Basic Education High School No. 9 Mandalay Explained

Basic Education High School No. 9 Mandalay
Native Name:အမှတ် (၉) အခြေခံပညာအထက်တန်းကျောင်း မန္တလေး
Street:24th st. × 86th st.
City:Mandalay
State:Mandalay Region
Country:Myanmar
Former Name:St. Peter's High School
Type:Public
Founder:De La Salle Brothers
Principal:Ohnmar Kyi (since 2017)
Staff:over 35 (2019-2020)
Grades:K-10
Gender:Both male and female
Age Range:5-17
Enrollment:over 550 (2019-2020)
Language:Burmese
Campus Size:6.3 acres

Basic Education High School No. 9 Mandalay (Burmese: အခြေခံ ပညာအထက်တန်းကျောင်း အမှတ် (၉) မန္တလေး; formerly, St. Peter's High School and State High School No. 9 Mandalay, commonly known as St. Peter's, SHS 9 Mandalay and BEHS 9 Mandalay (အထက (၉) မန္တလေး), is a public high school in downtown Mandalay, Myanmar.

Known during the British colonial days and parliamentary days of Burma as St. Peter's English High School, the Roman Catholic parochial school was the top school of choice for the children of the elite from Mandalay and Upper Burma.[1] Many of the country's who's who in those days were alumni of St. Peter's.[2] Many professionals and top-level leaders of Aung San Suu Kyi's government from Mandalay are also alumni of St. Peter's.

History

St. Peter's High School (1897–1965)

The school was founded as St. Peter's High School by the De La Salle Brothers,[3] a Roman Catholic order on 1 May 1897.[4] It was the first La Sallian high school founded in Upper Burma, and the third in the whole Burma after St. Patrick's in Mawlamyine and St. Paul's in Rangoon.

St. Peter's High School was started teaching over 80 students. In 1924, there were 11 teachers and 350 students, including 130 resident students.

Brother Director John managed the school for 18 years until he moved to St. Paul's in 1915. The swimming pool was constructed during his administration. Brother Clementian served as Brother Director from 1933 to 1948 for the first time, and from 1950 to 1956 for the second time. In 1952, Primary School was opened at the two-storey hall (now Nyana Hall) on the left side of the east gate. In 1955, a new Chapel and Study Hall were extended at the three-storey building. In 1957, during the administration of Brother Director Peter, a single-storeyed Kindergarten Hall was built on the southern campus of the school. It was reconstructed as a two-storey building (now Thiha Hall) in 1962–1963.

Since it was opened, the school accepted boys only for some time.The all-boys school was among the few early schools that educated the children of the country's British officers, the Anglo-Burmese, the Anglo-Indians and the wealthy Burmese.[5] The language of instruction was mainly English in the early days, and bi-lingual for some classes in the later days. There were also some Hebrew classes for the Jewish.[6]

State High School No. 9 Mandalay (1965-1983)

General Ne Win's military government nationalized the school in April 1965, and changed the name to State High School No. 9 Mandalay (SHS 9 Mandalay). The primary language of instruction became Burmese. The school, which used to have a "Roll of Honour" for its outstanding students, steadily lost significance, partly due to the new requirement to attend nearby schools as much as possible.

Campus

BEHS 9 is one of the few high schools in Mandalay with a sizable campus, covering perhaps 75% of the entire city square block. The compound of St. Michael's Church Mandalay, west of the school, takes up the other 25% of the block. (The school is bounded by 86th Shwetachaung road to the east and 87th street to the west.) Shwe Kyee Myin Pagoda, Basic Education High School No. 10 Mandalay (formerly, Diocesan High School), Basic Education High School No. 8 Mandalay (formerly, St. Joseph's Convent School), Basic Education High School No. 11 Mandalay, Basic Education High School No. 4 Mandalay, and Basic Education High School No. 1 Mandalay are located in the vicinity of the school.[7]

During the World War II, when the school was transformed into a hospital, St. Peter's High School was reopened at the Norman school campus (now BEHS 4 Mandalay). Its campus moved to its original and current place in 1952.

The current school, BEHS 9, is open in the gated southern campus since the northern campus, inclusive of three-storey building, is donated to the Department of Basic Education, Ministry of Education in Myanmar.

The gated campus consists of:

(It is the Main Hall)

Programs

The school offers classes from KG to Grade 11 in accordance with the syllabus and curriculums prescribed by the Department of Basic Education under the Ministry of Education in Myanmar.

School library

The school library is open during one-hour lunch break. Librarian and members of school library committee (teachers) manage and maintain the library systematically in line with the instructions of the principal. Member cards for students are free of charge. There are hundreds of books, inclusive of encyclopedias, written in both English and Burmese.

Labs

Both language and experimental science labs are available. Chemistry, physics and biology labs have enough teaching and learning aids for highschool students. Students have to join science labs when necessary for their studies, maybe once or twice a month.

Co-curriculum activities

Co-curriculum activities such as morals, life skills, arts, music and physical training are available for all levels of students.

