Karen Education in the Thai-Myanmar Border Regions (original) (raw)
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Social Sciences
Modern Karen education began in the early 1800s when introduced by British and American missionaries at roughly the time the British colonial powers arrived from India. After independence from Great Britain in 1948, Burma faced revolt from ethnic groups including the Karen, in large part, over issues of language and cultural self-rule. This led to the forcible closing of Karen-language schools by the military junta beginning in the 1960s and the re-establishment of Karen schooling by the Karen National Union (KNU) in independent self-rule territories, often near the Thai border. In this context, beginning in the 1980s, Karen-medium language spread into the highlands of Burma and into Thai refugee camps where Karen had been living for nearly four decades. Karen medium education is an important element establishing what Benedict Anderson called the “imagined community”. With mass Karen literacy, a national consciousness emerged, particularly in areas where schools were sustained. This...
Pedagogy of the Karen Indigenous Education as Self-determination
2020
In a context of seven decades of armed conflict since 1949, the Karen have educated their children in and outside of Myanmar in often extremely difficult circumstance. During the decades of civil war between ethnic insurgencies against successive Myanmar government’s regimes, the ethnic armed organizations (EAOs) including those of the Karen, developed their own ethnic education regime in response to the uneven access to education services from the State. The Karen have been fulfilling educational provision by the Karen community over several decades. Especially, the Karen National Union/Karen Education and Culture Department provides educational services to its marginalized communities under its territorial control and mixed control areas since the independence of Myanmar. The successive Burmese governing regimes manipulate education as a tool to serve so-called ‘Burmanization/Myanmarfication’ in nation-state building. The pedagogical approaches are also different. Whereas the mainstream system practices a teacher-oriented and banking model of education widely, KECD schools encourage a more student-centered and critical thinking classroom. As such, there is no accreditation of KECD education certificates by the Myanmar Ministry of Education. Despite this lack of recognition that denies KECD high school graduates accessing jobs or furthering their education in the Myanmar mainstream systems, many have found gainful employment in the nongovernment (NGOs) and civil society sectors (CBOs) and some have crossed the border into Thailand to access higher education opportunities provided by NGOs.
Karen Education and Boundary-Making at the Thai-Burmese Borderland
Journal of Borderland Studies, 2019
This article argues that schooling and education are boundary-making devices in the volatile borderland straddling Burma and Thailand. We show that the development of Karen education was one of the ways in which the Karen National Union (KNU) erected ideological, symbolic and cultural boundaries to keep this borderland separate from the Burmese and Thai states. We draw attention to the conflict in what is considered valued knowledge, the recognition of learning, and who is considered the legitimate authority to manage education at the local and school levels. In fact, examining Karen education at the Thai-Burmese borderland is more than just a description of schooling: it is an examination of the struggle over governance and identity, and ultimately of understandings of sovereignty and nationhood. Moreover, the changing political landscapes in Thailand and Burma have now drawn this borderland and its education into the orbit of the national sphere, provoking a redefinition of notions of governance and nationhood.
Asian Journal of Peacebuilding, 2020
This article addresses the issue of schooling for refugees, as members of a stateless nation, in the context of Karen refugees in Thailand. The authors used ethnographic methods of in-depth, semi-structured interviews and participant observation with over 250 residents of Mae La refugee camp. Our conceptual framework draws on theories of pedagogy for liberation and grassroots development. We found that, due to overlapping sources of authority with divergent visions of the future for refugee learners, the existential crisis of being members of a stateless nation is the most pressing issue for education to address. We suggest that a top-down approach to refugee education relying on technical solutions, while ignoring issues of history, power, and meaning-making, will ultimately fall short of being fundamentally transformative.
Lessons Learned: One teachers's experience working with Karen students in the US
This study is informed by funds of knowledge and culturally responsive teaching studies that aim to explore and legitimize the cultural knowledge immigrant children bring to their communities and schools. Consequently, this paper specifically addresses issues related to the educational experiences of Karen children and their parents from the perspective of one American teacher/researcher who has worked with the Karen for the past four years. In aggregate, this paper addresses issues germane to Karen education including; (1) background information on Karen educational experiences prior to resettlement, including a review of their journey from Thailand to the U.S.; (2) important characteristics of Karen culture; (3) Karen names; (4) Sgaw Karen language characteristics; (5) the language divide between parents and children; (6) parental involvement in their children’s schooling; (7) American teacher perceptions of Karen students; (8) issues over grading and, finally; (9) gender issues.
Thailand education policy for migrant children from Burma
Thailand has publicly committed to free basic education for all children regardless of nationality since 2005, but this commitment is challenged by the presence in the economy of large numbers of migrant workers whose children do not easily fit into the state school system. This paper is based on the findings of a research report by the author investigating how Thai state policy and practice in this respect has interacted and negotiated with ‘migrant learning centers’ (institutions which according to the government do not qualify as schools) run by members of ethnic community based organizations from Burma. © 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd.