The agrarian transition: Learn to be modern through ... - RCSD

The agrarian transition: Learn to be modern through education for ethnic minorityfemale students in Laos.Manynooch Faming, Ph.D.Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of AsiaMahidol University at Salaya, Nakhon Pathom 73170, ThailandTel: 66-2800-2308 ext. 3326, Fax: 66-2800-2332Email: manynooch@gmail.comAbstractBased on a field research conducted at the two boarding schools for ethnic minorities inKhammouan and Oudomxai and at the Teacher’s Training of Luang Namtha, Laos, this essaydeploys gender analysis to understand the implementations of the basic girl education project.The purpose is to analyze the national education and an international development agency in(re)producing gender differences, hierarchies, roles and identities within local settings.Attention is on the contents of textbooks showing lessons for girls contradicting with theireveryday life. This is to show that state and the involved development agency continue toperpetuate inequalities and re-inscribe gender discourse.Keywords: educational policy, development, equality, textbooks, gender, ethnic minorities.IntroductionGender and ‘minority’ discourses have put women and girls of ethnic minorities ofLaos on an important platform for critical discussion in many places concerning developmentand human rights. According to the general platform of ‘universal human rights’, women,girls, and ethnic minorities have a right to access formal schooling and modern educationfunded by the state (e.g., UNESCO 2003, UNICEF 2005, IASC 2006). In Laos ethnicminority women and girls are considered ‘poor’ and ‘backward’, and are assumed to be‘vulnerable’ and in need of help. Thus the education of ethnic minority girls should be animportant priority (GRID 2004b).One core educational goal in Laos is to bring ‘equality’. This essay argues that theLao government fails to achieve the goal of equality in education for women and girls©M. Faming 2010 1

ecause those in power are overwhelmingly Lao men (i.e., in the LPRP), who make decisionsfor all women. As we shall see, a specific program, the Basic Education (Girls) Project orBEGP, with one of its components, funded by AusAid, designed for specific groups, is tobring to women and girls of ethnic minority groups in particular a limited ‘equality’, so as tointegrate them into the ethnic Lao male-dominant society.The design of the national education for ethnic minorities is based on the assumptionsthat they are weak, vulnerable, disadvantaged and ‘backward’, and thus in need of modernknowledge so that they may become ‘civilized’(e.g., Keyes 1991, Harrell 1995, Hansen 1999,Faming 2008). This article looks at another aspect of the ethnic and minority discourse inLaos.Education for minority women is, in fact, no different from the national education forall in Laos, in the sense that all girls and women are taught to be ‘Lao women’, prepared tolive their lives as good progressive patriotic citizens of Laos and to participate in the nationaleconomic system. They are promised ‘equality’ and ‘equity’. This article is an analysis ofhow national policies, supported and influenced by foreign aid, are designed andimplemented at the local level and how they reshape local worlds through gender andeducation discourses. It covers the assumptions behind the policy making and strategythrough examination of an educational development project for girls - namely, the BasicEducation (Girls) Project (BEGP). This national development project worked closely with theLao Women’s Union (LWU). I explore the BEGP through a BEGP operational componentfunded by AusAid: the Lao-Australia Basic Education Project (LABEP). The article alsoconsiders how the involvement of international development projects influences the policyand strategy for national education for girls and women in Laos.Basic Education (Girls) Project (BEGP)Background to the Non-Formal Education (NFE) involvementBefore 1994, there were no specific educational programs for girls of ethnicminorities. There were only campaigns to encourage women of rural areas (regardless ofethnicity) to join the literacy programs run by the Non-Formal Education Department (NFE)of the MOE and to respond to the recruiting programs of the LWU. However, later, specificeducation for ethnic minority girls resulted from meetings and various conferences organizedby non-socialist countries, in which representatives of the LWU have participated. The World©M. Faming 2010 2

Conference to Review the UN Decade for Women (Nairobi 1985), with the theme of‘Equality, Development and Peace’, seems to have been the first of these events. Thisconference emphasized social harmony amongst men and women, equality before the law,and economic redistribution. It provided a new international role for the LWU, asrepresentative of all women in the Lao PDR. Then in 1993 Lao government representativesattended the Sixth Regional Conference of Ministers of Education and Those Responsible forEconomic Planning in Asia and the Pacific, held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Standing faceto face with those from many modern and more economically advanced countries, Laorepresentatives considered Third World women’s contribution to economic growth. At thisconference, the phrase “Education For All” specifically included education for disadvantagedgroups.In 1994, with UNESCO’s assistance and funding from the Norwegian government,the Lao MOE launched the Women’s Literacy and Basic Skills Training Project, supervisedby the Department of Non-Formal Education, to provide literacy programs for young women,as well as ‘cultural education’ for ethnic minority women, which included ‘skills training’ aswell as learning to read and write Lao. This project was the first one specifically for women.The department’s major task - to eradicate illiteracy - was to be carried out through itsLocal Community Learning Centers (CLC), located in each district throughout the country.During my data collection in the year 2000, I had a chance to conduct a formal interview withthe deputy director of Non-Formal Education (NFE). According to him, CommunityLearning Centers had been in operation since 1990 or earlier.The NFE and its CLCs designed education not only to improve Lao language skillsbut also to promote the cultural ideas of the ethnic Lao concerning gender. That is, womenare assumed to be good at weaving while men are better at carpentry, etc. 1 Suchunderstandings have remained the basis for policy planning and implementation, and werereflected in BEGP planning and implementation.The NFE was responsible for this type of training until the formation of a new EthnicMinorities Education unit under the General Education Department. This unit operated fromthe late 1970s to the mid-1990s. In 1995, the Lao Women’s Union sent representatives to the1 As an indication of some aspects of Lao cultural ideas about gender, the account of an official of NFE, givenduring an informal conversation, can be taken as an example. “Lao people have rules for both men and women,of course. Men are stronger so we (men) have an obligation to build and maintain the house. Women are notsupposed to be on the roof of the house, either. That’s too dangerous for them, but also it shows disrespectfulbehaviour to their father or older brothers…” (an interview conducted 20 May 2000). In fact, women are not tobe anywhere in physically higher positions than men in Lao culture. For example, women are to kneel down,while men stand up, in offering food to monks in the early morning.©M. Faming 2010 3

Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, China. After this conference, the Ministry ofEducation created another new division, the Girls and Ethnic Minority Education Unit(GEMEU), which took over all educational and training programs for girls and women ofethic minorities in 1998.The Girls (Gender) and Ethnic Minority Education Unit (GEMEU)This Unit was set up to develop plans and policies, and to implement developmentprojects exclusively for girls’ education. The main task is to increase enrolment rates and toreduce dropout rates among girls, and especially girls of ethnic minorities. The Unit has twofemale directors. One is an ethnic Lao woman, who handles all meetings with donors andinternational experts on gender to discuss planning for GEMEU for the long and short terms.The other is a Lao-educated Hmong woman, who is in charge of implementation. Throughher frequent encounters with foreigners, donors and consultants, the first director learned thatthe term ‘gender’ sells. In an interview, she told me that her Unit had changed the ‘G’ inGEMEU to represent ‘Gender’ rather than ‘Girls’. She felt that the use of this term wouldallow the Unit to draw more donors, and that it better indicated the government’s intentionsand international commitments made during international conferences and congresses toimprove the status of women (not just girls) through formal education. 2Details of the projectIn September 1998, at the ADB headquarters in Manila, the Lao government,represented by MOE, signed an Agreement of Understanding with the ADB and AusAid andcontracted to implement the Basic Education (Girls) Project (BEGP), which was thenlaunched in 1999. The first (unofficial) project document stated that “the project aims toexpand access to improve education for girls in ethnic minority areas. . . the long-termobjective [is] to bring more women into the mainstream of socioeconomic development. . . Inthe short term [this is] to improve primary education for girls in ethnic minority areas. Boys2 It should be noted that at the beginning of the unit operation (1998-2000), ethnic minority boys and men werenot mentioned much in the unit’s agenda. This is based on my observation and personal experience whileworking at MOE (1998-1999). Thus, at the point to changing the unit’s name from girl to gender was a reactionof the unit director, who followed the ‘gender’ discourse which has been heavily applied to only females ratherthan a social cultural roles meaning of males and females.©M. Faming 2010 4

will also benefit, but the major educational gain will be for girls. . ”. (LABEP 1998: 1). 3However, the official (i.e., approved by the Prime Minister’s Office) project implementationdocument (including the project’s short term and longer term purpose) were issued in 2000.The following presents the revised and official purposes of the BEGP:1. The long term purpose is to enable all women, all ethnic minorities regardless ofsex and age, to participate in socio-economic development, as well as to improvethe quality of education.2. The short term purpose is to develop educational access for girls and ethnicminorities to be able to complete basic primary education, the government’scompulsory education, as well as to be able to continue with secondary educationand vocational training. 4To achieve these two purposes, MOE’s strategy was to cover 10 provinces and onespecial zone. These areas included 50 main districts and two special districts. There were tobe two phases: phase one was to cover six provinces and 12 districts from 2000-2003, whilephase two was to cover five provinces and 38 or 40 districts from 2003-2005. However, bythe end of 2005 phase one had not been able to reach the above target and so it was extendedto 2007. Meanwhile, the project continued to be funded by ADB and AusAid. However,BEGP officially ended on 31 July 2007. According to the project report (informal copy), theproject closed with success, having achieved all targets planned since the beginning.I have argued elsewhere that the government attempts to reach its ideal of ‘equality’through education for ethnic minorities. Such cases of boarding schooling for ethnicminorities in Laos, the government aims to provide ‘equality’ and ‘equity’ for ethnic minoritychildren. That is, by providing full scholarship to attend either or both primary and secondaryeducation at the state funded boarding schools, ethnic minority children can equally enjoy full3 This statement can also be found on the ADB official website (http://www.adb.org/gender/practices/education/lao001.asp). This particular quote was an excerpt from a two page ‘unofficial’ interim report given tome by the first Lao-Australian Basic Education Project (LABEP) consultant. This document was obtained inNovember 1998.4 This is my translation from the Lao text from the MOE (1999) publication on the establishment of GEMEU.The official English version has: “The long-term objective of the Project is to bring more women into themainstream of socioeconomic development by progressively improving their education level”. There are thussome few small differences in the Lao and English versions of the document. These differences can be readdifferently. For example, as emphasized in the text, the Lao version seems to associate women (i.e., “. . . allwomen and ethnic minorities of both sexes regardless of ages…”) with ethnic minorities generally, while theEnglish version only mentions bringing women (assumingly regardless of ethnic group) into the nationalsocioeconomic development. The Lao text thus seems to reveal the government’s concern and discourses abouteducational development, poverty, gender and ethnic minorities.©M. Faming 2010 5

access to education. However, not all ethnic minority children can be accepted to this typeschooling but the ‘prestigious’ ones. To be specific, for example, in the selection process foradmission and for scholarships, there is a concept of ‘better or best or special or gifted’attached to this the selection process. This is only an example to show that even the specificschooling for specific groups of students aimed to provide equality and equity seem to beconfined within hierarchy system. Similarly, I will demonstrate an attempt to fulfill thenational ‘equality’ goal through this specific project designed for girls, with the hope ofintegrating ‘all women’ and all ethnic minorities into the mainstream society and economy, aswell as into the Lao nation-state. In other words, the two goals of this specific girls’ educationproject, as part of the overall national education development project, were also attempts toachieve ‘equality’ based on an understanding that women and girls, especially of ethnicminorities, were unable to participate in socio-economic development, and that they lackedaccess to education.There were three operational components of the BEGP. Component One was toexpand access and improve retention; Component Two, to improve relevance, quality, andefficiency; and Component Three, to strengthen management systems and capacity.Component One and Component Three were to be carried out under a loan from ADB, whileComponent Two was funded by AusAid. Although these components were supported fromdifferent financial sources, the main purpose was to assist the Lao government to expand itsnational education. I will provide brief descriptions of the tasks of the three components.Component One: Expanding access and improving retention 5To increase access, the component was designed with three tasks. They were: 1. tobuild more new schools, as well as to renovate existing old schools at the village base, so thatschools would be closer to the homes of the girls; 2. to encourage community cash and kindcontributions and engagement; and 3. to promote gender awareness.Component Two: Improving relevance, quality and efficiencyThis component was funded at around US$4.3 million by AusAid. It was calledLABEP, or Lao-Australia Basic Education Project. The project was established to deal with5 I am using the Lao text because it is longer and gives more detail of what the government wanted to achievewith this project, as the English version omits many passages.©M. Faming 2010 6

problems reported by MOE and international experts. The problem and proposed solutionwere that “the limited participation of ethnic minority groups in formal education results notonly from the remoteness and mobility of their settlements, but also from cultural andlinguistic differences that make remaining and learning in schools difficult. [Thus] theComponent will create an integrated quality improvement system to support increasedenrolment and retention of children, particularly girls, in multi-grade schools and schools inethnic minority areas”. 6 ‘Quality improvement’ here means improving the quality ofpedagogy: the task of this project was mainly to produce teaching and learning materials tohandle, for example, multi-grade teaching, the teaching of Lao as the national language, andthe teaching of mathematics, as well as to produce locally relevant curricula. These teachinglearningmaterials were supplements to the existing national curriculum and textbooks.A second task of Component Two was to develop 260 trainers of trainers, who in turnwould train 4,000 teacher trainees and an additional 50 ‘pedagogical advisers’ for 50 districts.Finally, the Component provided scholarships for 300 ethnic minority students,including 200 girls, who would be trained at the three teacher training institutions at LuangNamtha, Xieng Khouang, and Saravan. 7 They were to be trained under two systems: 5+4 and8+3. 8 These two systems were designed specially for ethnic minorities according to a‘Sandwich Delivery Model’ (explained below).Component Three: Strengthening Management Systems and Capacity.This component’s task was to strengthen MOE’s institutional capacity to manage,plan, and monitor the primary education system at all levels. That is, the work of thiscomponent was to produce high-quality information (i.e., handbooks and/or computer basedinformation) readily available to all education managers throughout the country. According to6 Ministry of Education. 2000. Basic Education Girls Project. Laos. (This is my own translation from the Laolanguage version, with my emphasis).7 These three institutions are the regional teacher training institutions for all students, regardless of ethnicity.However, students of these three institutions are mostly non-ethnic-Lao. For example, there are more Hmongstudents at the Xieng Khuang Teacher Training College; and at Luang Namtha there are more Khmu, Phounoy,Hmong, Lue, and Black Tai than there are ethnic Lao students; and there are more Bru students in SaravanTeacher Training College than ethnic Lao. It should be noted that since BEGP does not have a teacher trainingcollege for its own ‘ethnic minority girl’ students, it relies on these three colleges for facilities, administration,and teaching staff. Thus, BEGP students are required to follow the college rules and regulations, and learn fromthe same textbooks (in addition to textbooks and some extra activities designed specifically for them) and thesame teachers as all other students.8 5+4 refers to students who complete 5-year primary education and are then trained as teachers for another 4years; 8+3 refers to those who complete 5-year primary and 3-year lower secondary education and are thentrained as teachers for another 3 years.©M. Faming 2010 7

MOE, this would help establish a standard management system for all levels (i.e., village,district, and provincial).Project AnalysisAnalysis of implementation of components one and threeI analyze the implementation of the BEGP in terms of different themes.Pattern of centralization: Component ThreeThis component was set up to provide management skill training, computer skilltraining, and data collection and data-based information management training to staff at MOEand the staff at different levels in the provinces. Although it dealt with technical and practicalmatters that are beyond the scope of this article, it is an example of how an educationaldevelopment project for ethnic minorities is set up and operated from the center. Thiscentralized operation was to be provided through standardized technical and computerizeddata-base management. Planning was also to be carried out from the center. For instance, ifMOE or BEGP viewed ethnic minority girls and women as poor and backward, the provinces(and their sub-levels) were to hold the same view, regardless of what the realities in theprovinces were. From a couple of informal interviews with three provincial educationofficials (PEO) of Oudomxai Province, I found that they were mostly told what to do withtheir BEGP students according to standardized selection criteria, policy, and planning. WhenI asked one of them why this was so, she said,: “Actually, we do have our own managementand plan, but to be consistent with other provinces taking part in this project we have to takea standardized model from MOE”. For example, the selection criteria were the same as thosefor the boarding schools for ethnic minorities. When I asked why there was a need for thisprocess, one of the official replied: “This is to make sure that those girls and their parentscommit to the project, meaning returning to their villages and becoming teachers. Secondly,we have to make sure that they are really from poor families”. When I continued asking forclarification of the term ‘poor’, they looked at me with puzzled and suspicious faces beforetelling me: “Well, according to many international advisors (from ADB and the other donors),a poor family has low income or low agricultural product per household. This type of familytends to have only one parent, either a mother or a father…” This official went on giving me©M. Faming 2010 8

more details which sounded exactly the same as those I had been given by the schoolprincipals in Oudomxai and Khammouane, as well as by the Director of Ethnic MinorityEducation Unit, MOE. The only difference was that the project claimed to conduct face-tofaceinterviews with ‘selected’ girls and their parents at their villages. However, theinterviews with parents and the girls were carried out according to a standardized procedure.Therefore, as we can see, the capacity and system management to be strengthened seemed toembody the project with central MOE views on ‘poor’ and ‘backward’ ethnic minority girlsand women, who must be provided with education. However, while the criteria and thestandard selection process aimed at the ‘poor’, there have been many cases of students beingselected on the basis of the national discourse of ‘backward’ - despite the reality of the wealthof some ethnic minorities.Component One: Implementation to integrate vulnerable (ethnic minority) girlsThis component, I argue, was designed not only with the assumption that girls fromethnic minorities are vulnerable, but also with the purpose of integrating them ethnicminorities under official authority. According to the project’s preliminary findings: “Whilegirls and women may be equal under the constitution of the Lao PDR, they are stillconsidered to be more vulnerable than boys and men. Parents worry about the safety ofyoung daughters when they have to walk long distances to school. . . [some Hmong] parentssaid that if they had a school in their village, then they would send their daughters. . .”.(UNESCO 1998: 3). Thus, it seemed the ‘vulnerability’ mentioned by the project findingsmeant the distances that girls had to travel (on foot) from their houses to the nearest schools.As a result of this (as well as of findings in other reports on women, girls and ethnicminorities in Laos), 9 this component was assigned to deal first with school construction,according to the MOE approved model.A school building had to include classrooms, a teacher’s room, a small library, toiletsand student tables and benches. The 425 school buildings to be built under the BEGP were tobe divided into three categories. There would be fifty complete primary school buildings with9 For example, see Status of Women: Laos, prepared by UNESCO (1989:10); Children and Women in the LaoPeople’s Democratic Republic, UNICEF (1992: 104-6); and Women and Development in Laos, by SheilaThomson and Sally Baden (1993: 10-11). These are a few reports published prior to the project. However,nowadays, one can find the same or similar statements addressing the issue of the distances causing loweraccess to public service, in relation to such as public health and education, reproduced in many reports.Obviously, the Lao government wants international financial help to bring ethnic minorities into institutionsunder the central authority.©M. Faming 2010 9

five classrooms each, for grades 1-5; 175 multi-grade complete primary school buildingswere to include three classrooms, for grades 1-5; and 200 multi-grade incomplete primaryschool buildings would includes two classrooms, for grades 1-3. The number of proposedschool buildings was later increased from the original 425 to 449.Concerning the high cost of building more schools, an international consultantrecommended that Laos take a lesson from Australia: the number of villages should bereduced to increase the effectiveness of delivering formal education, so that the same numberof schools could be used to educate more students. According to this consultant, “There aretoo many villages scattered throughout Laos and the issue is children do not attend school ifthere is no school in their village. So, by gathering small villages and putting them under onevillage system, parents can send their children to their own village”. 10 The Lao governmentcertainly agreed with this recommendation, because it would seem to be a way to integrateethnic minorities into the mainstream. According to the 2005 census, most ethnic minoritiesoften live in smaller villages of 85-120 households, while ethnic Lao or Lao Loum villagesusually have more households and members. Thus, reducing the number of small villagesmeant, specifically, reducing the number of ethnic minority villages and resettling theirinhabitants in bigger villages, like those of the Lao Loum.The second task of this component was to recruit and encourage local communityparticipation. That is, villagers and parents were to be responsible for sending their childrento school. Participation also referred to cash or kind contributions. To encourage localparticipation, MOE was to provide US$150 to each target village head. This money was toimplement various activities to encourage ethnic minority parents’ participation in sendingtheir children to school, in contributing to maintaining the school building, and in taking partin all forms of improving local formal education.The third task: was that of promoting gender awareness, to be discussed below.Both the second and third tasks were the responsibility of GEMEU, which have beeninvolved in making policies and strategies on education for women, girls and ethnicminorities. To carry them out, GEMEU was responsible for all data collection on why girlsand ethnic minority children remained outside school, had high repetition rates and/ordropped out. According to GEMEU’s understanding, to bring justice and equality to all girls,they must be given ‘education’. Again, this means national integration, with theunderstanding that women and girls are ‘vulnerable’.10 Interview during March 2006 at MOE.©M. Faming 2010 10

