Alternative Secondary School - Thailand

International Eco-learning Community:

High School for Marginalised Youth in Southeast Asia

• Author: Pracha Hutanuwatr

Background

The Children Village School (Moo Bahn Dek) under the Children Foundation has been running for 30 years as one of the most successful alternative primary schools for marginalised children of Thailand. Actually in a BBC documentary it was called the best school for the poor in the world. The core principles are from Summer Hill School from the UK incorporating some Buddhist philosophy. With decades of experience we are now planning to extend the educational level into secondary (grade 7 -12 age 13-18). We would like to call it Youth Village School (Moo Ban Yuvabodhijon). Some of the students in this new school will be from the Children Village School, but we will also include other marginalised youth from our neighbouring countries whose parents are immigrants and migrant workers in Thailand as well as youth from ethnic nationals long the Thai border who don’t quite belong to any country.

Situation Analysis

1. Of the children from Children Village School: when they have finished the last year of the school (6th grade age 13), the options are either to go to the government secondary school or go out to the world and work to earn their living. Either way is dissatisfactory; the government secondary school ethos is mainstream which means competition; climbing social ladders, emphasis on memorising and classroom study, etc., all these values contradict what they learn from Children Village School where cooperation, contentment and diverse creative learning are emphasised. The result is often internal conflict in the young adults which continues once they leave school and go to work or to university and after. They have the dilemma of adapting to the unhealthy values of the mainstream society or to hold fast to the good ones they learned from CVS. Only a few strong ones can do the latter often living an alternative way of life and working in the NGO movement. Most however opt for the former with difficulty because they are not prepared for it. Of course some are more ‘successful’ than others, but a lot are less so.

2. As for those who go out into the world and earn their living; they have difficulties because they are too young and don’t have family back up like most of the children their age. It is true that more than half of the children in Thailand who finish primary school cannot afford to go to secondary school, and have to work but they always start with the family’s work or business or connections until they are more grown-up and able to be on their own. Most children from CVS who came from a very deprived background don’t have this family support.

3. We strongly think that when we have a secondary school, these kids will have 6 more years to be better prepared either to go out into the world to earn their living or to continue higher education. One aspect of this secondary school that will be different from the primary school of CVS where a lot of time and energy is used for healing the wounds from early childhood abuse is that the students will be seriously prepared to do well in a healthy and wholesome way in the tough situation of their life reality. This will be a school for cultivation of new leadership from the poor and marginalised communities.

4. We plan to extend this kind of education to the youth from the immigrants and migrant workers as well as those from ethnic nationals partly because some of this area is close to CVS and partly because they are some of the most marginalised youth of the region. Among the 4 countries of Burma, Cambodia Laos and Thailand there is a big gap of accumulation of wealth. Thailand’s GDP is more than 90% of the 4 countries GDP put together. Hence a huge number of economic migrant workers from the other 3 countries in Thailand, officially about a million but there are likely to be many more. There are also a lot of political immigrants or refugees because of the unsettled political situations especially in Burma. Children of these displaced people are in a very difficult position: fragmented education or none at all, unsettled accommodation, lack of basic needs from time to time. When young people from these communities come to our school, they will have a chance to prepare themselves for their real situations and return to be a resourceful member of their communities instead of getting education that will drain them away from their people.

5. The ethnic nationals or ethnic minorities in these 4 countries are not in a good situation. Politically they are dominated by bigger ethnic groups who control and govern machinery. These elite couldn’t care less about the identity of other ethnicities and regard them as inferior and backward. The mainstream education system often uproots people from the smaller ethnicities from their language and tradition thus creating a basic alienated mentality where you despise who you really are. Young people from these communities will definitely benefit from our secondary school in terms of gaining self-respect of who you are, skills to earn your own living, and leadership skills and more well rounded training to be a mature young adult going back to their community as more aware new generation leaders.

Target Groups: Children from the age of 12-20 who have finished primary school education and have basic literacy and numeric skills from the following groups;

• 1.Thai Children of deprived background from Moo Ban Dek.
• 2.Children with Burmese, Laos, Cambodian citizenship whose parents are migrant workers or refugees in Siam.
• 3.Children without citizenship along the Thai border.
• 4.Deprived Children of ethnic nationals in SEA.

Aim

To provide children from the target groups with healthy confidence and self esteem, leadership qualities, skills to earn a living, a sustainable perspective to serve communities and nature, spiritual maturity and the ability to continue the learning process in the next steps of their life in whatever situation they are in by making available to them an appropriate eco learning community education.

