EDITOR'S PERSPECTIVE

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Beginning with the current academic year, middle school students who have completed the eighth standard are required to choose one of seven groupings for their high school subjects. Burmese, English and mathematics are compulsory for all students who go on to the ninth and tenth standards, while a variety of sciences and social sciences make up the remainder of coursework. The focus of all groupings is clearly on preparing for university study, something that remains inaccessible to the majority of students. Despite the resumption of classes at several of the country’s universities, placement of eligible high school graduates is severely limited by the backlog of students who have waited more than a decade to enter an institution of higher learning. Under the current regime, civilian universities and colleges have been open for only about 40 months in the past twelve years. Ironically, the introduction of this new scheme in the country’s secondary schools has served only to emphasize the arbitrariness of decision-making processes in Burma. While encouraging students to make choices about their futures is not in itself a bad idea, forcing them to do so without warning renders the move an exercise in self-contradiction. The lack of prior consultation implies that the ruling regime still considers its citizens incapable of making informed choices; and yet that is precisely what they are being ordered to do, without the benefit of information. Only when the authorities stop treating students as potential enemies of the state, and their teachers as jail keepers, will the hope that comes most naturally to the young begin to remove the obstacles that have long stunted Burma’s growth as a nation.