Gender awarenessWhat is interesting about the second and third tasks is their implementations,particularly as raising gender awareness is concerned. Villages taking part in genderawareness training were those counted as exhibiting community participation and makingcontributions.However, the way ‘gender’ was interpreted by Lao men, women, and the foreignerworkshop trainers was interesting. During my data collection in 2002-03, workshops ongender and gender equality were organized nearly every two months at the MOE; others wereorganized by LWU at other ministerial offices and at the government offices at the provinciallevel. In one of the workshops I participated in, in September 2002 at the MOE, there werethree trainers: one female Australian gender expert and two Lao female officials from MOE.Other participants were members of LWU, rural development departments and educationdepartments at the provincial levels from selected provinces (Vientiane Province, LuangPrabang, Xayabuly, Khammouane and Savannakhet), and female civil servants from differentministries in Vientiane Capital. There were 25 participants in all. Two were men, one fromVientiane Province and one from the MOE staff.The foreign expert began the workshop by explaining why there was a need forgender equality in education. I asked the foreign expert why she thought Laos had need ofthis type of training, and she replied:In the past we [AusAid and GEMEU] have conducted some field data collection andfound that many girls and women are still living in bad conditions because of theirtradition, subordinating to their husbands. Girls could not go to school because of thefamily labor need. So it is obvious that this type of training should be organized totrain the government staff so they can help MOE deliver a better education to all,particularly to girls by giving a better understanding about gender equality… (withmy own emphasis).The expert continued with a definition of ‘gender equality’: “Gender equality is theequal valuing by society of both the similarities and the differences of men and women, andthe varying roles they play”. In other words, the expert understood that there was no or less‘gender equality’ in Laos than where she is from (i.e., Australia). Thus, to her, there was a©M. Faming 2010 11

need to train Lao peoples, particularly ethnic minorities, on the issue. In contrast to this, it isevidently that peoples in Laos know well the local context of gender equality (e.g., divisionof labor). But, obviously, they are also confused with the modern ‘gender equality’introduced by the project and the national propaganda.I followed one of the participants in the above workshop. Khamfong is a teacher atPhonesoung Ethnic Minority Boarding School of Khammouane Province. I interviewed herafter she gave a half-day training session at her school. 11 According to her, gender involvesbot baat gning xai (ÍíÈÍàÈÇéÃÆàÇ), or ‘roles of men and women’. I asked her to give mesome specific clarifications of this definition and she replied: “Let me give you an example.We (women) must know that we have whatever rights men have. For example, a propertyright. This must show that both husband and wife share equal ownership. This is to show thatthey have equal rights. Many women here still do not know what it means to be sharingownership”. When I asked which women did not know about this ‘gender equality’, shereplied without hesitation that they were “women of ethnic minorities living in rural areas”.Her answer and understanding of gender equality (equal rights before law) is correct.However, in practice, the property right that she mentioned is never equal. During myinterview with her, we were interrupted by another female teacher (Khankham), who said thatshe had greater ‘rights’ to her parents’ property and that neither her husband nor the law hadanything to do with it. This is, according to her, a ‘Lao traditional practice’ (i.e.,matrilineality), which is still valid today.Khamfong was confronting both the reality and her understanding of ‘genderequality’ drawn from the training workshop at the MOE in Vientiane Capital. I decided to askher again what she told her trainees. She repeated the answer given before, but this time shemade it clear that it was about roles of a husband and a wife in a family (Khankham agreed). Ithen asked both Khamfong and Khankham whether or not girls and boys were part of their‘gender equality’ understanding. Both of them said no, because they were only ‘children,boys and girls, and not yet fully grown males and females’. Khamfong told me, “For example,our female students do not understand what ‘gender’ is. I would say this is because theirparents never taught them women’s roles (i.e., a wife’s role) until they get married”. Icontinued asking if she viewed boys and girls as equally children (i.e., without ‘gender’ orsocial roles of male and female persons). Khankham felt that she should be the one to answerthis question. She said: “They are only children and ‘gender’ (bot baat gning xai) is to use11 This interview was conducted 18 October 2002.©M. Faming 2010 12

with adults of both sexes”. Khamfong agreed with Khankam, and added: “Yes. My traineesare also all adults, not children. So, children are not concerned with gender till they areadults”. This is clear that Khamfong (and Khankham) excluded boys and girls from theconcept of ‘gender roles’, and never mentioned ‘equality’ between boys and girls. Thus, inrelation to local community understanding of the gender concept, these two teachers impliedthat it concerned equal rights between a wife and a husband, while the social roles of boysand girls were not included, because they were ‘children’.In summary, Component One’s task implementation for raising gender awarenessinvolved the ‘gender’ discourse, which was interpreted in different ways by different men andwomen who had some considerable social position. However, one can clearly see that theproject to raise gender awareness was also to create an environment for national integrationthrough local participation and contribution of all forms. The project aims to increaseeducational opportunity for girls, but those in some local centres see no difference betweenschooling for all and schooling only for girls, as girls before their puberty and ready to getmarried are also part of a general category of ‘children’. The building of more schools inlocal areas side by side with the gender awareness training and local participation clearlybecome another national project for ‘civilizing’ ethnic minority girls and women, who areassumed by the project and the government to be the ‘vulnerable and disadvantaged’ incomparison to boys and men.Civilizing ethnic minority girls: Implementing Component TwoThis section is an analysis of the implementation of Component Two of the project. Acase study of the implementation tasks provides a good examination of how ethnic minoritygirls are being ‘civilized’ and how the project, as well as the government, failed to bringequality to girls and women through education. It is clear that the project assumed that ethnicminorities are poor, backward and vulnerable, and subject to subordination, resulting ininequality. As a result of this assumption, the component aimed to provide specificallydesigned courses and textbooks for girls of ethnic minorities (i.e., Task One: developingsupplementary materials for multi-grade teaching, Lao language, and mathematics). Thisimplied the hope that, by having good textbooks relevant to their life experiences, the girlscould absorb and learn better, and that the better-trained girls of the project would becomerole models (by becoming teachers in their own villages) for the next younger groups (asforeseen by the components second task, the training of trainers; and the third, to provide©M. Faming 2010 13

