sort of respect for teachers? Does that make it harder for someone who is not really a paragon of what society considers to be a quote, unquote, normal, upstanding member of society to become a teacher or have people as society in general, because you were saying previously that even if teachers don't face repercussions from the teaching institutions for things like corporal punishment, society can still, these days, hold teachers to account. Do you think that society has moved away from that veneration of teachers and has started to say no, like teachers are people, and teachers come from a broad, you know, range of walks of life and and that's fine. What do you where do you see society's interaction with teachers taking that?
Chan Lwin 1:01:14
Well, I will say it depends on institution and communities. Again, some communities are progressive enough that this isn't an issue anymore. And in some communities, I think you know, depending on institutions too, you wouldn't openly admit on your application that you are a non binary gender, right? So, I mean, I think it's again, I can't say, oh, in Myanmar, this is the case, because it's very different. And I still haven't really seen, like, I said, lesbian teacher yet. I mean, like, who's openly admitting right in the education system.
Maw Maw Tun 1:02:04
We do have, I have same or mad like this lesbian t shirt, but like Chen ha mentioned, they don't claim themselves as lesbian. So people kind of know. It's like open secret. People kind of know, but like, the person themselves doesn't identify. So it is hard to group then, oh, we have lesbian teacher when they maybe. So for it's a very complicated issue for for anyone to identify or not to identify. So it's not my place to identify them if they don't want to identify. But we do have the t shirt. But things are progressing slowly. I have to say we have, like chance mentioned some it depending on the context, like but compared to the 20 years ago, of course, we are more progressing. We are more understanding. And we understand like the it's a 21st century, like any one should be educated if they want to be educated, regardless of their identity. It should have been a problem, but there are still some certain areas who still hold traditional value, but people don't openly dispute about it. So even though traditional site people who value the traditional standard might judge them behind their back, but might not overly confront regarding or regarding the fact that people are more accepting nowadays. They might not come from the or make it worse the situation, but they might still be holding those kind of values.
Brad 1:03:52
But that, I think that's actually a very, very interesting thing, that because there is a very strong difference between a society in which there is a certain attitude prevalent, versus a society in which a certain attitude can safely and comfortably be be brought to the front. It's sort of like racism in the West, where racism is pervasive, a lot of people have very racist attitudes, but it is generally difficult to stand up in the town square and say, Well, I think this group, and this group is is bad in these ways. People will call you out and say, Well, you shouldn't say that. That's racist. Your attitude is wrong, and so on. So it, it doesn't fix the problem of racism, but it definitely puts it in a place where people have to think twice about what they're saying and how they want to say it if they want to express these ideas publicly, and people have to be prepared to deal with the consequences of expressing these attitudes. So if that's happening in the Myanmar context. First, I think that is an enormous and an essential step along the journey to to lasting, you know, transformative change in in regards to how the LGBT community is viewed in general, if not just specifically with teaching, but that that sort of leads us to to the question of the future here, the question of the objectives of this course. So I know you're saying that this is only week three of the course that you're running. It might be very early days to know exactly where this will lead, or where this can lead, and I understand that you're getting your funding from USAID and so, and rather, you're getting your funding from an intermediary, from USAID. And so I don't know how much funding security you have long term, or exactly how that's going to work and how long this project can run for, but the the fundamental question is, what, what do you a hope that you can achieve in in the Myanmar context, Myanmar education sector, long term, through this project, and potentially through future projects like this, and be on the more pragmatic side. What do you actually think you can feasibly and and sort of achievably do through this course. What impact do you think you can have?
