Ethical challenges for teacher educators in Myanmar due to the February 2021 coup

Abstract

On 1 February 2021, a junta launched a coup against the civilian government in Myanmar, causing strong backlash against the coup among civilians and leading the junta to suppress those who protested in an extremely aggressive way. While the citizens, including teachers, teacher educators, and student teachers, have participated in the civil disobedience movement, they have not achieved civilian sovereignty. The revival of the junta’s rule has imposed serious ethical challenges on teacher educators in Myanmar. This think piece will be a discussion of the following challenges based on the available literature: the purpose and direction of teacher education, the security of student teachers and the prospects of the teaching profession. The international fraternity of teacher educators should show solidarity by collectively thinking about these grave challenges.

Introduction

The people in Myanmar experienced a return to their oppressed past after the coup in February 2021. From 2010 until then, Myanmar had become more democratised, and a civilian government was established in 2015. An election was held in November 2020, and the ruling party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), led by Aung San Suu Kyi, won by a landslide against the opposition party, the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), which is under the strong influence of the army (quote). The NLD held 920 of the total of 1117 seats nationwide, while only 71 seats were won by the USDP (Kipgen, 2021). Immediately following the election, the USDP and military stated that they had great concerns about the way the election process had been carried out, rejecting the outcome (Kipgen, 2021). Then, the army commented that it would not deny the possibility that it might seize power in January 2021; on 1 February 2021, the military ¹ launched a coup and declared a state of emergency for a year (Kipgen, 2021).

The coup was not welcomed by the citizens. Soon after it took place, many citizens, including medical workers and public servants, started to form a civil disobedience movement to express their disagreement with the takeover (CDM) (The Lancet, 2021; Osada, 2021). While the demonstrations proceeded peacefully, the authorities started to violently crack down on the protesters, eventually resulting in the army brutally murdering citizens (BBC News, 2021a; Stayner, 2021). The army’s aggressive attitude towards citizens is symbolised in the extreme statements of the junta’s spokesman, Zaw Min Tun, when referring to the suppression of victimised citizens as ‘weeding’ or ‘spraying with pesticides’ (Global New Light of Myanmar, 2021). Because of the intense aggression with which the voices of citizens were suppressed, international leaders started to show concern, including some in Southeast Asian countries, such as the Singaporean prime minister and Lee Hsien Loong. Lee described the escalation of violence by the junta against the citizens as ‘tragic’ and advocated for the release of Aung San Suu Kyi (BBC News, 2021c), but his father, Lee Kuan Yew, critiqued Suu Kyi’s leadership and referred to the junta as ‘the only institution to govern the country’ (The Irrawaddy, 2016). At the meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) held in April 2021, ASEAN leaders urged Myanmar’s junta to stop the brutal killings (BBC News, 2021e).

Turning to the relationship between the CDM and the education sector, school teachers and university teacher educators have joined the movement (BBC News, 2021d; Waa, 2021b), boycotting schools and universities. The so-called Generation Z (Gen Z) comprises a substantial portion of the CDM’s participants (BBC News, 2021b; Ford, 2021). ‘Gen Z’ is usually used to refer to those under 24 years of age (BBC News, 2021b). Their interests overlap to some degree, and they do not necessarily have unified representative bodies but tend to connect with each other in a loose network (Ebbighausen, 2021). Gen Z tends to actively engage with protests using the latest technologies, such as ICT and social media (Ebbighausen, 2021). However, the aggressiveness of the suppression has intensified; thus, groups of teachers and teacher educators who surrendered to the power of, and pressure imposed by, the junta eventually began to arise (Myanmar Now, 2021a). Even after returning to the workplace, teachers faced the risk of being penalised or transferred (Waa, 2021a). The members of Gen Z have had to risk their lives, and many of them continue to participate in protests (Ford, 2021). The increase in armed actions by Gen Z (Beech, 2021; Reuters, 2021), which may further exacerbate the chain of violence and result in a state of civil war, has also become a concern (Horsey, 2021).

The aim of this think piece

In the situation above, there are ethical and political questions for teacher educators. For example, the people of Myanmar having experienced democracy for a long time, it is extremely difficult to teach student teachers how to justify the current coup and to deny the previous democracy. Then, the teacher educators have observed Gen Z – probably their own student teachers too – engaging in, or sometimes sacrificing themselves for, the fight for justice and democracy. Also, many of their colleagues joined CDM. Now, the political and ethical stance and identity of teacher educators are challenged: whether to fight for justice and democracy or not.

Considering these contexts, this piece was written with the aim of discussing the ethical challenges that teacher educators in Myanmar have faced in dealing with the coup by the junta, especially in terms of what moral contradictions they would need to counter them. In consideration of these difficulties, this study does not contain any interviews with the individuals concerned. Instead, this think piece will be based on data from publicly available sources, such as academic literature, newspaper articles and government documents and statistics, which will provide evidence for the claims in it. To achieve this aim, this think piece is divided into various sections as follows. Following this introduction, the general context is described, as are the tensions and mistrusts between the junta and citizens. Then, the concerns regarding the purpose of teacher education are discussed. Next, the security issues facing student teachers are discussed. Further, concerns about the prospects of the teaching profession will be addressed. Finally, some concluding remarks are presented.

