If We Don’t Change Education and Culture, We Will Carry the Junta into the New Union

James Shwe argues that a new model for education, culture, and religion is needed for Myanmar’s future.

This is the first in a series on how Myanmar’s democratic movement can rebuild education, culture, and the role of religion. Future pieces will turn to practice: community learning circles, the role of teachers and faith leaders, and how parents can build a less authoritarian culture at home. I am writing it now, in mid-2026, because the choices being made today—inside the resistance, in liberated areas, in displaced communities, and in the diaspora—will quietly decide what kind of union actually emerges on the other side of this war.

Why now, and who this is for

In the months since the junta staged its three-phase “election” in December 2025 and January 2026—condemned by the UN as a “fraud” and a “facade” designed to entrench military rule—it has also expanded forced conscription, including the prosecution of relatives of draft evaders abroad, and intensified surveillance in schools and universities still under its control. At the same time, the National Unity Government’s Ministry of Education, the Interim Federal Education Council, and a growing network of regional education councils are trying to lay the foundations of a federal democratic education system.

This piece is not addressed to the people already doing that work in classrooms, learning circles, and ethnic education departments. They have been showing the way for years, and in some ethnic areas for decades. It is addressed primarily to people like me: members of the older diaspora generation; senior figures inside the resistance, the NUG, ethnic revolutionary organisations, and political parties; parents, donors, and faith leaders who shape what young people are allowed to think and say. It is a plea to those of us with influence not to recreate, under new flags, the very habits of mind the junta cultivated.

I want to be honest about the risk of a straw man. Mother-tongue-based education, civic learning, and student-centred pedagogy have been advocated in Myanmar for at least fifteen years—much longer in some ethnic-administered spaces—and are widely accepted in principle. My worry is not that these ideas are unknown; it is that under the pressure of war, displacement, and the urgency of “winning first, reforming later,” they will be quietly set aside in favour of older reflexes—obedience, ethno-religious nationalism, and the fusion of religion and state. We will then carry the junta’s mindset into the new union without noticing.

Education, religion, and identity as tools of control

Myanmar’s future as a democratic union will be decided not only on the battlefield or at the negotiating table, but in our classrooms, homes, and religious spaces. For decades, military rulers have twisted education and religion together to manufacture obedience, fear, and division. If we do not change both the education system and the deeper culture that sustained it, we will unknowingly carry the junta’s mindset into the next political order—and silence another generation of children and youth who deserve to be heard.

From Ne Win’s “Burmese Way to Socialism,” elaborated in 1963, to the current State Administration Council, successive military regimes have understood that the easiest way to control a diverse country is to control how people think about themselves and each other. Schooling, religious symbolism, and ethnic identity were turned into instruments of rule, not sources of liberation.

In practice this meant:

• Rote learning instead of thinking. Children were rewarded for copying and reciting, not for asking whether something was true or fair, or whose voice was missing. A mind trained only to repeat is easy to rule and slow to resist.
• History as propaganda. Official textbooks presented the military as the natural guardian of unity, while minimising or distorting the histories of ethnic nationalities and their grievances.
• Fear in the classroom. Teachers were monitored and punished if they stepped outside the approved line. Encouraging genuine debate or listening to students’ questions could cost them their livelihood or worse, so the safest choice was silence.
• Gatekeeping through exams and careers. High-stakes exams and limited university places became tools of rationing and control. Advancement in life—scholarships, promotions, positions—was systematically tied to loyalty and obedience, not independence of mind. Those who asked too many questions, or thought too differently, found themselves blocked, sidelined, or pushed out.

Over time, this built an education system that prepared many young people not for citizenship, but for a lifetime of obedient servitude to military and bureaucratic elites. The system did not need to jail every dissenter; it simply starved many independent thinkers of recognition and upward mobility, a subtle but effective technique of social control.

Religion and identity were woven into this system. Buddhist symbols and state-aligned monastic structures—above all the State Sangha Maha Nayaka Committee, the government-appointed body that oversees the Theravada sangha, alongside ultra-nationalist movements such as Ma Ba Tha and its successor organisations—were selectively elevated as guardians of “national culture,” while non-Buddhist and non-Bamar communities were routinely treated as less central, less loyal, or even suspect. Whatever the official slogans, the practical effect of decades of forced “Bamar culture” policies was not genuine inclusion but deepening mistrust: many ethnic communities came to associate “Bamar” and “Buddhist” with humiliation and erasure. This did not just attack minorities; it attacked the possibility of future solidarity.

