School Business

School Business

Ban Rang Krathai School, Kanchanaburi

Students at Ban Rang Krathai School are always busy. As at other Thai schools, students do a lot of housekeeping/janitorial/grounds-keeping work. At our school though, they also work on the school farm, planting and tending garden plots, taking care of animals, and making items that can be sold. The farm operates according to the Philosophy of Sufficiency Economy (PSE), an initiative of HRH King Bhumibol. The sign identifies our school as a Sufficiency Economy Center for Learning.

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PSE is based on the use of scientific principles to manage land, water, and other resources effectively so as not to deplete them and still produce enough food to sustain one’s family. In the early 2000s, there was a move to integrate these principles into Thai school curricula. At a school like ours, students practice PSE by working on the farm. Most of the pictures that follow were taken on a day when visitors were touring our school to learn how it operates.  The school is well prepared for visitors. Abundant signage helps identify various vegetables, herbs, other plants, and projects. Below are two plants that are used to flavor many Thai dishes. The "pea eggplant," which is hot and slightly bitter, is often used in curries. Hot chilli peppers can be used in just about everything except desserts.

Solanum torvum (pea eggplant)

   

Capsicum frutescens

 Students are often pulled out of class to show visitors around, serve them cold drinks, and explain projects that have been summarized as poster presentations. Usually, girls do the poster presentations.

Students greeting visitors with the "wai"

Poster explaining "the air of nature"

On my tour of the farm, a sixth-grade boy who likes to use the English words he knows was naming plants and animals he wanted to show me – mushrooms, pigs, chickens, etc. Here are the mushrooms, stored in a shed.

 

 Continuing the tour, my student kept saying “fok” [rhymes with “rock”], so at first I thought he was trying to say “fox.” However, he led me to this pond (picture below).  – Oh, I said, frogs.  He nodded. “Fok,” he said again.  After that he took me to the fishpond. 

Frogs sunning themselves

Students learn practical arts as well as farming and gardening. Here you see boys with some of the products they make from bamboo: furniture, lamps, and baskets. Of course, they also display certificates they've received in recognition of their work.

The farm also makes use of simple machines made of bamboo, like this water wheel:

The school farm supplies part of the food the school needs. Eggs, vegetables, mushrooms, and herbs are plentiful, but most other food consumed at the school must be purchased. There are also occasions where food grown or prepared at the school is sold, giving the students an opportunity to collect, count, and keep track of earnings.

The following pictures are from an exhibition held annually at the district office, PESAO 2 (=Primary Education Service Area Office 2). Dozens of schools had booths to display and sell their students’ work. Here you see some of my colleagues putting up the banner at our school’s booth, and our principal inspecting the banner a bit later.

Below you see my colleagues and some of our students getting food ready to sell – the foods our students make in Thursday afternoon cooking classes (described in previous posts). They sold green papaya salad (som tam), sautéed quail eggs, spicy deep-fried green banana chips, several kinds of sweet snacks, and little containers of nam prik (hot chili sauce).  

Below you see Kruu Picha, the teacher in charge of the Center for Learning, and his students installing a water wheel. In the video, the wheel is turning on its own, without being powered by a bicycle.

Just to give you some idea of the variety, here are a couple of pictures from other schools, one that raises vegetables, and one that displayed crafts the students had made. I bought some of those plant hangers to give as gifts. I also bought fabric woven by students at another school, but didn’t get a picture of their booth.

And for something completely different: These students played their instruments literally for hours without a break.

The Thai name for this instrument is piphat mon – Mon being the name of an ethnic group from Myanmar (Burma), which borders Thailand on the west.   There are actually several types of piphat. If you are interested, this link will take you to a page with pictures of them (to see one like those in my picture, scroll all the way down). 

http://www.seasite.niu.edu/Thai/music/classical/thaiensemble/pi_phat_ensemble.htm

I could show you many other examples of student work displayed at the exhibition, but these are enough to illustrate my point: Each school has its own focus on practical arts and/or preserving aspects of traditional culture.  I’m always impressed by how readily Thai students participate in activities such as these – not just working on the farm or giving tours to visitors, but packing pickup trucks full of supplies to set up and later tear down booths to display and/or sell their products. I’ve written before about wishing that such activities didn’t always take precedence over academic subjects, but that’s a reality of Thai schools – or, I should say, of rural Thai schools such as the ones I’m familiar with..

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Disclaimer: The content of this blog is mine personally. The opinions expressed are not those of the Peace Corps, its employees, the United States government or its agencies, or anyone but me.