A school in the woods
The Bangkok Post January 25 1987 
The Children’s Village School in Kanchanaburi province is a welcome and lively departure from traditional ways of thinking about education.
Situated 37 kilometers north of Kanchanaburi town, on the banks of the Kwai Yai River, the setting must be every child’s dream, and every adult’s for that matter.
The village and school comprise 108 children and 22 adults, living in traditional Thai-style houses spread out in the greenery. There are classrooms, workshops, an experimental farm and assembly areas.
The Children’s Village school was established eight years ago as a pilot project of the Foundation for Children. Over the years it has grown and developed its philosophy and unique pedagogical style, controversial by conventional standards.
‘I don’t like the word teacher: adult is better,’ says Pibhop Dhongchai, the driving force behind the project since its inception in 1979. The comment is typical of this man’s critical and visionary approach to the way we deal with children in Thailand.
Pibhop, or ‘Father Peek’ as the children know him, graduated from Prasarnmitr Teacher College, where he met his wife Rachanee, who is now headmistress of the school. Headmistress is a word that fits ill with the atmosphere of the school, so nobody uses it.
Pibhop remembers discovering the writings of Scottish educationalist and psychologist A. S. Neil, the founder of the experimental school Summerhill, in England. Pibhop has been influenced by the philosophy of freedom and love that is central to Neil’s thought. He set about arranging for Thai translations and through the medium of the magazines he then edited, he brought to the teaching public a whole range of contemporary educationalists – Friere, A. S. Neil, Ivan Illich. At the time, these key figures in education were unheard of in Thailand and regarded, then as now, with some suspicion.
‘In Indonesia, Friere’s Pedagogy for the Oppressed is still banned,’ comments Pibhop. ‘It’s considered too dangerous.’
The children at the school come from diverse backgrounds but with much in common: poverty, neglect and a lack of love. They range in age from three to 16. Against this backdrop of poverty, family violence and child abuse – both sexual and in the labour market – Pibhop decided to set up a Thai Summerhill-style school.
‘There are many children in Thailand who suffer from psychological problems brought about by improper upbringing. Buddhism emphasises the need for a good environment – what is called paratokosa – and the importance of human relationships. So does the philosophy and educational structures outlined by A. S. Neil. Therefore we try to combine both these influences. It is not just a foreign imposition, as some people believe, but a school and village which is truly Thai, while taking the best from the Summerhill idea.’
Most of the children at the school come from the slum areas under the bridges and flyovers of Bangkok, the slums of Klong Toey and from Kanchanaburi province. Pibhop stresses the startling incidence of malnutrition and physical poverty in Thailand, a fact often cosmetically overlooked, as is the high incidence of child labour. Many children at the school are undersized and late developers. In poor families it is the weaker members, the children, who suffer most. They are viewed as units of labour to be exploited rather than human beings with their own rights and feelings.
‘They are starving to death at the rate of 55,000 a year,’ claims Pibhop.
Pibhop and Rachanee are both critical of the educational system we have in Thailand. Pibhop traces Thai schools back to their origins as preparation for government and administrative positions, thus the heavy emphasis on bureaucratic ways of thinking, rote learning and strict discipline. Anyone who has dealt with the various bureaucracies knows the significant absence of imagination or lateral thinking.
‘Schools in general are interested in encouraging only superficial success and the ability to memorise. They do not care how happy a child is. They are only interested in the child who submits to adult power, who receives the highest grades in the exams, who is admitted to university and gets a good job afterwards.’
The Children’s Village School is an attempt, on one level, to alleviate a distinct social problem, but also a challenge and a choice to the Thai public: that different types of schools are possible and desirable and can work.
Pibhop is more interested in the ‘wat’ [monastery] type school because traditionally it was better integrated with the community. This, he feels, is more in keeping with the true Thai lifestyle. As Rachanee says: ‘A. S. Neil’s ideas on life and education are much in agreement with Buddhist concepts. Our educational system alienates children from Thai society. They’re not yet Westernised but in the middle of nowhere. Our society today is restricted and deadened, with not enough ways out. Children are brought up incorrectly. They are brought up to enter schools in which the curriculum tends to train them for government work.’
