Myanmar: Where the top priority is education...

Burmese school children in a Catholic orphanage. @ACN
Burmese school children in a Catholic orphanage. @ACN

It is pitch dark. 13-year-old Monica is sitting alone on a bench in her classroom. Her friends and school chums are already sleeping on the floor above, on their bast-fibre sleeping mats, squeezed in side by side. The flickering light of a single candle falls on her book of Burmese poetry. She is deeply immersed in her reading. The visitors from ACN observe her with some concern, fearing she might damage her eyesight. But then there is no electric light this evening, once again, owing to a power cut. It is nothing unusual in Myanmar.

Monica is eager to learn. And she is one of the fortunate ones, for she has found a place in the boarding home run by the sisters of the congregation of Our Lady of the Missions (RNDM) in Pyay. Without them she would be unable to continue her secondary schooling. In her village there is only a primary school, and the journey into the town would have been far too long and the cost of accommodation in a state-run boarding house too expensive. It costs 30 Lakh, or around US$300 per year to attend a state-run middle or secondary boarding school. The average factory worker earns around 2,500 Kyat per day, while an unskilled labourer earns just 1,500 Kyat – or a dollar and a half a day – if he can find work at all, that is. Thanks to the help of the sisters, Monica can attend the state school and also gets additional tuition from the sisters, who are preparing her for her exams. It is tuition that is urgently needed.

Before the military junta under General Ne Win seized power in 1962 Burma was one of the most highly developed countries in Southeast Asia, with an outstanding level of education. Someone who fell seriously ill in Bangkok, for example, would travel to Rangoon (today renamed Yangon) to see a specialist – assuming he could afford it. Today the opposite is the case.

It seems as if the government is fearful of allowing its citizens too much education. Today education is limited to rote learning and chanted repetition. In many villages there is at best only a primary school, and in any case the mostly large families – 5 to 10 children is quite common – are dependent on having every available hand to help at home. So it is that travelling from Yangon to Pathein, one sees not only pregnant women working on the roads but also numerous boys and girls, carrying and sorting stones.

Critical thinking is not wanted. After the rebellion in September 2007, all the university faculties were moved out of the town. The new university is now in the middle of open fields, and there are no student hostels. The public transport is woeful. The mentality of the government seems be that people who have to spend at least three hours a day travelling to the university will not be so quick to get "foolish ideas" into their heads. Here too the level is well below world standards, and for years now Burmese degrees have no longer been internationally recognised.

Against this background one can easily understand why for everyone our ACN representatives encountered on their visit to the Catholics of Myanmar, education was the number one priority of their work – from the twelve bishops (out of 22 altogether) whom they were able to meet, the rectors of the seminaries, the priests, the religious sisters, right through to the seminarians. Archbishop Charles Bo of Yangon is every bit as convinced of this as is Father Hyginus Myint Soe, the rector of St. Joseph’s Catholic Major Seminary; Sister Fatima and Sister Josephina, both missionaries of the congregation of Our Lady of the Missions, know it just as surely as does young Monica in the hostel in Pyay.

Sister Fatima spent her youth in the diocese of Pathein and was taught by American missionaries. Her English remains faultless to this day. She was there in 1965 when the Catholic college she was working at, just next door, was confiscated by the regime. Today you can hear the voices of the children in there, chanting their lessons by rote. "At that time we had to start again right from scratch", she recalls. "We went out once again into the villages to the people, restricting ourselves entirely to religious instruction. In many respects though, that is still more dangerous for the authorities", she laughs, "since it is not so easy for them to control". She has never quite given up teaching, in fact. She has plenty to do in the girls' hostel. But often the teachers from the state college also come to her on the quiet and ask her to help them with their English pronunciation and grammar. English has become a crucial part of the education system, in order to be able to escape the total isolation. By now even the regime has understood this and now requires English to be taught from kindergarten upwards. The fact that this teaching is bearing very little fruit at present is not only due to the fact that the Burmese language is so very different from English, but much more to the appallingly inadequate training of the teachers themselves. Sister Fatima is certainly not going to be able to retire quietly any time soon.

The small, minority Catholic Church in Myanmar – representing only around 1.3% of the population, for the most part members of the ethnic minorities, the Karen, Kachin and Chin – is striving with all her energy to improve the overall level of education, even though she herself is still forbidden to maintain regular schools. She is committed to helping not only Catholic children and young people in her kindergartens, student hostels/boarding houses, minor, propedeutic and major seminaries, but also children of other faiths and above all those of the Buddhist majority. This extensive outreach, which covers all ages, is bearing rich fruit for the future of the Church – for in fact practically all the bishops, priests and religious in the country were once pupils in the "boarding schools". Although the Church is extremely poor materially, she is nonetheless rich in vocations.

Indeed, the Catholic Church would be only too happy to extend and expand her educational work still further and better equip her available facilities – for many of the boarding houses are little more than rickety timber and thatch constructions which provide inadequate protection in the rainy season and in summer are hot and sticky and invaded by mosquitoes. But for the most part she does not have the resources to do so. She would also like to be able to give more children the opportunity to attend school, but she cannot afford the cost of their upkeep. It takes approximately 15 sacks of rice per year to support each child. ACN is therefore helping wherever possible to set up self-help projects, such as a small pig-rearing scheme, a fishpond, a poultry farm, a rice field, a fruit and vegetable garden, etc.

At the same time ACN is supporting the youth work of the Church, and of course the training of priests, religious and seminarians – not least through our help for the new Jean Marie Vianney Interdiocesan Major Seminary. The charity is also helping to fund such things as retreats, courses and theological study sessions, as well as providing grants for the ongoing study of catechists. This is the only way to consolidate and improve the level of education provided by the Church. "We do things in small steps", says Sister Assunta, the Superior of the novice house of the Little Way Sisters in the diocese of Hakha. Ultimately, it is the country as a whole that will benefit.

To know about this and many other similar projects in favour of the pastoral needs of the suffering Church, please contact our national offices.