Where division begins: culture, faith, and the classroom

The formal system attached itself to existing cultural and religious habits and hardened them for political use.

• Hierarchy as destiny. Healthy respect for elders, monks, and teachers was twisted into an unwritten rule that those above must not be questioned. This shielded both religious and political authorities from scrutiny.
• “My religion is best” as a default. Many children grew up hearing that their own faith was superior and that others were ignorant or dangerous. The military did not invent this, but it amplified it through hate propaganda and unequal protection.
• Ethno-religious labelling. Ethnicity, religion, and political loyalty were fused: “Bamar Buddhist” quietly became the imagined norm of full belonging, while others were guests or perpetual suspects.

It is unrealistic—and not even desirable—to expect children to give up the deep conviction that their own religion is true or precious. For many families, that conviction is the core of meaning. But when children learn that their beliefs can only be safe if others lose, they become adults who see politics as permanent war between groups.

Youth, capability, and the Spring Revolution

The Spring Revolution has revealed another Myanmar: Buddhist, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, animist, and non-religious youth standing together in the streets and on the frontlines, caring for each other’s wounded and sheltering each other’s families. Across the country, young people are creating improvised schools, learning online under fire, and organising community learning spaces in liberated and displaced communities.

Concrete examples are not hard to find. Spring University Myanmar (SUM), founded in May 2021 by Civil Disobedience Movement educators, now operates twelve virtual schools, more than 200 faculty, and has delivered over 850 courses to more than 25,000 students; its “SUM Box” (an offline Raspberry Pi-based local network) and radio lectures reach learners in Karen, Karenni, Chin, Sagaing, and Bago where internet is unreliable or surveilled. The Karen Education and Culture Department (KECD), founded in 1947 under the Karen National Union, today runs 1,671 schools serving 140,732 students with 11,192 teachers, and has been recognised by researchers for its student-centred, democratic pedagogy that explicitly fosters critical thinking and community resilience. The Mon National Education Committee (MNEC), established in 1972, runs a mother-tongue-based multilingual system in Mon, Burmese, and English and, in a notable breakthrough before the coup, won the right for its students to transfer into state schools via jointly administered Grade 8 exams. Parami University, Myanmar’s first liberal-arts institution, has continued to teach Philosophy, Politics & Economics and Data Science online with dual degrees from Bard College, surviving the coup by going fully online. And the NUG’s Ministry of Education now coordinates roughly 70 online federal schools, 300 township education boards, and 246 Interim University Councils, and—alongside the National Unity Consultative Council—has welcomed the recent emergence of regional education councils across ethnic states as the building blocks of a federal democratic system.

Curriculum and teacher-training resources already exist for the deeper culture change as well. Mote Oo Education, based in Yangon and Mae Sot, produces context-appropriate civics, peace-education, history, and gender textbooks (Active Citizenship, Understanding Conflict, Understanding Peace, Histories of Burma) used widely in non-formal community schools, monastic schools, and IDP/refugee settings. The Inya Institute offers research-methods training and social-science modules to a new generation of Myanmar scholars.

The core insight running through this work is simple: in crisis, access to some form of schooling is not enough; young people need capability—recognised pathways, voice in decisions, and the confidence that their learning leads somewhere. This is exactly what decades of authoritarian education tried to deny.

If we rebuild schooling on the old foundations, we will betray that courage.

• A federal democratic union requires citizens who can work across lines of faith and ethnicity, not just recite a new constitution.
• Community self-reliance requires people who can solve problems with limited resources, not wait passively for orders or donors.
• Real inclusion requires us to move away from ethno-religious nationalism (“our group must rule to be safe”) and towards civic nationalism (“we share a country, laws, and responsibilities as equal citizens”).

Children and youth must have structured, respected spaces to speak about their beliefs, fears, and hopes—and to see that adults will protect their right to believe differently.

