Reading from the same script

Reading from the same script

A new bilingual curriculum allows schoolchildren in the South to learn Thai more easily alongside their mother tongue Malay

Rohkiyoh Abu recalls the bad experiences in primary school which she hopes her children will never have to face. Referring to her first months in school, the 28-year-old Muslim mother of two from the southern province of Pattani explained, "I could not communicate with the teacher who spoke Thai in the classroom."

Video by Jeerawat Na Thalang and Chomporn Sangvilert


Like most people in her Muslim-majority community, Ms Rohkiyoh's family spoke Patani Malay at home. Her parents could not speak or write Thai.

Ms Rohkiyoh faced culture shock when she attended Ban Lada, the public primary school in her village.

"If we spoke Malay in school, we would be fined," Ms Rohkiyoh recalled.

"I didn't understand a word the teacher said to the point where I did not want to go to school."

The Thai government requires all public schools use Thai as the language of instruction.

SPELL IT OUT: Teachers in Ban Lada School in the South's Pattani province are adopting a bilingual curriculum, teaching students in Patani Malay that is written with the Thai script. (Photos by Chumporn Sangvilert)

Despite the language hurdles, Ms Rohkiyoh managed to get by and continued her formal education to finish high school. She eventually learned to read and write in Thai.

Now a housewife, Ms Rohkiyoh doesn't want her own children to go through the same thing.

"I do not want my children to suffer a similar experience," she said.

"I want my children to feel happy to go to school and not feel like they are being forced to speak Thai."

Her eldest daughter, Afifa, is attending her old school, Ban Lada, which has since changed the classroom teaching style.

"Students can learn Thai while communicating in Patani Malay," Ms Rohkiyoh explained.

On the day Spectrum visited, Afifa, a second-year kindergarten pupil, was learning how to pronounce the Patani Malay language using the Thai alphabet. So were her classmates.

A teacher showed the young students a picture of a cat and a card with Thai characters that phonetically formed the word kucin, the Patani Malay word for cat.

While many of her friends in the southern provinces send their children to private schools, Ms Rohkiyoh has plans for Afifa to continue her free education to eventually gain admission to a Thai university.

"Afifa is a smart girl. She is not shy to speak up in the classroom," Ms Rohkiyoh said. "I want my daughter to have the highest education possible." Afifa told Spectrum she wants to become a doctor.

LOST IN TRANSLATION

Ban Lada is one of 16 schools in the four southern provinces of Yala, Narathiwat, Pattani and Satun which are trialling "mother tongue first bilingual education", a pilot project conducted by Mahidol University.

LOST FOR WORDS: Rohkiyoh Abu and her daughter, Afifa. Ms Rohkiyoh hopes that her daughter won't face the challenges she had with learning Thai. PHOTOS: Chumporn Sangvilert

The programme allows Malay-speaking students to learn to read and write first in Malay as a bridge to bilingual literacy.

Thailand's public schools use Thai as the language of instruction since it is used in gross national literacy measurements.

There is no exception for the southernmost provinces of Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat, where the Patani Malay dialect is spoken.

The same policy applies in other regions where dialects are spoken.

But unlike the South, they share a similar cultural and linguistic background to people in central Thailand.

Patani Malay, known by Thais as Yawi and colloquially as Jawi, is similar to Malaysian and uses a written script which is a combination of Arabic and Roman (or Rumi).

Educated Muslim parents can tutor their children at home or send them to private schools which conduct lessons in Patani Malay.

Some send their children to pondoks, traditional boarding religious schools where Malay is used and Islamic studies constitute the only curriculum.

However, the Thai-only formal education system does not work well in communities that use ethnic languages.

"The students should learn from their mother tongue to fully receive knowledge," said Suwilai Premsrirat, project director of Patani Malay-Thai Bilingual Education at Mahidol University, who led a research team on bilingual education nine years ago.

Isra Sarntisart, a programme director of the Thailand Research Fund, added, "The Thai-only formal education has also caused the decline in the use of ethnic languages in Thailand."

The aim now is to get Thai Malays to master the Thai language while allowing them to embrace their own. There are several ethnic dialects spoken in different parts of the country, including Miabri in Phrae province and So, or Thavung, in Sakon Nakhon province.