Sports

Having sufficient facilities and good training, BEHS 9 Mandalay is well known for its students winning medals in basic education level tournaments every year.

Clubs and activities

BEHS 9 Mandalay has both academic and extra-curricular clubs and activities according to each year's academic calendar.

School council

See also: School Council.

As all public schools in Myanmar are required to form School Council, BEHS 9 Mandalay forms its one with five houses— Anawratha, Kyansittha, Bayintnaung, Alaungpaya and Bandula— every year. The school council consists of the head (principal), five leading students from the 9th Standard, five leading teachers from each team, six representatives of six standards (Grade 6 to Grade 11) and one secretary from 10th standard. Each team has to do some chores, for the cleanliness of its class and the school, in group each day before the school begins its classes. In the last period of each week on Friday, all five teams work in pairs for the maintenance of the green environment in their respective areas. All of their work mark as scores for each team. According to the sequence of the sores, in the first day of a school week, order in column of their teams are shown. The greater the higher.

The four stars in the badge of BEHS 9 Mandalay represents the houses of school council which were originally four houses.

Fife and drum corps

St. Peter's boys band once was the most popular in Mandalay. Many awards were achieved. However the band was dissolved for some reasons.

In July 2019, school alumni co-ordinated with the principal, and formed new fife and drum corps with the current students. From August 2019 onwards, music lessons were started for BEHS 9 Mandalay's band.

Waso ceremony

On the full moon day of Waso each year, BEHS 9 Mandalay offers Waso flowers at nearby Shwe Kyee Myin pagoda, and Waso robes are offered.

Uniform

See also: School uniforms in Myanmar.

Like all public schools in Myanmar, students of BEHS 9 Mandalay have to wear the school uniform at all times. There are two sets of uniform— one from KG to 4th Standard, and another more traditional one from the 5th Standard to 10th Standard. But all uniforms are of the same colour— a white shirt or blouse, with a green garment for the torso.

Principals

BEHS 9 Mandalay

  1. Hla
  2. Nyan Tun
  3. May May Tin
  4. Than Hnit
  5. Khin Nyunt Yee
  6. Yi Yi May
  7. San Yu Mar (2009–2014)
  8. Mya Mya Than (2014–2017)
  9. Ohnmar Kyi (2017–present)

Notable alumni

Civil and military politicians

width=20%Namewidth=50%Notability
Zaw Myint MaungChief minister of Mandalay regional government[8]
Ye LwinMandalay mayor; Mandalay regional minister of city development affairs; chairman of Mandalay City Development Committee (MCDC)
Than WinMember of Amyotha Hluttaw;[9] former rector of University of Medicine Mandalay[10] [11]
Khin Maung HtayDeputy speaker of Mandalay regional Hluttaw[12]
Maw ThanUnion Auditor General
Lieutenant-general Soe HtutUnion minister of home affairs; former commander of central military region
Brigadier-general Aung Zaw OoTatmadaw member of Amyotha Hluttaw[13]
Colonel Aung Kyaw MyoTatmadaw member of Pyithu Hluttaw[14]
Lieutenant-colonel Aye ShweTatmadaw member of Pyithu Hluttaw[15]
Kyaw Myint (physician)Former member of Pyithu Hluttaw; former minister of health; former rector of University of Medicine 1, Yangon
KarFormer minister of education; former rector of University of Yangon[16]
Major Phoe KunFormer minister of education and health during pre-independent days; former Burma ambassador to Thailand (1963) and to Soviet (1968)

Professionals, artists and businessmen

width=20%Namewidth=50%Notability
S.N.GoenkaBurmese-Indian Vipassanā training teacher[17]
Nyi Pu LayAuthor (famous art work: A Light Sweet Honey Dew on the Sharpened Edge of a Blade)[18]
Maung Moe ThuAuthor[19]
Khine HtooSinger[20]
Kyaw WinFirst Burmese actor who won Myanmar Academy Award for Best Male Artiste in 1952
Edward Michael Law-YoneJournalist; author
Maung Maung TaActor
Inzali Mg MgSinger
U ThaungJournalist
U Bhone (Chemistry)Writer
Than Myat SoeSinger
Ah Yee Taung LaphetBurmese laphet product company

External links

  1. De La Salle Christian Brothers https://web.archive.org/web/20100203110523/http://www.lasalle2.org/english/english.php
  2. De La Salle Christian Brothers, Province of Great Britain http://www.delasalle.org.uk/
  3. Brief history of the Lasallian Institute http://www.lasalle.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1&Itemid=56&lang=en
  4. Catholic Encyclopedia article http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08056a.htm Mentioned about the school in Mandalay in this article, Institute of the Brothers of the Christian Schools under the heading Schools of Europe and the East.
  5. Works by the Institute of the Brothers of the Christian Schools http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/authors/c#a3694 at Project Gutenberg
  6. Old and recent pictures of Brother Director Felix of St. Peter’s and St. Paul, Burma / Myanmar
  7. St. Peter’s High School or No. (9) S H S (now BEHS) Mandalay
  8. St.Peter’s High School Mandalay Homage invitation, list of teachers and students 2011
  9. Face Book of No 9 SHS (BEHS) St. Peter's Mandalay