On a practical level, the community or ‘commune’ as Pibhop whispered mischievously has achieved much. What is immediately apparent is how happy the children are and how untrammeled their reactions to adults are. None of that stilted politeness or the self-effacing ‘wai’. No numbers embroidered across chests. The ‘sala’ is a meeting place for weekend visitors, kite games, and comic reading. Adults and young meet and talk on an equal footing; talking is not the prerogative of the bigger and the more educated.
The children who come to the Village School are usually starved of affection, attention and proper adult role models: here they can express themselves. As one visitor said: ‘Children who lack love and warmth are like kittens that rub against their owners for affection.’
The community has 185 rules, established and voted upon by children and adults alike at a weekly meeting. All the children have a right to vote for policy, for rules and for solutions to the school’s problems. Both children and adults are governed by the rules they themselves draw up. They mete out their own punishments for infractions ranging from bullying, obscene language to running about in the rain and climbing trees. There is no corporal punishment at the school.
Class attendance, as at Summerhill, is voluntary. The children have a right to choose to learn or not to learn. The classrooms are open to the environment. Pupils come and go. Teachers are referred to by first names. There is an emphasis on the workshop. The most interesting was a woodwork workshop with toy cars, kites and model telephones nailed to the trees in a beautiful parody of real life. ‘The children love to make their own toys,’ explains the Japanese woodwork teacher. As with kids everywhere, fads come and go, one week it’s kites, one week it’s cars. They have to repair them themselves if they get broken.
‘Each child is free to choose his way of life. He is free to build a place to live in by himself and free to stay in any house. However, all this freedom has to be based on the principle of respecting each other’s rights,’ says Rachanee.
To see particular qualities as virtues requires the breakdown of shibboleths. The Children’s Village school does exactly that – not with middle-class kids, as happens so often elsewhere, whose parents have the money for choice – but with the most needy section of the population.
In Thailand, so-called ‘American-style’ education is the prerogative of the private, often religious-run schools where it’s frequently hard to see the little humans behind the Mercedes. The affluent have always been attracted by the cosmetic hardware of education: more and better computers, swimming pools, trips abroad. The devolution which Pibhop and Rachanee have brought into ‘play’ at Kanchanaburi is a refreshing antidote to all that. What the children play with they make and repair themselves. They grow their own food on an experimental farm, with ducks and chickens. The nearby river is the swimming pool. Their amusements, rules, punishments and souls are all of their own making and unmaking.
The children at the school chaperoned us round their vegetables and irrigation systems and poultry pens, with evident pride in their achievements. Questions are answered and we are questioned in our turn. Before coming to the school they were overworked, underfed, interfered with and beaten. Some of the stories are horrendous. Fathers had raped two of the little girls. Jed’s story is typical:
‘Jed’s mother and father were always drinking. His mother was continually in a state of drunkenness – day and night. She would become violent and often beat Jed in hatred. Sometimes she wanted to beat Jed until he lay writhing. She beat him mercilessly with a broom. She even had been known to throw a knife at him. Occasionally, Jed’s younger brother would help his mother to beat him.’
Jed has adapted well to the school’s ethic of freedom and love, after an initial period fraught with adjustment problems. Rachanee explains: ‘Jed was free to behave as he liked in order to release his suppressed emotions. If he violated the rights and freedoms of others, he would be told upon and punished in the school council. He received the same care and warmth that all the children in the school received. Jed’s psychological condition improved rapidly until he seemed almost a different boy. Jed worked and studied every day. His aggressiveness disappeared. He was starting a new life ...’
Jed’s story is one among many. The Children’s Village school is by any standard a remarkable achievement in a world where education is fast becoming a supermarket and where the words ‘experimental’ or ‘alternative’ are looked upon suspiciously. Thailand should be proud of this home, this ‘commune’, tucked away among the trees and the hills.