- Schools in Myanmar opened on November 1.
- Few students participated.
- There is a fear of attack.
As schools across Myanmar reopened, classrooms were almost empty, and students and teachers refused to attend classes.
“I didn’t go to school because there was an explosion in the school recently. Neither did my friends,” said Chika Ko, a 16-year-old high school student from Bie Town, Bago State. Asked not to use her real name to avoid retaliation.
“My school has not been attacked, but when I heard about explosions in other schools, I was scared, so I stayed at home.”
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Chika Ko said her school usually has 600 students, but only about 20 students showed up in recent weeks.
Since the military announced the reopening of schools on November 1st, many students like Chika Ko have refused to participate after the country’s closure due to Covid-19 in July. They all protested on February 1st. The generals who seized power in the coup, but also out of fear, they may be attacked.
“I refuse to give away any of my children”
Nay Zin Oo is a 48-year-old parent from Yangon. He has one child in elementary school and two in middle school, but he refused to let any of them attend classes while the army controlled the country.
“The school is run by the army. As a revolutionary, I refuse to send any of my children,” said Nay Zin Oo, who asked not to use his real name to avoid retaliation.
He added:
If our parents choose to send their children to school, it means that we are supporting the military. I will only send them after the other party wins.
He believes that boycotting schools is a powerful way to protest against the military as he fights to return to the civilian government elected in November 2020.
He also wants to fight back against the country’s outdated education system.
“In the current education system [students] Don’t even get too much, so I don’t see the point of sending them. When students graduate here, the degree is only useful in our country, and even that is not very useful,” said Nay Zin Oo, who graduated with a double degree in engineering and physics but now works as a taxi driver.
In the past 20 years, the basic curriculum has hardly changed, and he uses his background as evidence of the failure of the current system.
Since the military seized power, November is not the first time that Myanmar has reopened school due to low attendance.
Due to Covid-19, most schools were closed at the time of the coup, but at the end of the spring, the military announced that they would reopen on June 1.
Strike movement
However, almost no students go to class because most of the students participated in the strike movement.
Teachers and students were the first to lead the Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM)-Myanmar’s anti-military protest movement-boycotting the curriculum and refusing to participate in the military’s efforts to reform the education system.
By June, it was reported that more than half of Myanmar’s 400,000 teachers had participated in a strike to join the CDM.
“The military has been pressing teachers to go to school to stop the civil disobedience movement,” said Min Htet, an executive member of the Basic Education Alliance, which is committed to reforming the national education system. Please do not use your real name to avoid retaliation.
Min Htet added:
Many teachers have resigned, but others feel that they have no choice but to go to school.
Those who continue to work have not been spared the increased violence of the coup.
After the reopening on November 1, the support of the leadership of teachers who did not participate in the boycott made them targets of extreme non-military groups.
Last week, the principal of a school in Mandalay was shot dead at his home, and on November 5, a teacher in Yangon was killed in a taxi to the school.
Armed groups claimed to have launched a number of attacks, and they used violence to prevent support for the military.
For example, the November 5 attack was claimed by a Yangon organization called the Generation Z National Defense Forces. The organization claimed that the teacher had been threatening students and providing military information and therefore needed to be stopped.
Many of these resistance organizations claim to be part of or affiliated with units of the People’s Defence Forces (PDF), the loose and scattered armed groups of the National Unity Government, which is a parallel government against the military, although many appear to be independent operations.
NUG condemned the use of violence against civilians, claiming that it should only be used for “self-defense.”
“I think PDF is trying to scare away students, so we will protest with them. But now PDF and the military are on such an extreme side,” Chika Ko said.
“Even PDF now says that if we don’t join them, it means we support the military and they are threatening us.”
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