Notes and References

  1. Book: Ṅve tā rī maggajaṅʻʺ . April 1966 . Ūʺ Ēi Moṅʻ. . my.
  2. Book: Who's who in Health and Medicine in Myanmar: A Biographical Dictionary of Men and Women who Have Contributed to the Development of Health and Medicine in Myanmar Since Independence (1948) . 2005 . Ministry of Health, Union of Myanmar . en.
  3. News: အတိတ်၏ စာသင်ခန်းများထဲက စည်းကမ်းကောင်းသော ဘရာသာများ . The Myanmar Times . 18 March 2020.
  4. According to the District of Rangoon, Brothers' houses 1860-1960, published in Rangoon Gazette Limited, St Peter's High School, Mandalay, Burma was founded on 1 May 1897.
  5. Book: Myaing . Wai Wai . A Journey in Time: Family Memoirs: (Burma, 1914-1948) . 2005 . iUniverse . 978-0-595-35651-5 . en.
  6. News: St. Peter's English High School, Mandalay, Myanmar (Burma) Archive Diarna.org . archive.diarna.org.
  7. News: "မ န္တ လေးကို ဖြတ် သန်း ခဲ့ သော ငှက် နှစ် ကောင်" (ဦး မာ ဃ နဲ ကို ပေါက် (မန္တလေး) ပူး တွ ဲ တင် ဆက် ခြင်း) . Myanmar Gazette News Media Forum Network . 31 December 2013.
  8. News: နှစ် (၂၀) နီးပါးထောင်ကျခဲ့တဲ့ မန္တလေးတိုင်း ဝန်ကြီးချုပ်ရဲ့ နိုင်ငံရေး ဘဝခရီးကြမ်း . Blacker . 2 July 2020 . 21 October 2020 . 26 June 2022 . https://web.archive.org/web/20220626021228/https://blackotfb.com/wingikcbwakhayi/ . dead .
  9. News: ပါမောက္ခဒေါက်တာသန်းဝင်း အမျိုးသားလွှတ်တော်. www.amyotha.hluttaw.mm. 2020-10-23. 2017-10-24. https://web.archive.org/web/20171024144008/http://pyidaungsu.hluttaw.mm/members/56c561623f609e2b2c8b4572. dead.
  10. News: "အပြောင်းအလဲလိုပြီ"လို့ မန္တလေး ဆေးတက္ကသိုလ် ပါမောက္ခချုပ်ဆို . Mizzima Myanmar News and Insight . en.
  11. News: ပါမောက္ခ ဦးသန်း၀င်း . ဆေးတက္ကသိုလ် မန္တလေး ကျောင်းသားဟောင်းများအသင်း . my.
  12. Web site: Home . mandalayregionhluttaw.gov.mm . 2020-10-23 . 2020-02-20 . https://web.archive.org/web/20200220161624/http://mandalayregionhluttaw.gov.mm/%E1%80%92%E1%80%AF%E1%80%90%E1%80%AD%E1%80%9A%E1%80%A1%E1%80%80%E1%80%BC%E1%80%AD%E1%80%99%E1%80%BA%E1%80%9C%E1%80%BD%E1%80%BE%E1%80%90%E1%80%BA%E1%80%90%E1%80%B1%E1%80%AC%E1%80%BA/ . dead .
  13. News: အောင်ဇော်ဦး အမျိုးသားလွှတ်တော် . www.amyotha.hluttaw.mm.
  14. News: ဗိုလ်မှူးကြီးအောင်ကျော်မျိုး (တပ်မတော်သားပြည်သူ့လွှတ်တော်ကိုယ်စားလှယ်) Pyithu Hluttaw . pyithuhluttaw.gov.mm .
  15. News: ဒုတိယဗိုလ်မှူးကြီးအေးရွှေ (တပ်မတော်သား ပြည်သူ့လွှတ်တော်ကိုယ်စားလှယ်) Pyithu Hluttaw . pyithu.hluttaw.mm . 2020-10-23 . 2020-10-22 . https://web.archive.org/web/20201022062725/https://pyithu.hluttaw.mm/node/12549 . dead .
  16. https://drkokogyi.wordpress.com/2011/05/14/former-education-minister-u-kar-is-a-burmese-muslim/ Former Education Minister U Kar
  17. News: ဝိပဿနာဆရာကြီး ဦးဂိုအင်ကာ ကွယ်လွန် . VOA . my.
  18. News: အတိတ်နှင့်ပစ္စုပ္ပန်ကို ချိန်ထိုးကြည့်ခြင်း . Real Power Online Media (Myanmar) . 15 October 2020.
  19. News: Save The Library in Myanmar Author. မောင်မိုးသူ . savethelibrarymyanmar.org.
  20. News: ဂန္တဝင် ရွှေလည်တိုင်သို့ တမ်းချင်း . WE . en . 2020-10-21 . 2020-10-22 . https://web.archive.org/web/20201022142728/http://we.com.mm/detail/719 . dead .