In this week’s Deep Cuts we have the first of a two-part series featuring analyses of Burma’s education system through the years. The first is Salem-Gervais and Metro’s examination of the changes in Myanmar’s school curricula from the BSPP period through the SPDC one. What is shocking is the amount of pruning of content on non-Bamar peoples. At one point the authors ask, acidly, “Since the national races are portrayed as being completely unified politically, one may begin to wonder what differentiates them at all” (2012:52).” Myo Oo compares two specific textbooks during the independence period, an era which he argues is understudied. He finds an apparent contradiction: the history book analyzed asserts that many ethnicities consolidated into a homogenous population in Myanmar; the civics book, by contrast, articulates liberal principles of governance that displace the importance of national identity.

See here for the PDFs.