General context: The gap between the junta and citizens in Myanmar

It should be noted that there are stark contrasts between the junta and citizens in various senses, which have made the situation harder to resolve and can be summed up in a few points as follows. First, there are few pipelines for dialogue between the junta and citizens. While the junta has strong internal cohesion fostered by a tradition of dominating members and internally redistributing resources within the organisation, inclusive of wealth and positions (Nakanishi, 2013), the citizens tend to work in networks, as in the case of Gen Z (Ebbighausen, 2021). The civilians now have the National Unity Government (NUG), consisting of lawmakers chosen in the last election and citizens (Strangio, 2021), but they do not necessarily rigorously engage in negotiations with the junta.

Second, there is dissonance regarding the meaning of politics. The junta is only interested in sustaining its sovereignty and maintaining its superiority over other entities (Osada, 2021) – its members may be threatened about maintaining their preferred polity because of the landslide in the election and the civilians’ disregard for their arguments about misconduct during the election process (Kipgen, 2021). The civilians have been influenced by the ideas of Aung San Suu Kyi, which emphasise the moral aspects of democracy (Nakanishi, 2019), despite the fact that Suu Kyi herself includes the notion of dialogue in her political thought (Nemoto, 2009). This dissonance between the parties has made it harder for them to engage in negotiations and consultations to resolve the situation, especially since the coup, despite the legitimacy of the citizens’ disagreement with, and rejection of rule by, the junta.

Third, there is a large gap in the resources available to the parties. The junta has a long history of appropriating national resources for its leaders and redistributing them within the organisation to ensure support for them (Nakanishi, 2013, 2015). The junta even privatised the state-owned enterprises to cement its wealth for its own benefit (Ford et al., 2015). In contrast, the number of citizens involved in the CDM is far smaller than the number of junta members. The citizens’ access to resources, including the Internet and social networks (Handley, 2021), falls under the control of, or is at least easily influenced by, the junta.

The series of events described took place within a couple of months. The incident demonstrates the massive oppression of the civilians, including teacher educators. Teacher educators in Myanmar, regardless of whether they have joined the CDM, have faced extraordinary challenges, and those involved in the CDM are facing a turning point. This problem has become extremely serious when considering the potential for serious divides among faculty members, the demise of student teachers and their colleagues and the oppression of freedom of speech and thought. There is, therefore, a need to consider the ethical challenges that teacher educators face.

Questions about the purpose of teacher education

The coup raised a fundamental question about teacher education: For whom and why does it exist? The coup aimed to suspend and restrict the liberty and democracy that the citizens of Myanmar had started to enjoy during the preceding decade brutally, as described above, and it aimed to re-capture the sovereignty of the state and make the polity more amenable to its perspective (Osada, 2021). Thus, the legitimacy of the coup is highly questionable from the perspective of the citizenry because of its arbitrary nature.

The education system in Myanmar has an extremely authoritarian nature (Maber et al., 2019), which tends to be justified for cultural reasons rooted in monastery education (Gutierrez, 2015; Kyaw, 2015). Simultaneously, the experiences in 1988 and 2007, both of which were caused by public demonstrations of democratisation after the mismanagement of economic issues by the junta, greatly influenced the climate in higher education, seriously repressing the autonomy and freedom of both students and faculty members (Hong and Kim, 2019). This repressive, authoritarian climate started to change due to various initiatives coming from the steps taken towards democratisation (Esson and Wang, 2016; Hong and Kim, 2019; Hong and Chun, 2021). That is, the students and adults involved, including teachers and teacher educators, started to enjoy slightly more relaxed conditions in the 2010s, even if they were unable to overtly discuss issues related to democratisation.

However, the coup was launched to reclaim all these freedoms from the citizens and repress them. It would not be surprising if the teachers and teacher educators could not accept this turn of events and started to seek freedom. In other words, it is inevitable that teachers and teacher educators will feel lost regarding for whom and how the educational system should work in such a context – and they themselves will seek freedom. A fundamental question is whether they will educate the future generations to accept suppression of their freedom and democracy or whether they will attempt to develop freedom and democracy through their work. It might seem rational for them to resist suppression of their freedom, since they have been exposed to freedom and democracy, as well as the concept of sovereignty; thus, they will probably not be willing to return to living as citizens under the junta.

Concerns about the security of student teachers

The second ethical conundrum is whether to encourage Gen Z to fight the junta – and, if teacher educators should fight for freedom, how this generation should do so. Although the youths of Gen Z have probably almost completely forgotten the events that transpired in 1988, their sentiment was reversed once the coup was organised. Many youths participated, standing on the front lines of the demonstration. They then utilised their knowledge of technology to inform their peers about spots where they could protect themselves (Schimpl, 2021).