Outcomes

25 children will graduate at high school level each year with abovementioned qualities (after year 6 of the project) and will be able to:

• 1.express ideas critically and fairly by writing to a standard for local publications, speaking in public or other means of communication
• 2.think, speak and act creatively, positive and healthily
• 3.earn a living by practical skills they learnt
• 4.express their deep concern about basic human rights, social justice and sustainable environment
• 5.work and play as a team as well as an individual
• 6.express themselves artistically at least in one way
• 7.survive healthily or even in tough situations; enjoy challenges in life
• 8.look after oneself in terms of physical and mental health
• 9.organise people especially youth to do constructive activities
• 10.articulate the best aspects of their own spiritual traditions from their daily practice and occasional retreat

(Please see below - Appendix II Expected Outcomes and how to achieve them)

Educational Philosophy

Living is education

Education is not what is going on in the classroom or at the training course. It happens naturally all the time as we live our lives. So in the school an aspect of learning is in daily activities such as cooking, clothing, playing, sleeping, preventive and curative healthcare, developing a balance and healthy habits in daily life. The contribution of a teacher is that we create a process to reflect on the experiences, especially together with other students. This reflecting together helps draw lessons learned from the experiences in a systematic way. We also discuss how to apply these lessons in other situations. So function of a teacher is to help students think clearly and systematically about what might have been unsystematic and unclear before.

The process is not new. Actually this is a universal way human beings learned. Forest dwellers and indigenous societies don’t tend to develop ideas into elaborate theory rather they will record their findings in songs, poems and stories that transmit from generation to generation orally.

In this way of looking at education, we do not perceive villagers or elders in the villages who cannot not read or write as uneducated. They are educated through experience and traditional culture and together this has the capacity to make sense of the experiences they have gone through. We want to encourage our students to learn this kind of timeless wisdom from traditional communities and incorporate it into their life and work. This will ensure that the students are rooted in local culture and tradition hence more stable and protected from alienation.

Making decisions is education:

Without making decisions we do not really learn anything significantly. The most important part of the participatory learning process is that students need many opportunities to make meaningful decisions and draw lessons learnt from them. This is the crux of our holistic learning. Decision making in important issues will make the students learn actively and take responsibility which will be very different from listening, copying and memorising things that may not be relevant to real life situations. This way of learning is very similar to real life situations where making decisions, including wrong decisions and learning from them is how we mature in life. From this point of view, sitting in the classroom for 12 or 16 years or more without making enough relevant decisions is such a waste of time in our life span. It is important for teachers/facilitators to remember that students have the right to make different decisions than the teacher. In other words, they are allowed to make possible wrong decisions from the point of view of the teachers and learn from them. In this way students will have a lot of self-motivation for learning.

For a person to grow up with a balance of awareness between individual and community needs there must be a good balance between the individual decisions and group decisions so that both personal and community responsibility are learned. Likewise the process of drawing lessons learnt can be both from individual and group experiences so that they learn to balance personal and group opinion and wisdom.

The most important outcome of this approach is empowerment - When students have a chance to learn through decision-making, the important outcome is self-respect and self-confidence. This confidence is vital of our target groups who are the underdogs of society. On top of that mainstream society, media and education always make ordinary people feel that they are not good enough, underdeveloped and uncivilized. All these forces result in loss of confidence, helplessness and alienation; a mentality conductive to consumerism. Education for new leadership of marginalized communities needs to nurture and restore self-respect and self-confidence among these people so that they can actively look after themselves and their community. This is the meaning of empowerment. People are no longer submissive. They are no longer objects to be pushed around by the elite, even the so-called development elite. They are the subjects of their own destiny.

Relationships are education

It is not always easy for the teachers to share power with students. Like wealth, power is very tempting and far more attractive than wealth for some. Teachers can feel threatened if students are united and make decisions differently than they would make themselves. This is especially true if students present different decisions in an unfriendly way. This may make the teachers lose face. A big issue in some societies is respecting teachers. Spiritual cultivation and practice is crucial for the critical self-awareness of both teachers and students. A teacher may teach and students may learn the concept of sharing power but can hardly do it themselves.

However, this is a very important step in rebuilding a healthy society where power is shared more fairly and less abused. It is only through a new kind of power relation between parents and children, teacher and students, elder and younger generations, that a genuine kind of democratic society is possible. This doesn’t necessarily lead to chaotic and antagonistic relations as we see in some modern societies where the generation gap is a real issue. We want to create mutual respect of the old and the young. It means seeing the value in oneself and each other among people of different generations with compassion and kindness. In this sense relationship is education. Students learn to share power through a power-shared relationship with the teachers. Likewise they learn to be compassionate and kind by compassionate and kind relationships with teachers.

