Sep 22, 2008 0
Burma’s Secret Schools Of Dissent
Monks teach children critical thinking and human rights, to groom the next generation of activists. Part 3 of 3.
Mae Sot, Thailand; and Rangoon, Burma - Deep in the Thai jungle bordering Burma (Myanmar), a group of children gather every day for their lessons. In an elongated but modest teak shack, nearly a dozen ashen-faced children – all different ages – sit in front of a tattered blackboard.
“What do you want to be when you grow up?” teacher Zaw Lazein Oo asks. Each student answers in measured English. “A doctor,” answers one. “An aid worker,” another replies.
Such open-ended questions are unthinkable in Burma’s government schools, where learning is by rote and adheres strictly to the ruling junta’s ideology.
But a new generation of political activists is striving to change that by setting up a network of secret schools – from the Thai-Burmese border to monasteries in Burma – that service impoverished students and teach critical thinking and human rights.
