Monastic schools in Myanmar

Pre-colonial schooling

The monastic schooling is best documented in lowland Burma, with historical records dating back to the 11th century during the Bagan Kingdom. There is some evidence that the system began in earlier Mon-dominated Kingdoms. The Pyu city-states had some form of monastic school, with boys and girls attending monasteries or convents as novices.

In pre-colonial Burma, the Sangha was the primary educational institution. The Burmese word for school, kyaung, is synonymous with the word for monastery from this connection. In dynastic Burma, one of the main Buddhist obligations of the king was to provide welfare to the people. The schools were independent from the government, often supported by local donations to the monastery. The state, however, had a vital interest in its development and promulgation. The various dynasties that ruled lowland Burma built monasteries and provided charity to attract and support the monastic school system. This in turn provided religious legitimacy through direct welfare in the lives of ordinary people. However, for most agriculturalist rural villages, students had little need for the Pali language instruction in Buddhist scripture. Instead, the teaching served two practical purposes; they instilled moral character into young Bamar men and 'civilised' conquered non-Bamar minorities by imbuing religious and cultural values.

The schools provided important education needs throughout Myanmar's history and they were the only source of education for lives ranging from royal princes to unskilled workers. The Buddhist monastic schools helped to give Myanmar a rate of literacy considerably above those of other East Asian countries in the early 1900s. In 1931, 56% of males over the age of five and 16.5% of females were literate — approximately four times as high as those reported for India at the same time. Early European travellers and later British colonial administrators acknowledged the impressive literacy rate, supported by regular censuses of literacy conducted by various kings to prove their efficacy and legitimacy. Even as early as the 17th century, a Venetian traveller noted that the kingdom was governed by pen, with many people needing paper and writing to travel between even rural villages.

The schooling system, by nature of its monastic code, was only available to boys. Girls were educated at home, gaining basic literacy skills and other home or marketplace skills. There is, however, evidence of a much smaller parallel system run by educated laypeople for female students.