Commodification of Education in Myanmar’ Chin State Under the Shadow Education System

Abstract

The matriculation passing rate of Chin State has always been the lowest amongst other states and regions in Myanmar. Hakha, the capital of Chin State saw the emergence of boarding class as alternative schooling alongside government high schools from the early 1990s. The rise of boarding class as shadow education provision has been constantly associated with failures in the government education system. Since its emergence in Hakha, Chin State, Myanmar, there is a rapid growth in the number of boarding classes, reaching more than 15 to date. They emerged with advertised objectives of assisting students to pass the university entrance examination called matriculation examination, which will consecutively upgrade Chin State’ matriculation result. Parents and students alike expect boarding class guaranteeing successful academic results. Considered as the only solution, boarding classes win enormous popularity with more than 90% students joining them. Hence, the objective of this qualitative, ethnographic study is to investigate boarding class in its relationship with students’ academic results. Concepts of “schooling and commodified education” are employed to analyze schooling prevalent in the research area. The main questions of this study are: 1) What are the implications of shadow education system in the form of boarding class on parents, students, teachers and boarding class administrators?; 2) To what extent do these Boarding Classes fulfill (if any) students’ learning outcome and who are the most benefitted out of them?; 3) How do Boarding Classes become institutions which manifest commodified education? This study found out that boarding class in Hakha, while not alleviating the passing rate of students in Chin State over twenty years of its emergence – the overall passing rate in the periods of four-year times at the selected boarding classes continued to be lower than 50%, it also constructs implications on teachings-learning at government schools and often results in social stratifications – assisting few high performance students while paying less attention to weak students, while also creates financial burden on parents of poor students who became in debt sending their children to the boarding class. It creates more burdens to students who have to study in both boarding class and government schools – study hard, less sleep, no recreation. Positive outlooks, however, come from boarding class operators and students passing matriculation examination. To persuade parents and students, commodification of education is strengthened with boarding classes’ advertising techniques such as big billboards at main intersections in big cities and advertisement in the local media in Chin State to increase people’ hope in matriculation achievement. As a consequence, academic performance is treated as a commodity, result in education being commodified. In the meanwhile, it is these boarding classes that receive economic benefits from the few propitious students as well as from unpromising students alike.