[Working Paper]
Exploring Examination Inequalities in Burundi: Implications for Post-Conflict Development Trajectories.
Exploring Examination Inequalities in Burundi: Implications for Post-Conflict Development Trajectories.
[Working Paper]
Playing the ‘double game’: exams, exclusion, and interethnic violence in Burundi’s education system from 1966-1993
Education and political conflict are intricately related: unequal education reflects unequal political systems, and unequal education systems contribute to unequal politics (King, 2014). To respond, we need to understand how macro-level political economy conflicts shape individual, micro-level experiences in schooling, and how the consequent micro-level experiences scale up to grievances and conflict. Burundi, with its exclusive political institutions and education, represents an important case for understanding these interactions. This paper presents the results of interviews with twelve Burundians about how they experienced and perceived ethnicity and politics in their schooling during the build-up to the 1993-2005 civil war. I argue that education served as a mechanism through which Burundian state policies contributed to tangible and perceived social hierarchies and perceptions of exclusion based on ethnic inequalities. This occurred both through proxies used for ethnic identity in schools (though ostensibly ethnic identity did not exist), and through the exclusive nature of national exams at the time, which promoted members of Tutsi minority at the expense of the majority Hutus. This study has implications for understanding how individual-level grievances in education may manifest as grievances against the state in pre-war contexts, and for understanding how such grievances could be overcome in education post-violence.
Playing the ‘double game’: exams, exclusion, and interethnic violence in Burundi’s education system from 1966-1993
Education and political conflict are intricately related: unequal education reflects unequal political systems, and unequal education systems contribute to unequal politics (King, 2014). To respond, we need to understand how macro-level political economy conflicts shape individual, micro-level experiences in schooling, and how the consequent micro-level experiences scale up to grievances and conflict. Burundi, with its exclusive political institutions and education, represents an important case for understanding these interactions. This paper presents the results of interviews with twelve Burundians about how they experienced and perceived ethnicity and politics in their schooling during the build-up to the 1993-2005 civil war. I argue that education served as a mechanism through which Burundian state policies contributed to tangible and perceived social hierarchies and perceptions of exclusion based on ethnic inequalities. This occurred both through proxies used for ethnic identity in schools (though ostensibly ethnic identity did not exist), and through the exclusive nature of national exams at the time, which promoted members of Tutsi minority at the expense of the majority Hutus. This study has implications for understanding how individual-level grievances in education may manifest as grievances against the state in pre-war contexts, and for understanding how such grievances could be overcome in education post-violence.
