Forty-six years of brutal and incompetent military rule have all but destroyed Burma's education system. A proud culture of learning and literature has been replaced, critics say, with a 'socialist' education system which aims to churn out obedient, unthinking citizens, loyal to the ruling junta.

Schools and universities are grossly underfunded, standards are extremely low and corruption is rife, with rich students paying bribes in return for top grades or entrance to the better universities. Government censors determine what everyone, not just students, can read.

UNESO found that in 2005, just 43% of both girls and boys attended secondary school. According to the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, "Government spending on health and education combined is less than 1% of GDP - among the lowest in the world."

But dedicated and visionary educators – based in neighboring Thailand and India, or in areas of Burma controlled by ethnic minority rebels – are preparing for a future transition to democracy by passing on the skills they hope will allow their students to think critically and help shape the country's future.

"Without education you cannot build a nation," says Sai Hsai Lum Kham, principal of the Migrant Learning Center in Chiang Mai, northern Thailand. "First we have to educate our people. After that, we have to know what democracy is.''

The Chiang Mai-based Education Burma group, which opened the learning center two years ago, also runs teacher training courses, a library for displaced people and other educational projects.
 
Director Thein Lwin, 55, is passionate about his work. A teacher and member of Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy, he was arrested in 1990 for opposing the regime and sentenced to two years in Rangoon's notorious Insein Prison. On his release he left Burma for Germany and then England, where he received his doctorate in education from Newcastle University.

Thein Lwin started the teacher training project when he arrived in Chiang Mai in 2000. The courses ran for six months for the first few years, but are now more intensive, at only three months each.

Twenty-five to 30 trainee teachers study on each course. Thein Lwin recruits students from refugee camps along the Thai-Burma border who have completed their secondary education in the camps and want to become teachers. An estimated 140,000 people live in nine such camps, mostly ethnic Karen and Karenni.

The trainees study classroom management, lesson planning and teaching strategies that can be used in different subjects such as history, geography, science and mathematics. Upon completing the course, some have stayed in Chiang Mai to work with youth and women's organizations, but most go back to teach in the camps.

For the past few years, Thein Lwin has also recruited from areas held by ethnic Shan and Kachin groups in northern Burma. The newly-trained teachers return to the rebel-controlled areas to pass on their skills and knowledge.

Education Burma also provides one-week training courses to teachers, including western volunteers, working in migrant schools in the Thai border town of Mae Sot.

Thein Lwin says workshops in "reading and writing for critical thinking" are an important part of the teacher training courses. These encourage the development of critical faculties, and active rather than passive learning. "Students respect each other's views. It's a kind of democratic practice in the classroom," he adds.

In an academic paper entitled "Education and Democracy in Burma", released in July of last year, Thein Lwin wrote of the current situation: "Many teachers enter the classroom without proper training. Curriculum is textbook based and is just concerned with memorizing facts in science, history, geography and so on. Teachers use an authoritative role in teaching. It seems that the regime uses education as a political tool by preventing children from learning how to think. Young people are expected to be disciplined in and out of school under the military regime.

The notion of discipline invokes ideas of loyalty and the image of obedient citizens."

The Migrant Learning Center is another of Education Burma's success stories. It is open to displaced Burma people of all ages and ethnicities, although most students are in their 20s and ethnic Shan, as Chiang Mai is close to Burma's Shan state.

The students study English, Thai and computer skills, with three levels in each subject, each lasting three months. Lessons are free and are held from 6-8 a.m. and 9-11 p.m., as most students work during the day - often in bars or restaurants, construction, agriculture or the sex industry.

There are also regular sessions, with guest speakers, on health and human rights issues.

The center, which has eight volunteer teachers, recruits new students every three months. Around 350 are currently studying there. Those studying computer skills learn about publishing programs and applications such as Photoshop, and are encouraged to publish literature on various subjects. Some students have already created their own blogs and websites, Thein Lwin says proudly.

Among them is Aung Aung, 22, a construction worker who has lived in Thailand for four years. He has studied at the learning centre for one year, and now has his own blog on which he puts his poems and shares his new knowledge of computers. 

