The Young and the Restless

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The Young and the Restless
With all universities closed, students can only imagine what might be

By Jose Manuel Tesoro
Asia Week February 13,1998


Dreams die easily in Myanmar. They dry up like fallen leaves, vanish like
dust. Kyaw remembers when his ambition expired, how quickly it faded
despite how long it had been nurtured. As a child in Rakhine, an isolated
region in his country's far west, Kyaw often wondered about the world
beyond Myanmar's closed and wary borders. "I wanted to become a diplomat,"
says the slight, tall, dark-skinned Burmese, now in his late 20s. He
studied hard and won a place at Yangon University, which admits only the
country's top-scoring students.

But in his second year there, among worldlier and wiser classmates, he
learned the truth. Despite his intelligence and his effort, he lacked the
one thing that would enable him to realize his ambition. "I did not have
any kap," he says -- glue, Burmese slang for connections, patrons. Without
a well-placed family friend or relative to speed his way into the foreign
service, Kyaw understood his aspiration could never be reality. He now
spends his time as a tour guide, chaperoning middle-aged foreigners around
his country while he searches for another future.

Kyaw is one of thousands of young Burmese for whom a university education
has not been an initiation for the intellect but a lesson in frustration
and disappointment. Their education is stultifying instead of stimulating.
And even if they work hard, they find that jobs after graduation depend
more on connections than on qualifications. Their frustration has often
erupted into rage. In December 1996, after a series of student
demonstrations, Myanmar's largest universities were shut on the orders of
the ruling military junta, which now calls itself the State Peace and
Development Council (SPDC). Students were sent home, some said to have been
flown back on government expense.

Throughout last year, rumors spread that schools would soon reopen, but
colleges are still shuttered. Many students have long given up on their
education. This closure, after all, is the third in a decade. Since the
junta took over, Myanmar's schools have been closed as long as they have
been open. Students stay home, working and waiting. For what? No one really
has an answer. "We cannot define the shape of the future," says Kyaw of his
generation. "We cannot plan, only react."

"The real tragedy of Burma," Burton Levin, former U.S. ambassador to
Myanmar, once said, "is that it is a country of the educated ruled by the
uneducated." Disillusioned by their government, yet unable to change it,
and discouraged by their fate, yet unable to escape it, Myanmar's future
teachers, traders and leaders have been idle and embittered for over a
year. As long as they are kept at bay, the country's longstanding social
and political stalemate between its people and their rulers may never be
settled.

When demonstrations erupted in June 1988, universities were shut down. It
was not until three years later that the junta reopened them. To handle the
backlog of students, schools drastically cut down the content of their
courses, squeezing a full year of work into half just to have students
graduate. The quick courses did nothing for student enthusiasm. A professor
who taught at the time says her charges had "windy minds." Abbreviated
school lasted until 1994, when rallies in support of opposition leader and
Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi led to another brief closure.

The most recent demonstrations, in December 1996, were ostensibly to demand
an officially recognized student union. Yangon University has not had one
since 1962. That year, four months after army commander Gen. Ne Win took
over, soldiers dynamited the Student Union building. Thar Nyunt Oo, one of
the December protest leaders, fled to Thailand after the army dispersed the
demonstrators. On a crackling phone line from northern Thailand, he talks
about why he and his fellows took to the streets. "If we have a student
union," he says, "we can demand our desire." Democratization would be one
request, but so, too, would be a decent education.

The reason for student dissatisfaction is simple. Since the very beginnings
of army rule, education has become little more than a paper accreditation.
Maung, a former physics student, scoffs: "There are only two times you need
your degree -- to put after your name when you get married and then to use
in your obituary." Maung, whose family comes from northern Myamar, now
works at a hotel, a job he started before the schools were shuttered. He
loves his work, and appears almost relieved that he does not have to worry
about coursework, which he considers worthless. At the university, he says,
"we have one test tube for ten students."

He feels that the system, which allows students to choose only certain
courses depending on their scores in the college entrance exams, has done
him a disservice. The highest scorers can enter the institutes of medicine
or engineering, while those with scores below that can only apply to the
arts and sciences universities. Physics was the most prestigious of the
courses Maung's marks would allow him to take. But, he asks, "If I study
physics or chemistry, what can I use it for?" So his focus is on earning.
He says he is no different from many in his generation: "We think about how
to make money even though we are very young."

Making money is not easy. The economy can only offer menial jobs, such as
driving cabs, answering phones or manning hotel reception desks. Thus
Myanmar's best and brightest can be found outside the country -- in
Thailand, England, Japan or Malaysia. It is well-known among Myanmar
medical students that passports are difficult to obtain. The government
fears that if doctors go abroad, they might never return.

Weak or non-existent student unions, rigid curriculums and the mismatch
between education and economic needs are not unique to Myanmar. "These are
structural problems that affect post-colonial nations," explains Martin
Smith, a writer for the World University Service. What aggravates the
situation in Myanmar, he believes, is that the troubles have taken on a
political dimension. Education has gone nowhere in the years of army rule,
so hope for an improved life rests irrevocably on change in the political
system.

That is why students continue to protest, and the government continues to
crack down on them, closing universities if it has to. Distrust of the
educated is in-grained in those who hold power. Ne Win, who ruled the
country for over 25 years, was a former
postal clerk who had failed his exams. He surrounded himself with people
whose primary qualification was loyalty, not capability or intelligence. In
the now-dissolved State Law and Order Restoration Council, only four of the
21 generals who made up the junta had university degrees. Eight did not
finish high school. Saw Maung, the first chairman of SLORC, did not
complete primary school, while Senior Gen. Than Shwe, his successor and now
also head of the SPDC, dropped out of college. Government ministries and
policy are under their management. Without proper education, argues Mya
Maung, a Burmese economics professor who emigrated to the U.S., "economic
policy is formulated by mediocrity."

Lack of education impoverishes society, says Win, a former university
professor. He quotes a Burmese proverb: "The pot sinks while the shards
float." The people with value sink to the bottom, while the worthless rise
to the top. Married with a child, he has been at the university most of his
professional life, first as a student, then as a teacher. Though he makes
less than $4 a month and many of his former colleagues have abandoned
education for better salaries in the private sector, he continues to cling
to teaching as a mark of respectability. "There are three things an economy
can do: provide a place to stay, something to eat and something to wear,"
he says. "But education is for progress."

Progress looks distant. The students demand better education and better
opportunities as much as they do democracy. If the universities re-open,
those demands will once again resurface. Kyaw had joined the December
demos. "If we are many, I am not afraid," he says. But as long as campuses
are closed, the government can avoid protests and can afford to ignore the
students. It is the price Myanmar pays for an uneasy, fitful peace.

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CCT