Nationalisation and control of minds and livelihoods

The military’s strategy was never limited to classrooms. After the 1962 coup, Ne Win’s Revolutionary Council moved quickly: the Enterprise Nationalization Law of 1963 placed banks, large enterprises, and the import-export, mining, teak, and rice trades under state monopoly, eventually nationalising some 15,000 private firms. By taking control of economic life and shutting down independent power, the regime tied people’s livelihoods directly to the state and its party networks. Economic survival became another channel of political discipline.

The schools and universities were brought under similar control. Where my own generation began in diverse settings—including Christian mission schools and other non-state institutions—those spaces of relative autonomy were gradually absorbed, constrained, or erased. Controlling the economy allowed the regime to control people’s material dependence; controlling education allowed it to control how people thought, spoke, and imagined their future.

In this sense, the military’s education system and economic order worked together: they prepared citizens for a lifetime of dependence and obedient servitude, rewarding loyalty and punishing independent thought, both in the mind and in the marketplace.

What must change in education

Any future democratic union government—whether the NUG, ethnic administrations, or a new federal arrangement—will have to commit to at least six deep shifts.

1. From rote learning to critical and self-directed thinking

Students should still learn facts, but they must also learn to interrogate them and to guide their own learning.

• Classroom practice must move beyond copying toward discussion, problem-solving, and project work, even at primary level.
• History and civics must present multiple perspectives and clearly distinguish between fact, interpretation, and propaganda.
• Schools must explicitly teach self-directed learning: how to set goals, ask good questions, find information, check sources, and reflect on mistakes, so that children can keep learning even when schools close.

A population with strong critical and self-directed learning habits is harder to control and better able to rebuild.

2. From obedience to shared responsibility and youth voice

We should move from “obey your teacher, your elder, your monk” to “learn to reason, to listen, and to share decisions.”

• Students can help set classroom agreements, sit on school councils, and evaluate their own learning.
• Youth advisory groups at township, state, and union levels can provide input on education and youth policy.
• Teachers need training and protection to welcome questions—including about fairness and bias—rather than punishing them.

When young people see their voices changing their classroom and school, they begin to believe their voices can shape their community and country.

3. From central propaganda to plural stories and faiths

A federal union needs a narrative that honours its diversity.

• Curriculum development must involve educators and communities from all states and regions—as KECD, MNEC, and other ethnic education departments have shown is possible in practice.
• Local languages, cultures, and moral stories from different traditions should be treated as legitimate vehicles of learning, not as disposable extras.
• Students should encounter the histories of different groups, including painful chapters, and discuss what justice and reconciliation might mean.

Children who encounter different faiths and cultures respectfully at school are less likely to accept hate later.

4. From “my religion above all” to tolerance and equal citizenship

Most traditions teach, implicitly or explicitly, that their path is the truest. We cannot—and need not—ask children to abandon that conviction. But we must teach them that:

• Believing deeply in one’s own faith does not require despising others.
• Every person has the right to believe, change belief, or not believe, without discrimination or violence.
• Using religion to incite hatred or justify discrimination is a betrayal of both democracy and genuine spirituality.

Comparative ethics and shared values across traditions can be powerful tools: stories of compassion, justice, and honesty exist in every major faith in Myanmar.

5. From ethno-religious nationalism to civic nationalism

For decades, state narratives implied that “real” Myanmar identity is tied to a particular ethnicity and religion. That story has brought cycles of conflict and military manipulation.

We must teach a different idea of belonging:

• Civic nationalism says: “You belong because you are a citizen under shared laws, with shared rights and responsibilities, regardless of ethnicity or religion.”
• Rights and duties attach to personhood and citizenship, not to bloodline or creed.
• Classroom and community projects should deliberately mix students from different backgrounds to solve shared problems, so they experience “we” as practical cooperation.

As long as politics is framed as “us versus them,” every crisis will drive communities back into hostile camps.

6. From fusion of religion and state to clear boundaries

The military has long tried to wrap itself in religious legitimacy. That habit is dangerous under any government. A democratic union must protect both freedom of religion and freedom from religious domination.

Children should learn that:

• The state must not favour or enforce any particular faith; its job is to guarantee equal protection and freedom for all.
• Religious institutions can advise and inspire, but they must not control law or policy.

This is the principle of separation of religion and state—not hostility to faith, but protection of both faith and politics from corrupting each other.