Chan Lwin 1:06:26
That is a great question. And I love how you frame it. You know, one is hope and the other one is actually achievable, right? Yeah. So, yeah, I think what we actually hoped to make a difference is in the long run, we are trying to aim at what does a federal education system look like? Because we don't even know what federalism I mean, as in, not that we don't know the federalism. We can't really agree on the definition of federalism in Myanmar so and I have talked to many, you know, institutional leaders, you know, some ethnic group leaders even, and and what I really want to make it happen is the bottom up approach, starting with the educators, to be able to see what the other educators in other regions are doing, what they're facing on their you Know, daily life, because it's very different. In some region, you have access to internet, pretty stable environment. You also have regions where people are running away, you know, almost every week, either because of flooding, because of bombing, right attack, air raids, so on and so forth. So because we wanted to start reconnecting these teachers again, from a different from different backgrounds, from different regions, from different communities that they're not they don't just exist in isolated, you know, silos, and we wanted to have a collaboration again, from bottom up. Approach is starting with the teachers. How do you collaborate and how do you picture an education, the future education of Myanmar, not by an administrators, not by, you know, leaders, or not by presidents, right, but as a, again, more collaborative approach from the Teachers. I guess that's the hope. I guess the actual achievement, which is, you know, the funding that we receive is just one year, is what we wanted to provide, is not only the resources for these group of teachers. You know, I mentioned the second phase, where they will develop their own resources in their own languages for their own communities, as open education resource, which will go on a platform, you know, the same, shared platforms, so that you know, people can not only share their ideas and their modules and their own experience with each other in the program, but also to their own communities. Another doing phase two, another group will be doing Teach, teaching their teachers, or training the trainer to you know, program again, is to. To kind of spread this knowledge and spread these ideas about not only the curriculum change, but also collaboration. That's a seed that we want to plant with this program.
Maw Maw Tun 1:10:13
It's never easy, and especially when you have limited resources, but all the educators, including mindset and Chen and everyone we are in here working for education sector in Burma, educate, I always joke around, this is my joke. Working in education, I will never be rich. I wasn't rich. I won't be rich either. But we've been here for a long way media together, with all the participants, educator, it means we want to contribute to the development of education in Myanmar and change wasn't easy, won't be easy, and we couldn't do it alone. So I was hoping this should be at like a start to think how we should a small start, like, how should we start with ourselves, try to make it better, content, better lesson for our students, and together collaboratively with our peers, to create more, You know, comprehensive, better learning system together with our community, yeah, that was the only hope to improve ourselves and together, to improve or to create more for the community, for based on our context and region.
Brad 1:11:36
And I think that that's a really important point is that you're not just trying to have a program that runs forever, partially because, pragmatically, we know that programs don't run forever because funding dries up, because that's how things work, but also because, I think the most effective projects are those that are designed to empower A group of people to continue to do the work. And in this case, it's it's not about you becoming the sort of preeminent hub of teaching teachers, but rather disseminating that knowledge and then allowing people to to continue to modify it and change it and localize it and contextualize it. And it's giving people not just the tools to build the house, it's giving people the tools to craft further tools with which other people will be able to build the house, which I really think is is crucial to to the longevity and and the impact that a project like this can have. So I I sort of, I feel optimistic if I can say that about about the project and about the impact that it's going to have based on on the way that you've approached it.
Chan Lwin 1:12:55
Thank you. I first wanted to say thank you for giving us this opportunity to share our project, and, you know, our thoughts. And I think it's really important to mention that in situation like Myanmar, where we're facing there's a lot of people who wanted to help, which we really appreciate. At the same time, I also want to remind people to think about agency of the people that we're helping, and that's our priority with this project, which is to give agency to the local teachers, and also give agency to local institutions. When we ask, you know, what kind of things will be useful, and I think in the long run, it will be most beneficial and most effective if the people that were trying to help have their own agency to shape their own future. So I think that will be the message that I wanted to give.
Maw Maw Tun 1:14:09
First of all, thank you. Thank you for giving us the opportunity to share about our project. And my last word will be, I um, including me and all the people who are working in education sector in Myanmar, let's do what is possible, instead of focusing on to create ideal situation. It we will be it will be hard for us and fee discouraged if we are aiming for ideal, right? So the current situation, so let's do together what we can, and let's move forward and hope for the best and stay strong.
Host 1:15:08
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