ED6060- Assignment 1

1. How would you propose a plan to prepare students in your country to work in a different cultural, technological and economical context?

            21st Century teaching and learning for skills is essential to meet the demands of internationally developed competitive education system all over the world. Our Education systems have to accomplish the development of 21st Century Skills: MILE (Milestones for Improving Learning and Education) which will ensure one’s success in today challenging world.

Our education system applied in the past is less favorable for the students to comprehend the changes globally so we need to upgrade our old education system to modernized system which enables the cultural, technological and economical and social development of country to cover across ASEAN countries by 2015 and globally in next few decades. We also have to grasp the Information and Communication Technology based education system in order to level and achieve Business opportunities in ASEAN region and International because we had suffered in the past due to poor management in Education and hadn’t upgraded because of political situations. Since 2010, after emergence of new democratic reform, our government positively approach for education standard and giving much support to level International standard. Under the leadership of democratic government, the government made many changes especially in education to meet 21^st century education standard since 2011. So, it is very good opportunities for our school to reform and make changes.

            I would like to suggest our newly democratic Myanmar government to prepare to narrow down the gaps in Education systems and Information and Communication Technology between ASEAN regional countries which are more ahead of us in terms of business and technology advancements because the reason is the gaps in ICT make us less advantage in global economy and communication. Making enhancement in those areas make us more understanding, get closer looks and learn various kind of aspects especially in culture, economy, technology among ASEAN nations as our first stepping stones for our country’s future developments and we can move forward our new generations (students) in International level as next step for global culture, economy and technology in next decades. 

2.  What has been done by your country in each context?

Originally, our Myanmar (or) Burmese culture was adopted from Buddhism and Mon culture. Many of our traditional events and ceremonies are also adopted from neighboring countries’ traditional cultures (for example, Buddhist days and lunar events) from India, Thailand and China. And also Myanmar has many minority ethnic groups such as Kachin, Karen, Shan (Thai people called as Tai Yai) and Mon and they also have their own cultures. British colonial ruling our country for more than one hundred year made the popularity of westernized culture especially the adaption of wearing styles become common since then. But our Burmese people and ethnic people in Myanmar wear their own traditional dresses (such as sarong) and celebrate their cultural festivals and events such as Myanmar New Year water festival (i.e. Songkarn). Burmese makeup or Tanaka is the most popular perfume and almost every woman wears Tanaka every day. Although the popularity of modernized wearing styles or influence of westernized cultures are adopted by new generations but we are still keeping our own traditions as prides of our country.

In the past time, we had done so much for cultural development the main purpose of education in Myanmar was to produce the educated citizens who will be able to carry out the economical and social development of our country as directed by the project of Ministry of Education of Myanmar. However, as the technology became more proficient all over the world and the globalization was operated fast in present time, we need and have to update the education system which can lead our country to meet 21st Century Skills: MILE (Milestones for Improving Learning and Education).

We had done in the past for those contexts but it’s not much in terms of the situation and progress of our nation. Since, Myanmar became one of the members of ASEAN countries in Southeast Asia region; we have to follow the education systems and standards according to ASEAN Curriculum Sourcebook to become regional standard education systems among ASEAN nations by 2015. We are just beginning of reform era but from my point of view for recent changes and reforming in Myanmar for various sectors including economy and following education standard among ASEAN nations, I am sure we will have steadily and gradually movements and can reach the standard level in Education in next 10 years.

References

Bringing ASEAN to the Region's Classrooms, The official website of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations http://www.aseansec.org/27025.htm

U.S. Support Bringing ASEAN into the Region’s Classrooms, United States Mission to ASEAN, http://asean.usmission.gov/pr07052012.html

Tin (2004), Seminar on Education in Myanmar, Centre for UNESCO, Australian National University, Canberra. http://www.anu.edu.au/unesco/Tin.pdf

Education statistics: Myanmar. UNICEF, Division of Policy and Practice, Statistics and Monitoring Section, www.childinfo.org, May 2008

Development of Education in Myanmar, Ministry of Education, Myanmar

21 Century Skills, 2009: The MILE Guide, Milestones for Improving Learning & Education, Partnership for 21 Century Skills p21.org/storage/documents/MILE_Guide_091101.pdf