scholarship to 300 ethnic minority students who would be trained as teachers of ethnicminorities). The following discussion of the tasks demonstrates how the component operatedand what happened in its implementation.Supplementary books designed by LABEP and NRIESTask One of Component Two was to produce textbooks for primary students(particularly for girls), as all present national textbooks for primary students were assumed tolack appropriate content concerning some aspects of education for girls, and especially ofthose belonging to ethnic minorities; and also to provide teacher training. The first effort tocarry out this task was in 1999, when two selected subjects (Lao Language and Mathematics)and a teacher’s manual for multi-grade teaching were already in the plan. In 2005, theteaching of Life Skills and the production of a teacher’s manual for each new textbook wereadded to the plan. The subject name ‘Lao as the National Language’ was changed to ‘LaoLanguage’ at this time.The purpose of the new textbooks was to provide ‘relevant’ knowledge in areas ofnatural science, social science, mathematics, Lao grammar and ‘population study’ (civiceducation). Accompanying teacher’s guides would include lesson plans and answers tostudent exercises. The contents of the textbooks were, in fact, the same as those of textbooksused in all schools throughout the country, but the project textbooks included illustrations ofgirls and ethnic minorities, to be used with specific groups of students. The Life Skills subjectwas, according to international experts, meant to apply what students learn in textbooks toeveryday living. In practice, students learned simple math from the Math textbook, fromwhich it was believed they should be able to use math in the market or count the days or timerelated to their lives. In practice, the Life Skills subject was more or less a version of the‘World Around Us’ subject, which all students of grades 3-5 have to learn. However, somecontents were specifically designed in the Life Skills textbook for grade 5, including, in thefirst 5 lessons, how to knit; how to sew a hat, a pair of gloves, a skirt, pants with elasticwaistbands, and infant diapers; and how to take care of oneself during pregnancy – as theproject was aimed at girls more than boys. Although boys were also asked to learn theseskills, the emphasis was clearly on teaching domestic life skills to girls.In sum, textbooks for girls are, like all other textbooks used in Laos, about nationalidentity, authority, and Lao culture as civilization. The only difference is they are supposed to©M. Faming 2010 14

Training towards civilizationThe teachers and directors also had the task to train the project students to take on thepassion for a teaching career. This passion includes the concept of self-improvement (korsang tone eng, À¡Å‹àÃÉíÌâÜÃ) and must be developed by young teacher trainees. According to aPhounoy girl: “Through this education, I have to gor sang ton eng, as we will be the futureethnic teachers in our villages”. However, the self-improvement idea passed on to thestudents was based on their teachers’ judgment and their perceptions of the project students(i.e., as backward). For example, at the Luang Namtha Teacher’s Training College, thedirector told me: “Many girls who are between 14-16 change so fast. They can adapt to themodernity of Luang Namtha very quickly. After a few weeks at the college, I have witnessedthat those girls start wearing short blue denim skirts. They dress like many Tai Dam, TaiKhao, and Lue girls living in the main town of the province”. I asked what he thought washappening with those girls. He said: “It is because they have been spoiled due to theirrelatively well-paid scholarships from the project, and that Luang Namtha was a moderndream place for many ethnic minority girls, particularly the smart Hmong girls, wanting tomake a transition in and out of their villages where was nothing much going on”.Similar behavior was interpreted by GEMEU and LABEP consultants also as negative.In a study done by GEMEU in February 2007, one of the concerns that were expressed in thereport is:…the transition made by some female students is not in a good way after having beenliving in a bigger town [i.e. Luang Namtha]. These include their love affairs outsidethe college’s fence and [that they] spend their scholarship stipend on cosmetics andfashionable clothing to dress up and to look like those girls in town who show noprogress [referring to girls who have no stable jobs or work in the local bars] in theirlives at all. (GEMEU 2007:38)In other words, GEMEU was unhappy with their selected students’ manner of makingthe transition towards ‘civilization’ (i.e., modernity), which was different from the one thatthe project had planned for them. Thus it seemed these girls needed to be trained in selfimprovement,not because they were shy or less expressive or had low self-esteem, butbecause they were being spoiled by the project allowances.©M. Faming 2010 15

