This paper uses the case of Eritrea to explore tensions between education and militarisation as forms of everyday state-making and examine how teachers constitute the state in the process of navigating these tensions. In 2003 Eritrea merged educational and military institutions. Teachers responded to the new policies by alternately joining in with students' tacit resistance to them, and engaging in strict, often violent, measures to reclaim control and exert 'teacher sovereignty' over schools. Teachers' intermingling of resistant humour and foot-dragging with violence and authoritarianism suggests that teachers, as agents of the state in Eritrea and elsewhere, may resist militarisation yet also reproduce authoritarian violence. While this policy, which effectively merged military and educational institutions was unique to Eritrea, the disjuncture between education and militarisation exposed by this case illuminates the complex role that schools and teachers play in state-making and nuances our understanding of education, the state and armed conflict.