The Thailand Research Fund has sponsored Mahidol University to design the "orthography" for diverse ethnic groups, including Malay-speaking students, so that they can better understand classroom teaching via their own tongue. Orthography is the systematic representation of a language's sounds by written script or symbols. In the projects Mahidol is developing, Thai script is used as the basis to develop the "sound" of the ethnic languages being spoken.

"The results of the students who graduated from bilingual programmes shows the positive result that the students could better interact in the classroom," Ms Suwilai said.

"In the past, some students dared not ask to go to the toilet because they could only seek permission to go out of the classroom in Malay."

The programme received the Unesco King Sejong Literacy Prize 2016 last month as part of International Literacy Day. Ms Suwilai went to Paris to receive the award.

MOTHER TONGUE

Wanna Udomsartsakul, the principal of Ban Lada School, said that the communities surrounding the school are low-income. Some are chilli farmers, while others work low-paid jobs in the city.

BILINGUAL THINKING: Suwilai Premsrirat, project director from Mahidol University.

"When they are at home, they speak Malay. Some parents cannot speak Thai. So when the students come to school and we ask them to speak in Thai, it is not easy."

Ms Wanna started at the school in 2005 with a mission to teach students to read and write Thai. She is from the southern province of Phattalung.

"We in Phattalung speak Thai with a thick southern accent. But here, the students speak a totally different language," she said.

"Schools in other provinces may have a target of their students topping Onet scores. But for us, our wish is that at least half of them can read Thai."

Ms Wanna said she tried additional classes in Thai but they did not work because many students still spoke Malay at home.

"Although we told students to speak Thai once they stepped across the school gate or else be fined one baht, the students did not bother," she said.

"They preferred speaking their mother tongue or they chose not to speak in class at all. Once, a teacher told students to pick up a broom. The student did nothing because he was totally clueless.

"Of course, students pick up some Thai in the end, but some quit because they don't like going to school."

In 2012, Ms Wanna was told by a district educational officer of the experimental bilingual project. She later learned her school was qualified to join the programme. The community is Malay speaking, and teachers speak both Thai and Malay.

During the school break, the teachers attended the training course run by Mahidol University.

"It is not a translation course, but we have applied the 'total physical response' technique by using words and picture books to make students think of words that they want to compose."

The second-year kindergarten students learn to compose a word by using Thai letters to read Malay sounds. Science and maths classes combine both languages in the classroom.

"Otherwise, how can students understand a topic such as photosynthesis if we speak in Thai the whole time?" she said.

The orthography and bilingual techniques are heavily used in the first three years but in years four to six, formal Thai language is solely used to prepare students for middle school.

Yawi is taught as a separate language by this stage.

SCHOOL OF THOUGHT

Waemaji Paramal, a lecturer from the Malay Language, Eastern Language Development department at Prince of Songkla University, Pattani Campus, went through a similar experience growing up in the South.

SETTING HOPES: Patimoth Mormoh's son goes to Ban Lada. She hopes he will master Thai.

Now 62, he recalled, "If teachers caught us speaking Malay in a Thai public school, we would have to chew the bitter borapet [climbing shrub] as punishment."

Mr Waemaji was one of the research team members to produce the orthography, which locals have dubbed karaoke letters.

"Of course, there are certain sounds that do not exist in Thai alphabets. We put the symbol to mark certain sounds such as a nasal consonant. Or we compare the sound with a Thai letter with the closest consonant to the Patani Malay consonant."

Asked whether Thai letters would lead to cultural barriers when they are used with Malay, Mr Waemaji said, "Like the Thai language, Patani Malay does not have its own alphabet", referring to the evolution of Thai script from Sanskrit. "The dialect existed in verbal communication."

When the British came to Malaysia and the Dutch to Indonesia, they used Rumi letters to capture the sounds of local languages. "Rumi" came from Roman or Latin words used in English.

"Scholars have used either Rumi or Jawi script to capture the Malay sounds. And if they could use Rumi which came from Latin-Christian literature, why not use Thai letters which are rooted in Buddhism? After all, Buddhism has never had a history of a crusade against Islam," Mr Waemaji said.

He said, in designing the curriculum, educators have to avoid certain issues that can be sensitive in the South, such as religion. The stories, for instance, are based on a tropical landscape with rubber plantations to make students familiar with the textbook.

"We want students to analyse the situation, not just recite the words."

He said education is a factor in solving problems in the South as it helps improve the well-being of people.