Many members of Gen Z who actively participated in the CDM-related activities against the junta, however, have been at risk of becoming victims of various types of violent suppression – including arrests, interrogations, being taken into custody, torture and, in many cases, killings. If the unarmed protests carried out as part of the CDM had been realised peacefully without brutality or bloodshed, the teacher educators who were willing to democratise their country may have had luck enticing student teachers to join the movement. However, the violence of the junta has become increasingly brutal, and sacrificing the lives of student teachers, and sometimes their own, would be extremely difficult to tolerate. The demise of a student teacher equates to a loss of young talent and is a loss for the future of the country. A moral question about whether to encourage Gen Z student teachers to fight the junta or discourage them from doing so has thus arisen.

Even worse, some members of Gen Z have started to militarise their fights (Beech, 2021; Reuters, 2021), deviating from simple unarmed disobedience – which is understandable, given that citizens must protect themselves and considering that some degree of violence should be permitted when fighting the junta, as argued by the leaders of various ethnic groups (Nemoto, 2009). However, this move would lead to a mutual escalation of violence, resulting in either complete confusion within the country or the outbreak of a civil war, a concern raised by experts (Horsey, 2021; Lindstaedt, 2021). There is also an increasing risk that the entire country could collapse in such a context. However, this is another risk that must be mitigated as teacher educators seek to answer ethical questions about their positions.

Problems related to the prospects of teachers

Another ethical question that teacher educators must address is whether to encourage student teachers to become teachers. This question has not arisen simply because of the coup. Rather, it could be considered a reflection of a long-standing issue, and the coup has simply been a trigger. This question is rooted in two issues: welfare and practice. If teachers are clearly aware of this problem, there is bound to be a radical internal conflict about whether to encourage student teachers to enter the profession or tell them about the harsh truths that await them.

The welfare of teachers has been an issue in Myanmar for a long time. For example, teachers’ salaries have remained low (Blevins, 2019; Kobakhidze, 2020). Despite student teachers’ beliefs about the prospect of a steady government-supported income (Htang, 2019), it is difficult for them to obtain any income other than the salary provided by the government (Blevins, 2019; Kobakhidze, 2020). Thus, many teachers must give private tutorials to sustain their families (Blevins, 2019; Kobakhidze, 2020).

The practices implemented at the classroom and school levels are highly authoritarian (Gutierrez, 2015; Lall, 2011; Maber et al., 2019). The centralised educational bureaucracy has a conservative nature (Higgins and Paul, 2019) and suppresses their creative practices. Since the coup, there has been growing concern that the pressure on teachers could become even stronger. In classrooms and schools where they must always be careful about whether they are remaining within the boundaries, they cannot demonstrate their creativity or develop new types of practices. This does not necessarily mean that there is no space for those who assess their performance to change their interpretations of teachers’ practices, but it will remain difficult to immediately change the perspectives held by the authorities responsible for measuring their performance.

Concluding remarks

This think piece was written with the aim of discussing the fundamental ethical issues faced by teacher educators in Myanmar following the coup in February 2021, including the purpose and learners of teacher education programmes, how to ensure the security of student teachers when many of them are engaged in the CDM and the prospects for their professional lives. The intensity of the pressure stemming from these issues may strengthen if the rules of the junta become more arbitrary, and such questions will persist among teacher educators in Myanmar while the junta governs the country.

It will be critical for overseas researchers, especially those who have connections to teacher educators in Myanmar, to stand in solidarity with them by considering how to support them in overcoming these issues. We must at least start to seek opportunities for collaboration by listening to our fellow teacher educators in Myanmar and understanding their struggles. It is also important for the international teacher educator communities to provide support based on expertise. NUG has set up a parallel education system along with the one run by the junta, based on online home learning (Myanmar Now, 2021b). Thus, NUG is establishing their own system that is unique to the current Myanmar. Even so, support for the professional development of teachers and teacher educators on the civilian side, inclusive of online learning systems, as well as the means to sustain the sense of community in online learning, remain key factors. International teacher educators, especially those who already have connections to their counterparts in the country, should engage in this discussion rather than forgetting about their fellow educators in Myanmar.

The situation in Myanmar raises a fundamental question, not only for the teacher educators in Myanmar but also for those in other countries, regarding what they should work towards. It also indicates numerous realistic challenges to sustaining ethical and political commitment even if they have. The nature and degree of the challenges in Myanmar would be more radical than those in developed countries. However, internal problems and issues arise on a daily basis even in developed countries, and we must remember that we, as teacher educators in various countries, are also challenged to clarify our ethical and political standpoints.

This think piece is an initial engagement by the author towards how to collaborate with fellow teacher educators under difficult circumstances in Myanmar. Efforts may be made regarding further joint empirical research concerning their situation, depending on the safety of counterparts or participants in this research from violence by the junta. It is also necessary to analyse policy documents and open information sources that would influence the environment of the teacher educators, as well as schoolteachers. It is critically important to keep the public and teacher educator community informed, and to provide good analyses through various forms of research regarding what is happening with – and how to support through practices – the fellow teacher educators in Myanmar.