It is interesting to look at GEMEU’s, and the director’s, view of being ‘spoiled,’ as itseemed to him that the project itself was the spoiler. The pre-perception or assumption is thatethnic minorities are ‘poor’ and normally cannot afford ‘modernity’ (i.e., lipstick, short skirts,a hairdo, etc.) - during my fieldwork, people working for the project (from MOE to LuangNamtha Teacher’s College) told me without a pause that the project was for poor girls ofethnic minority background. This contradicted with the reality of a minority of selectedstudents, as many of the girls, as well as the boys, in the training project were better off thantheir peers in their own villages. This is not to say that they were richer than many rich ormiddle income ethnic Lao/Chinese/Vietnamese of Luang Prabang or Vientiane Capital.However, based on my observations, ethnic minority girls and boys who can make it throughgrade five in rural schools in Laos have parents who are relatively well to do. These parentsrequire little contribution of their children’s labor, while they have adequate financialresources to send them to school. When students from such families were selected by BEGP,the scholarship meant extra income that they did not have to ask for from their parents. WhenI interviewed some students from relatively rich (i.e., their parents owned a rice mill, or wererice traders, or had a deal with a Chinese agricultural company) Hmong and Phounoyfamilies on how they felt about their monthly allowance. They immediately told me that itwas barely enough for their living expenses. 12 However, it seems that such relatively well-offstudents represented almost half of the project students at Luang Namtha Teacher’s TrainingCollege - the rest of the project students seemed to have been from poor family backgrounds.The point to be made here is merely the assumption made by the project that the ‘poor’students were being ‘spoiled’ by the project allowances. One can see that some students werenot being ‘spoiled’ by the project allowances so much as by the fact that they had ‘rich’backgrounds. For those who were really poor, the allowances would not have been enoughfor them to buy makeup and denim, etc.At any rate, the ‘poor ethnic minority’ view of the teachers shows that they knew verylittle about the previous financial status of their students. Therefore, the teachers and directorsconcluded that the target group, ethnic minority girl students, was being ‘spoiled’ only by themoney from the project.Secondly, the director assumed that his students had been little exposed to‘modernity’. He told me that: “many girls know how to buy a mini skirt, which many female12 I observed that, like the allowances of students in the boarding schools for ethnic minorities in Khammouaneand Oudomxai provinces, the monthly allowances were not enough for them to survive without extra supportfrom their families in their villages.©M. Faming 2010 16

teachers in Laos are reluctant either to buy or wear, for cultural and financial reasons. Thesegirls seem to be exposed to the life in Luang Namtha too quickly”. This clearly shows thesense of agency that some project student girls had, beyond the director’s and the project’sexpectations, to make choices from different forms of modernity. Training the role modelsfor the next generation of ethnic minority girls can be read as involving an ideology, andsome students chose not to conform to it. The ‘cultural sensitivity’ thus seemed to fail, asteachers found that many project students were not as they had been told – after which theyjudged them to be spoiled and unqualified to be the role models for the next generation in theway that the project and teachers had hoped them to be.Attitude of an international advisor towards ethnic minority identityThe point to bring up here is related to the notion of the culture of consultancy indeveloping countries. That is, the international advisor’s concern for her ethnic minoritystudents, as ‘innocent’ and needing to be told that their ethnic identity and culture should bepreserved, demonstrates her perception of ethnic minorities in Laos as well as her solutions.There are many ways to understand this. On the one hand, one can assume that the advisormay have a feeling of the loss of ethnic identity from her personal awareness, as anAustralian, of the experience of Aborigines in Australia. 13 On the other hand, her perceptionof ‘innocence’ - that students need to be told what is ‘right’ for them - somehow reminds meof what Ferguson (1994) finds in his study of the agricultural development program inLesotho. In his study, he found that international consultants came to Lesotho with a preperceptionthat local people needed help with methods of raising cows for cash income. Withall the ‘right’ advice and the ‘right’ strategies, this agricultural project faced problems relatedto the fact that the villagers did not want to sell their cows, as cows meant wealth for mostvillage people. The point here is that the advisors to this Lesotho agricultural project feltsympathetic to the village people, who did not want to sell their cows for money. The money13 The LABEP project was funded by AusAid and the advisor and international consultants were mostlyAustralian nationals. I was told on various occasions (informal lunch, formal visit, formal interviews) by theLABEP advisor and consultants that the Lao ethnic minority education case was similar to that of theAborigines of Australia. I once was told by one of these consultants: “The Aborigines were treated badly in thepast. Young boys and girls were taken away from their homes and were put in the boarding schools. Many ofthem now grow up and have lost their ethnic identity. They are now as Australian as us. It’s pity. We have seenthat most young Aborigines do not know anything about their own tribes. It is a big concern for many people forfear of ethnic cleansing through this process of national education, which makes them forget and lose touchabout their ethnic identity. So, we (Australian government) try to preserve the Aborigine’s culture andlanguage”. (From an informal conversation with an Australian female consultant in charge of curriculum reform,15 September 2004)©M. Faming 2010 17