"I want to be a computer expert and I want to share the knowledge with other people inside Burma," he says through Thein Lwin, who translates.
Another student, Thiha Lynn, 23, has been living in Chiang Mai for five months and is supported by his sister.

He has a degree in business and management from a university in Rangoon, but has been studying English and computers at the center for four months. He says he wants to learn English because it's the world language and he "can make friends anywhere".

Thiha Lynn says there are no opportunities for employment and education in Rangoon, where he hails from. He wants to study for a master's degree in the United States as his sister lives in New York, where she is a journalist with Voice of America.

He would also like to do a teacher training course and teach others in Mae Sot or Chiang Mai. In the future, he would like to go home and work at his father's rice mill. "If Burma gets freedom, I want to go back," he says.

Sai Hsai Lum Kham, the principal of the Migrant Learning Center, has a long experience of teaching. The 57-year-old ethnic Shan graduated from the Rangoon Institute of Education and then taught English, Burmese and social science in high schools for 13 years, before working as a scriptwriter for the BBC's Burma service. He said the quality of education in Burma is "very bad" except for the rich, who send their children to private schools or to foreign countries like Singapore.

Sai Hsai Lum Kham left for Thailand in 1990 because he was disillusioned with the political system and felt there was no hope.

He described the Migrant Learning Center as a place where friends meet and support each other. "Some people who come here never went to school," he says. "We are happy here. Although we don't have too much income we can support ourselves and we can support our people. I think for the time being, here is the right place for us. Thailand is a democratic country." However, he said, everybody would like to go home one day, and his dream is to see "many, many learning centers like this in Burma" when it is free from military rule.

The Migrant Learning Center is funded by Bill Harrison, a retired American banker who raises funds in the United States. Its budget is $20,000 a year including rent, electricity, water and books.

The teacher training centre is funded by individual donors and Prospect Burma, a United Kingdom-based charity which aims to "keep the flame of education alive".

Thein Lwin is proud of the work he is doing and optimistic about the future. Like his students and fellow teachers, his dream is to see democracy return to Burma. "And when Burma is free for educational work, we will go back to Burma. The teachers we train can participate in education and change Burma," he says.

In addition, hundreds – perhaps thousands - of migrant workers will have gained new language, communications and computer skills thanks to the efforts of Thein Lwin and his colleagues, "and this will be useful when we rebuild our country", he concludes.

  At a small school in cramped premises in New Delhi, refugees from Burma eagerly study English, which they hope will be a key to a better future.

The school – which is funded by Prospect Burma - has been open for more than 12 years and currently has about 70 students aged from 16 to 60, although most are in their twenties.

The majority are ethnic Chin, from the northwest of Burma, and Christian. Many Chin were converted by missionaries in colonial times.

The school teaches English in three stages – basic, pre-intermediate and intermediate – and each stage lasts one year. The courses are free, and anyone can take the written entrance test.
 
Many students have already graduated in Burma, and when they finish their studies at the school they go on to study in Bible schools or at Indian universities.

With just two teachers and two office workers, the school costs 15,000 pounds (31,000 dollars) a year to run. Every student receives 15 rupees (around 38 cents) per day for travel expenses, although most use it for daily living. They get free books and stationary twice a year.

Peter Tuang, 34, is one the school's success stories. He studied there before getting a job as a member of its office staff, looking after the accounts and student records.

He lives in the school building and in the afternoons he studies by correspondence for an English honors degree from Delhi University. "Without this job I couldn't survive," he says.

 

Before he left Burma, Tuang worked at a government technical college. After a friend asked him to distribute anti-government leaflets to students, members of the feared Military Intelligence visited the school and took his personal file, so he fled to Delhi. He is now in touch with his mother and sister again, via email, and says he is optimistic that democracy will return to Burma.

"He is just like a son to us," says Neera Tuli, who has taught at the school for 11 years. Tuli was born in Burma to an ethnic Indian family, and brought up there. Like her students, she would love to go back if the situation improves, she says in the school's small office, decorated with a picture of Aung San Suu Kyi.

However, she believes it will take 50 to 60 years for Burma to catch up with educational standards in other countries. "If people graduate [in Burma] they are just getting the degree, they are not getting the education," she says.