All rooms are equipped with an overhead projector
Rooms C, D, E, F, G and H (H only on Saturday): slide projector (framed slides, carrousel. There are extra carrousels available to set up your presentation in advance)
Rooms C, D, M, N, O, U and Committee Room 2: beamer to connect your laptop. You have to bring you own laptop. (If you want to use your Apple notebook, please contact us, as it may be incompatible.)
Rooms C, T and U: VCR
Programme
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History of Education and the Making of Identity: The Case of Southern Thailand
| Once belonged to a flourishing trading centre, known in Europe as the Kingdom of Pattani, the area which now constitutes the southern provinces of Yala, Satun, Narathiwat, and Pattani, became an administrative part of Thailand following the agreements made between Britain and Thailand in the early 20th century. The 'region' is home to over four millions Muslim ethnic minorities of Thailand. It is a geographical site with long history of political violence where the last insurgency was believed to have been abated in the early 1980s. However, since January 2004, political disruption has resurfaced with clear indication of the sharp rise in violence against governmental officials and non-Muslim communities. The Thai authority, convincing that political violence is linked to the plan of 'separation', has retaliated lobal mobs and strikes with brute forces. Over 500 lives, resulting from a series of battles between the 'state' and the 'insurgents', have hitherto been numbered. At the time of writing, violence continues to escalate in the deep south, turning the region to become the most dangerous zone of Thailand. The Thai government is yet to find appropriate policy to deal with this situation.
Scholars of the Thai studies have pointed out that one of the aspects in which the southern violence can be understood is through an assessment of Thailand's development policies. 'Uneven development'may predominantly appear to be economic matter but national imbalanced development is a long socially determined process which requires broader socio-cultural and political understandings. My paper examines the making of 'minorities' through the early education policies of Thailand. The Thai modern education system was established in the second half of 19th century as part of the rapid process of 'nation-building'. Education was the chief instrument in inventing the 'Thai identity', a concept which was introduced by and for the (consolidation of the) Thai nation-state. Through the uses of compulsory education which excessively emphasized identity in reference to the three institutions: nation, monarchy, and national religion (Buddhism), the Thai common culture has successfully been assimilated nation-wide. However, the Thai state's insufficient understanding about the 'south' and its obsession to put control over the Chinese schools; the site of potential threat to the sovereignty of Thai monrachy at the time, subsequently created 'policy externality'. The use of yawi as language of instruction in local Islamic pandok schools, and the Thai government's decision to leave pandok out of the central administrative system have brought unexpected outcomes. Pandok, rather than modern Thai schools, slowly emerged as the social avenue where the Thai-Muslims have come to socialize and stregthen self-identity. Outside their community, nevertheless, the inability to speak, read, and write central Thai language means a large number of Thai-Muslims did not have opportunities to take part in the processes of Thailand's modern socio-economic development.
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