"Communication is also two-way. Thai officials should also understand the local language as a goodwill gesture for the local people."

BILINGUAL BENEFITS

Pranee Lumsensa, an education lecturer at Yala Rajabhat University, evaluated the outcome of the bilingual project. She found that the students from grades 1-3 under the bilingual programme performed better than students in the same years being instructed only in Thai.

Most importantly, they are happier to go to school because they can speak to teachers.

TO THE LETTER: Professor Waemaji Paramal.

The results from grades 4-6 are not different, partly because the students are increasingly studying in the same system. "Eventually, they are all dependent on tutoring cram schools for the Onet test," Ms Pranee said, referring to the standardised middle school exam.

Students with wealthier parents tend to perform better since school factors vary.

"Teachers in the deep South are changed more often," Ms Pranee said. "They have to leave school before 3pm," she added, referring to security needed to get teachers home. "These are also factors affecting the performance of students in school."

She said education is a solution to the problems in the southernmost provinces.

"If people are educated and given job opportunities, economic well-being will ease the conflicts. The disparity in the deep South is still high and it can create tensions."

Patimoth Mormoh, another parent whose son is in year three at Ban Lada School, said, "I want the best education for my child. And this is the best shot for my son to continue his formal education in a Thai school."

CASE OF IDENTITY

However, some community leaders were concerned with the bilingual project. For Muslims in this part of Thailand, their Malay identity and Islam are inseparable. Some were concerned about using the Thai alphabet in place of Jawi since Arabic is Islam's sacred language.

"We have to listen to Allah," said Abdul Aziz Yanya, president of the Pondok Association in the Five Southern Border Provinces of Thailand.

"It does not work to use the Thai alphabet to read Malay because there are some words that cannot be pronounced.

"It may work for some students, but it will affect the system and the identity of the language. You cannot just replace our language."

Asked why Malaysia and Indonesia have used Roman script, he said, "The original language has gone because those countries were colonised.

"It is good that Thailand hasn't abolished the language of people in the community. We are lucky to be in Thailand."

He said students should learn Thai in school and speak Malay at home.

"The schools should not mix the languages together," he said. "The leaders should help nourish the religion of the local community and promote education. If the local community is happy, there will be peace in the region."

SOCIAL STUDIES

Kessaree Ladlia, former dean of the education faculty at Yala Rajabhat University, said the bilingual orthography serves the specific purpose of helping some students.

"As teachers, we are trying to experiment with every technique to help needy students. This programme rescues some students from ICU," she said.

In the past, the language issue was not as severe because Muslim and Buddhist people lived side by side in their communities.

"When children play together, they pick up the language."

But now tensions in the insurgency-hit South are more severe, Buddhist residents have left many of the communities. Many children have grown up in purely Malay-speaking communities, especially in rural areas where the adults are not well educated.

"The bilingual curriculum matches the needs of specific groups of students, especially those in remote districts where their communities don't speak Thai at all," Ms Kessaree said.

"Students in the city areas grow up in an environment where the parents can speak both Thai and Malay so they can better adjust to the formal education environment where teachers conduct lessons in Thai in the classroom.

"The other kids are in ICU and programmes like this can help them."

She said wealthier parents in the South tend to send their children to private schools when they get older.

During primary years, 70% of pupils are in public schools and 30% in private schools. In middle school, the ratio flips to 30% in public schools and 70% in private schools. In high school, only 10% remain in the public school system.

Ms Kessaree did not explain why formal education is not popular with parents in the South, but said the trend seemed to show the number of parents sending their children to private schools for primary education was also on the rise.

"I don't know why but the formal education system is not popular," she said.

"As educators, we have to experiment with whatever curriculum works for students, especially the needy ones."

FOR A START: Ban Lada is helping pilot a 'mother tongue first bilingual education' project.

OPEN BOOK: The textbook being used in southern schools has the Yawi or Patani Malay language written in the Thai script.

QUICK STUDY: Students in Mahidol University's pilot project are offered a uniquely designed 'orthography', a system of script and symbols to help teach the Thai language through their mother tongue.

CLASS IN SESSION: Ban Lada is one of 16 schools in the South chosen to participate in Mahidol University's new bilingual education project.

TURN THE PAGE: The textbooks try to depict familiar situations for students to readily analyse.

Do you like the content of this article?
COMMENT (4)