Teaching citizenship under an authoritarian regime: A case-study of Burma/Myanmar.

摘要

What does citizenship education look like in a society ruled by an authoritarian military regime? This dissertation seeks to answer this question by examining official citizenship education policy in Burma/Myanmar and how it is implemented in contemporary government primary schools.;Using critical qualitative methodology, I identify the government's key citizenship education policies by analyzing the civic messages in the Myanmar Readers. These are Burmese reading textbooks, mandated for use in all state-run primary schools, which contain more citizenship education-related content than any other primary school textbook. Then, through conducting and analyzing in-depth, ethnographic interviews with former teachers and students from Burma, I identify how these policies are brought to life in Burma's classrooms.;Findings suggest that, the government's civic education policy prioritizes the teaching of moral values relating to discipline and obedience. In the majority of cases, teachers seek to implement this official policy as faithfully as possible, as they whole-heartedly agree with these moral messages and they believe it is in the best interests of their students to learn and adhere to them. Thus, the textbooks' civic content is mirrored in teacher-student interactions. However, in the rare instances when teachers disagree with a particular component of government civic education policy, they demonstrate their agency by implementing the policy in an altered form, so that it better fits their views.;Findings also indicate that teachers train their students in areas of citizenship education unaddressed by the textbooks. Most prominently among these is `protective coaching,' a form of participatory citizenship education that all teachers engage in. This involves teaching students how to participate in civic life without provoking the ire of the Burmese government, so as to remain `safe' from government retribution.