Suu Kyi vows to replace memorization-based education system

State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi visits a school. Photo: MOI
State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi visits a school. Photo: MOI

Myanmar must replace rote memorization in the education system with a “rationalization-based system, state counsellor and former education minister Aung San Suu Kyi declared at an education seminar in Naypyidaw last week.

“The main objective of learning is to develop the practices of taking responsibility and accountability, the ability to judge based on reasonability, the spirit of cooperation and nurturing elite people with sustainable learning,” she was quoted by the Global New Light of Myanmar as saying.

Achieving these objectives, she went on, will require fixing the weak points in the current education system, which include teachers’ inability to work beyond prescribed lessons and obsessions with exam scores.

Stronger training in reasoning skills combined with knowledge students acquire at home and in their social lives will foster openness, tolerance, accountability, and comfort in diversity, Suu Kyi said.

She went on: “With a long-term investment in the education sector, we can hope for liberation from the poverty we are now experiencing, and we can hope for the enjoyment of rule of law, peace, justice, and freedom for the whole national populace.”

Suu Kyi’s speech came exactly a week after The Economist blasted Myanmar’s “awful schools,” where children can be found “regurgitating sentences all morning.”

“No hands are raised, no questions asked. To earn promotion to the next form, there is no need to gain a proper understanding of the subject; memorizing textbooks is all that is required,” the author of the Nov. 30 article wrote.

The article quotes writer Ma Thida, who says Myanmar’s education system has created an “intellectually blind” society, as well as one businessman who says Myanmar’s education system is so poor that “the more educated you are, the less employable you become.”

While Myanmar under the NLD government has boosted spending on education – nearly four times what was spent in 2012 – that money is being spent on new curricula that are being implemented without any apparent order and without consultation with teachers or education experts.

The state counsellor’s speech also emphasized the value of “edutainment” in keeping students interested and of supplementary education by parents. But the rest appears to respond indirectly to the previous week’s criticism.

Let’s hope these ideas lead to real change rather than just providing subject matter for rote recitation.

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