Training the mind in wholesome and healthy thinking is education

All Asian and ancient traditions have developed meditation of one kind or another as part of the training of the heart and mind and as a crux of education. Unhealthy and unwholesome thoughts are harmful to oneselves and others. In a modern setting, these are not only allowed and given legitimacy but also encouraged and stimulated. Greed, competition, ego-assertion and anger are seen as vital needs to motivate a living. In contrast, these are regarded as poisons and unhealthy in Asian spiritual traditions. For humans to live a good life, generosity, compassion, tolerance, wisdom and non-self are the qualities that human beings need to cultivate to curb the negative thoughts mentioned above. The younger one is trained in this mind and heart cultivation the better chance to live a healthy adult life and become a healthy member of society. There are all sort of forms of meditation that can be adapted to teach young people, yoga, tai chi, martial arts, vision quest, voluntary homeless wondering, cycling, running and listening to music on top of traditional sitting and walking meditation. It can be enjoyable and interesting for young people.

Restraining oneself from harming other beings is education

However, training the mind and heart alone is not enough. When we are motivated by negative and unhealthy thinking, sometimes we harm ourselves and others easily. We need self-restraint not to harm ourselves and others. Likewise, this training needs to be started young so it becomes a habit not to harm. Others in the Asian tradition include animals and plants. In modern society, harm is inherent in the form of social injustice at a structural level such as consumerism and nationalism and other things. To combat this traditional Sila (precepts) needs to be redefined and reinterpreted to make them relevant to present and future times. Students who are young adults can participate in this discussion of redefining and reinterpreting. Training in self-restraint also manifests in the form of democratic living together. Rules and regulations in the community come from everyone thinking and reflection together. All have a say in making decisions about how is the best way to live together without harming each other.

Holistic Education involves training in heart, head and hands

From the above mentioned principles it is not difficult to see that our education encompass all aspects of life. Put simply, our emphasis is not head centred thinking, memorising, reasoning although critical thinking is an important part of our learning process. This goes side by side with training the heart to be compassionate, caring, generous, loving justice, calm and clear as well practical skills for survival in a tough situation where most students come from. In this sense reading, writing and arithmetic are just tools for education; they are not education in itself. Literacy again is a tool for education but it is also often abused in the sense that a large part of literacy in the world today is used to un-educate people.

• (Please see below – Appendix I Philosophy and its application)

Sketch of curriculum Contents

Core Subjects

• Knowing Oneself
• Knowing Society
• Knowing Nature
• Knowing Beauty
• Knowing Love
• Knowing Knowledge

Specialised Subjects

• Bamboo/wood Craft
• Sustainable Agriculture
• Ceramics
• Carpentry
• Mechanics
• Community Business
• Computer
• Construction
• Sustainable Tourism
• And more

Learning and Teaching Approach

Approaches we encourage	Approaches we try to avoid
a. Holistic, inter-related, inter-disciplinary; head, heart and hands are seriously taken into consideration, hence hidden potential revealed and blossoms	a. Head Oriented, compartmentalised, students are one-sidedly developed, hence many potentials hidden
b. Dialogue, teacher/students are good friends in learning; student-centered; subjects relevant to students needs; students are actively participating in learning by making important decisions	b. Authoritarian, teacher- centered; teachers know all & talk a lot; subjects decided by some central authority; students are passively taught.
c. Team learning; cooperation; generosity	c. Individualism; competition; selfishness
d. Traditional culture & spirituality are important parts of education	d. Uprooting from traditional culture & spirituality
e. Empowerment, healthy confidence, humbleness; being content, ready to serve others, hopeful and happy	e. Inflicting inferiority complex, wrong pride & fake confidence; ambitious; un-contented in life; always climbing social ladders, hopelessness and despair
f. Aim primarily to promote the growth of healthy human quality	f. Aim primarily to produce employees, technicians.
g. Self-education in real experiences of life & lifelong learning	g. Education confined mostly to classroom
h. Inter-related / interdisciplinary	h. Compartmentalized
i. Giving prime importance to critical thinking with fairness	i. Overemphasis in memorizing
j. Integrated theory and practice	j. Overemphasis on theory
k. Emphasis on learning by doing projects together	k. Overemphasis on learning in the classroom and from books

Activity Plan

(8 year plan)

Year 1

• 1st Half
• Total Pax: 2

Activities	Comments	Facilities	Paid Staff
Visionary Meeting Needs Assessment Eco Design Plan: bioregional mapping landscape design eco-infrastructure plan eco building design Recruit 3 teachers 2 studio masters 1 logistic person Training using participatory approach and therapeutic education Potential is revealed and blossoms	People who have a common aspiration to make this school happen have input into vision & founders group formed including consultation with target groups Alternative and appropriate technology used e.g. reed bed sewage, wind and solar power etc. All teachers will have some therapeutic skills and some with more experience.	Natural wild Woodland	Director and Administrator

• 2nd Half
• Total Pax: 8

Activities	Comments	Facilities	Paid Staff
Curriculum Design Landscaping/infrastructure completed building begins Recruit 30 students	Phase one of building will provide modest accommodation, classroom for 25 students & staff plus one or two vocational workshops	1 learning hall 2 big houses for 30 students and 2 teachers 6 smaller houses for staff 1 Agriculture studio 1 Construction studio	3 teachers 2 studio masters 1 logistic person