that these advisors assumed would bring ‘wealth’ to the villagers, however, meant trade, butnot ‘wealth’ or local social status. The local view of wealth was interpreted by these advisorswas that the villagers were ‘innocent’ and ‘less exposed’ to ‘modern’ economy. Fergusonviews the sympathy (related to the notion of innocence) of these advisors as ‘professionalism’;by which he means the ability to be rational despite one’s personal feelings (e.g., sympatheticones). To come back to the point made earlier in our case, a LABEP advisor who Iinterviewed may feel the need to make sense out of his/her personal feelings towards ethnicminority girls, so as to find a solution; and this is typical of consultancy culture (Stirrat 2000).Regardless of her being a professional under the influence of the culture of consultancy, herattitudes towards ethnic minorities in Laos still involved a perception of them as being‘vulnerable’, ‘innocent’ and ‘poor’.Project ImplicationsThe previous sections constitute an analysis of the project implementation, whichaimed to integrate and educate girls to be ‘Lao’, and ‘civilized’. This section looks at theoverall implications of the project.One implication is control, which is carried out on different levels. On one level, theproject controlled the quality of future ‘ethnic minority’ teachers. For example, the selectionprocess was a quality control apparatus. That is, the project selected only those with potentialwho were qualified candidates to be trained as ‘ethnic minority’ teachers. Only those whowere married or had a strong social tie to their home villages were highly considered forselection. The international advisor discussed above said: “The reason the project prefersmarried to single candidates is to be assured that students return to their home villages andteach”. However, some single young girls and boys were also selected for training. This wasbecause, according to the College Director, “there were not enough married girls who werewilling to leave their family duty as a wife and a mother”.Another form of control was that of control of mobility. That is, the selected studentswere to guarantee that they would return to their home villages and become teachers, andthey were closely monitored by the international on-site advisor to make sure that they did soafter graduation. This left little chance for students who wanted to engage in otherprofessions in other places rather than become teachers in their home villages.Some project graduate students told me that they felt uncomfortable being monitoredby the project to see if they would return home and teach. A Hmong student told me: “I©M. Faming 2010 18

not only a control mechanism over ethnic minority girls’ lives and their mobility in order toachieve the project goal of producing ethnic minority teachers for their own villages. It alsofails to treat the students equally, as we see that not all girls are given the same attention.Besides this failure to deliver ‘equality’ among students, it also failed to return allproject graduates back to their home villages. For example, pregnant students and those withchildren were to have only one choice - to work as teachers, and only in their home villages,which are known to be poor areas. Although these students were from better-off familybackgrounds, they found it hard to continue their lives in these ‘poor’ areas. as they couldmake more money in bigger towns. One of them said: “I do not mind teaching in my homevillage but I need to find an extra source of income to support my own family. I feel ashamedto rely on my parents’ money. To find an extra income, I have to be elsewhere (i.e., LuangNamtha main town, Luang Prabang, or Vientiane Capital). You know the teacher’s salary[i.e., 100 US dollars/month] is far too low to support all of us [all members of his family]”. 14This issue of pregnant and married couples or couples with small children moving outside thetarget sites assigned by the project and MOE was mentioned in the last GEMEU report,issued in February 2007. The report expresses no opinion on the issue, stating only that ‘thisis an important issue that needs a further study’ (pp: 43). According to some internal sources,“if the project admitted that they failed to meet a 100 per cent goal in sending the projectgraduates back to their home villages, people in charge would not be appointed for a projector a promotion”. 15 The GEMEU report avoided discussing this in further detail – if it haddone so, it would be an admission that many of the students did not, in fact, return home.However, we can see that a number of students in the project refused to do so, and/or madechoices in a different direction for social mobility than that planned and designed by theproject, implying partial failure of the project and of GEMEU, which aimed to be analternative ‘hope’ for girls of ethnic minorities.ConclusionAs we have seen, the project failed to bring ‘equality’ to girls and re-emphasized thereality of ‘inequality’. The selected students were privileged over non-selected ones, withwhom they shared their classrooms and teachers. Among the selected ones, some girls were14 This is from an informal conversation with the project final year students. This particular quote is from aHmong female student of Luang Namtha province. (14 March 2006).15 Anonymous from the GEMEU office.©M. Faming 2010 20

treated more special than others. The project was claimed to operate with cultural sensitivity,as t an understanding that ethnic minority girls needed such sensitivity in order to become‘civilized’. This was only a pre-perception of ethnic minority girls as shy, less-expressive,and of low self-esteem. The road towards the ‘self-improvement’ that their textbooks, and thecurriculum specifically designed for them, taught them to engage in, was lined with messagesgeared towards their becoming ‘Lao’. They provided certain types of knowledge - inparticular, how to read and write Lao language, and survival skills, such as being obedient tothe authority as well as ‘Laoization’ (e.g., adopting a Lao name) - as a channel for socialmobility. It thus repeated the national education for ethnic minorities that we have seen in theOudomxai and Phonesoung Schools, aiming to bring ethnic minorities more firmly undercentral authority so as to more easily channel their social mobility - i.e., their mobility ws tobe within mainstream ethnic Lao culture and society.Equality is thus hard to reach, and ethnic minority women and girls remain a target fornational integration into an ‘ethnic Lao culture and society’ in which they are always labeledwith the double status of poor and backward because of their ethnicity.©M. Faming 2010 21

MOE (Lao Ministry of Education). 1999. Agreements and regulations for the establishmentof the Girls and Ethnic Minorities Education Unit (GEMEU), Vientiane: Laos.______. 2000a. Lao Education Law. Vientiane, Laos.______. 2000b. The Education Strategic Vision: A draft discussion paper prepared for the4Education Donors’ Meeting, (Vientiane: Laos).______. 2002. Enrolment rate of ethnic minority students in 6 provinces of the Lao PDR,prepared by BEGP, ADB Loan No. 1621-Lao (SF), Vientiane: Laos.______. 2006. Gender and Ethnic Groups Development Plan: Lao PDR. ADB: Manila.NRIES. 2005. Lao Language Grade 2 or Pasa Lao Po Song (ÑàÅàÖà×Îç 2) in Lao. NRIES:National Research Institution for Education and Sciences, MOE, Vientiane, Laos.UNESCO. 2003. Gender and Education for All: The Leap to Equality. Paris: UNESCOUNICEF. 2005. Gender achievements and prospects in education: the Gap report part one.New York: UNICEF.©M. Faming 2010 24