Changing ourselves: home, school, and the resistance

We cannot simply blame the military and extremists while copying their attitudes in our own spaces. The honest question is whether the older habits—deference to age and rank, ethno-religious gatekeeping, fear of public disagreement—are showing up inside the resistance itself. I think they sometimes are: in committees where younger members and women are heard last; in social-media spaces where dissenting voices within the movement are quickly labelled as traitors; in informal hierarchies that quietly track religion and ethnicity.

The encouraging news is that there are already examples to learn from.

• In families, we can listen when children ask “why,” explain our reasons, and occasionally admit “I was wrong,” so they see that authority and humility can live together. Community-based schools that opened in homes and places of worship after 2022, often run by CDM teachers, deliberately reorganise the adult-child relationship around questions rather than commands.
• In classrooms, we can stop normalising humiliation and slurs about any group and create space for students to share their own traditions while listening to others. SUM’s ethnic-language courses, for example, are explicitly designed not just to teach the language but to “unlearn” Burmanised history and build rapport between Bamar and other communities.
• In resistance organisations, we can insist that leadership and membership are open to all communities, and that religious and ethnic identity must not determine rank or rights. The joint statement from the NUG Ministry of Education, the NUCC, and the Interim Federal Education Council welcoming regional education councils is a small but important signal that decisions about the future are being made with ethnic stakeholders, not handed down to them.

The same people who grew up under ethno-religious propaganda now have the chance to build a different culture—if we are willing to examine our own habits honestly.

Who is speaking, and why

I was born in 1954, before the military seized power in 1962. I began my education in a Christian mission school in Myanmar, then continued under the nationalised, tightly controlled system that followed. I saw how quickly Ne Win’s government moved to nationalise major businesses to control people’s livelihoods, and schools to control people’s thinking and ability to think.

I am not a professional educator or theologian. I am an engineer by training and an advocate for democracy in Myanmar, shaped by more than seventy years of living and learning on both sides of the world: growing up and being educated under military-dominated systems in Myanmar, then spending most of my working life abroad. I have experienced both the strengths and the wounds of our cultures, and I have seen how education, religion, and economic power can either free people or bend them into tools of control.

I write as someone who has spent the last several years inside diaspora advocacy and Myanmar policy debates—in Washington, on the Hill, with NUG and ethnic interlocutors, and in our own community spaces. I keep meeting younger Myanmar educators and organisers who already understand what is in this article better than I do. My target reader is not them; it is people in my own generation, and senior figures in our political and religious institutions, who still hold disproportionate influence over what counts as legitimate speech, legitimate identity, and legitimate authority in the movement.

This is about what we must teach

This article has focused on what we must teach: critical and self-directed thinking, tolerance across religions and ethnicities, civic rather than ethno-religious nationalism, and clear boundaries between faith and the state. In future pieces, I will turn to how this is being done in practice: how children can teach themselves in community learning circles, how teachers and faith leaders can support them, how parents can help build a less authoritarian culture at home, and how organisations like SUM, KECD, MNEC, Parami, Mote Oo, and the NUG MOE can be supported, scaled, and—where appropriate—knitted together into a coherent federal system.

Reforming education, culture, and the role of religion will take time and courage. But some steps can begin now. The military tried to manufacture a country that could not help itself—divided by fear and chained by propaganda. The Spring Revolution has already shown that another Myanmar is possible.

The remaining question is whether we will build an education system—and a political culture—that nurtures free, self-directed, compassionate young people who know their voices matter, who can teach themselves, and who see their neighbours not as enemies to be feared but as fellow citizens to be respected.

A democratic union is more than a constitution. It is a way of living together—across religions and ethnicities—under shared laws and shared responsibility. That way of life begins with what we teach our children, and how we listen to them, today.

James Shwe was born in Myanmar in 1954 and began his education at a Christian mission school before the 1962 military coup. Trained as an engineer, he grew up and studied under military-dominated systems in Myanmar and later spent most of his working life in the United States, where he owned and operated a successful consulting engineering firm for many decades and helped launch the careers of many younger engineers of Myanmar origin. Now semi-retired, he advocates for democracy in Myanmar, with a particular focus on education reform, federalism, and interfaith understanding.