Year 2

• Total Pax: 8/30

Activities	Comments	Facilities	Paid Staff
Start teaching Agriculture learning centre starts Construction learning centre starts Construction work continues Recruit 30 new students 3 teachers 2 vocational workshop masters 1 Visiting centre manager Evaluate and develop curriculum	By end of year 2: accommodation ready for 25 more students from year 2 onwards students will participate in construction as vocational learning staff recruited and trained for year three	By the end of year 2: 2 vocational studios 1 ecology visiting centre 2 big houses for 30 students and 2 teachers 2 houses for studio masters

Year 3

• Total Pax: 14/60

Activities	Comments	Facilities	Paid Staff
2 groups of students running Ceramic and Batic studio start Ecological education visiting centre(with café and craft shop) starts Construction continues New Recruits 30students 3 teachers 2 workshop masters 1 conference facility manager Evaluate and develop curriculum		By the end of year 3: 2 vocational studios 1 Conference facility 2 big houses for 30 students and 2 teachers 4 houses for staffs	3 teachers 2 vocational workshop masters 1 Visiting centre manager

Year 4

• Total Pax: 20/90

Activities	Comments	Facilities	Paid Staff
3 groups of students running 2 vocation studio starts conference facility starts Construction continues Recruit new 30 students 3 teachers 1 workshop master Evaluate and develop curriculum		By the end of year 4: 2 big houses for 30 students and 2 teachers 2 houses for staffs	3 teachers 2 vocational workshop master 1 conference facility manager

Year 5

• Total Pax: 24/120

Activities	Comments	Facilities	Paid Staff
4 groups of students running 1 vocation studio starts Construction continues Recruit new 30 students 3 teachers 1 workshop master Evaluate and develop curriculum		By the end of year 5: 2 big houses for 30 students and 2 teachers 2 houses for staffs	3 teachers 1 vocational workshop master

Year 6

• 1st Half
• Total Pax: 8

Year 7

• 1st Half
• Total Pax: 8

Year 8

• 1st Half
• Total Pax: 8

Educational Environment

According to the philosophy above the whole environment of the school will be educational, therapeutic and ecological from earth, water, trees, wild animals to the building and construction as well as how teachers and students live, learn, play and work together.

A living education approach is used to enable students to live, work and gain skills in a variety of small scale community enterprises and services facilitating self reliance for the school as well as the students in the longer term.

For example:

• Community centre for meetings, and performances for school and outsiders
• Vocational workshops for self reliance of centre that teach these skills to students using an eco-approach e.g. carpentry, ceramics, mechanics, construction, crafts, sewing etc.
• Shop selling the products made including a health-food café for people visiting and passing by.
• Guest house run on eco-tourism principles for visitors and outside participants attending courses
• Sustainable agricultural farm providing organic food for the school
• Wilderness area for wild life and ecological education with a living exhibition of the local and regional eco-system
• Eco-power systems will run the school e.g. reed bed sewage, solar and wind power etc. aiming for zero emissions
• Recycling, reducing and reusing principles and activities for waste management
• The school and associated buildings will be built to sound ecological principles mainly with bamboo, mud and other local materials with proper study of the local ecosystem
• Communications centre including computer and IT, library, language lab
• Publication house
• One medium size and a few small non-sectarian spiritual sanctuaries for meditation and prayer hidden in the wilderness area
• Sport centre and sport field

Evaluating Student Progress

We will work with outside evaluation personal from the very beginning to monitor and evaluate in a participatory way whether we are moving toward our aims and objectives and achieving our outcomes. The evaluation process will include monitoring the students, staff and management systems on a monthly basis feeding into an annual evaluation workshop where strengths and weaknesses of the school are identified and fed into the management plan and education curriculum. After 3 years and 7 years there will be a more formal evaluation process.

When evaluating our students: we will give weight to 4 areas equally

• 1) Developing healthy attitude and heart;
• 2) Intellectual understanding;
• 3) Skills in vocational training;
• 4) Capacity to serve community.

The evaluation process for students will be participatory; this means first each student evaluates him/herself, then his/her peers share their opinion, then the teachers will come in. The best will be consensus from these three parties. The second best is two parties out of three.

Long-term Sustainability

After the initial grant for the first 7 years, we hope that we will be able to sustain ourselves financially by:

• 1. Income from vocational studios and guest house which we will eventually turn into production-education centres where they will produce and sell enough to support part of the expenses of the school
• 2. Donations from Thai people who have sustained Children Village School in the past 30 years. The campaign for donation from individuals will start from the 2nd year once we have students staying with us.
• 3. Donations from socially concerned business.

Appendix 1

Philosophy and its application

Appendix 2

Expected Outcomes and how to achieve them