Students
Studying Akha Script
Studying Akha Script
Studying
The MPCDE/SEAMP Student Program Chiang Mai has been very important
for Mountain peoples' Minority Students for about
15 years already and a few
hundred students have been able to get help. Several of them now have leading
positions in their groups and organizations. We are extremely grateful to
the SEAMP-Foundation, Utrecht ; the Lakeland Foundation , Laren and several
individual donors for their continuous support. Today we want to show you
, however, that for minority peoples with very rich cultures, who for centuries
have been deprived of literacy and literate school education, the building
up of a new generation of literate people with strong modern leaders takes
a much longer time. But it is in fact the best way to fight poverty, diseases,
human rights abuses and also heavy problems like HIV/AIDS and prostitution
. We will tell you also how, in the last few years, we have been narrowing
down our help in higher studies to fields which are essential for the Akha
and others to face the increasingly heavy problems of the present.
1. The intention of the Founders of student programs:
Our Chiang Mai based MPCDE/ SEAMP-Student program is, as is well known, not
a "normal" scholarship program just helping poor students to attend
classes in Thai Institutions and acquire their degrees there.
Akha leaders who initiated the MPCDE/SEAMP and related NGO's educational programs
had the following in mind:
2. Lets not forget the pre-history of the MPCDE/SEAMP student projects:
Until some 20-30 years ago most Akha villagers/parents were not in favor of sending their children away for education in lowland schools in Thailand or in Burma. A reason for this was that for good school-education children had to leave the villages and go downhill for months, which was costly. As governments did not bother too much about education of mountain people's children, some sectarian or catholic missionaries had set up boarding schools in the lower areas. People had seen that in most cases, when the children had gone downhill for education, especially in Mission schools which had some kind of monopoly position before, they never would come back home again. There was even a bitter joke saying that people proselytizing for sects and churches are like vampires, who buy children from villagers for money and than eat them, defecating money in order to buy new ones from the villages.
Besides this it was difficult for many villagers to miss children and especially
the girls, as they are a main "labor force" for the family and children/grand
children the main security for the parents in old age.
Another problem was, finally, that national school systems in Thailand, like
in Burma, S. China and Laos, where Akha live teaching in national languages,
being Thai, Lao, Burmese, Chinese. " There are no Akha schools, because
we don't have an Akha country". What did exist however was an Akha educational
system. Akha and other minorities had built up, over centuries, their own
orally transmitted education systems, in which traditional knowledge of all
sectors of life was transferred by cultural or technical teachers/specialists, elders and
parents. What existed and still exists in several mountain peoples
villages (although the number is decreasing rapidly) is a large corpus of
orally transmitted practical traditional knowledge built up over many centuries.
This corpus of hidden knowledge includes flora and fauna ecology, traditional
medicinal plants and treatments, handicraft confection and bamboo technology,
mountain agriculture, human psychology, legal and moral systems, business
dealings and so on. Akha and other mountain cultures are much older than Thai
culture, and because of marginalization and isolation into the mountains they
needed such practical knowledge for survival. This was part of traditional
Akha education and carefully transferred from generation to generation through
"lines "of specialists in various fields, in recited texts, ceremonies
and songs. But this knowledge was/is not always adapted to modern life and
not accessible through modern technical means, like books or CD ROM. Handed
over from generation to generation by the ancestors over hundreds if not thousands
of years, for survival, it lives in the minds, praxis and hearts of the older
"culture specialists" and will die with them if not adapted to modern
means of communication.
3. In search for a national school education with safeguarding of own culture and identity:
By the end of the 1970's there was a growing awareness, in Thailand, that
there was an urgent need for participation in the national Thai education
systems, because the gap between the economy and technical knowledge in the
mountains and the lowlands had become too wide. Most villages did, however
had no schools or mostly only "non formal education" schools just
to learn the Thai alphabet and this is basically still the case in the 2000's.
For real adequate school education children have to go to the lowlands,
that is away from home. This is now the case with elementary school education,
starting at the age of 6. Its even more true for high school starting at
age 12 of which there are none of any significance in the mountains. Moreover,
students have no means to pay for higher studies when in the lowlands. As
a consequence there were hardly any Akha with school education a few decades
ago. As parents were ( and still are mostly) illiterate, the children were
not used to a life of literate study and reading. For those who started studying
at an older age, that is over 20 years, concentrating on writing and reading
created very heavy head-aches indeed.
We also have not to forget that for Akha and other ethnic minorities "going
to school",unlike in our countries, also means: Learn to speak, read
and write a completely different language. A large majority of people in
Akha villages are not able to speak Thai and even fewer are able to write
it. Akha and Thai languages belong to completely different language families.
( Akha belongs to the Tibeto Burmese language family and Thai to the Austro-Thai
family). Going to school thus means not only the transition from an "oral",
preliterate culture to a literate one; but also to study- and learn to think
- in a completely different language and culture. It finally means: going
away from home in the mountains to the lowlands.
In the past some Buddhist temples offered young and poor mountain children
to become a temporary students, but education there was in fact more
Intended for future monks although becoming Buddhist and abandoning own culture
were not stressed. There were also individual Thai teachers or people offering
Akha and other help for study, in return for help in the household. But this
invariably -according to these we have researched-turned the child into a
kind of house-slave, leaving no time for study. This was experienced by Leo's
wife Deuleu and his sister in law Assui, amongst others.
A few American religious sectarian groups had started-for this reason- a hostel/boarding
school but requested from the children and parents to become
member of that sect by baptism. Unbelievable as its sounds, but this also
included the request to completely denounce Akha or other mountain peoples
ceremonies, songs, traditional knowledge, customary law , leadership, ancestors
and culture. This created enormous divisions and conflicts in Akha and other
mountain peoples' villages with the consequence that either the "converted
Akha " or the " traditional Akha " group had to leave.
Another problem was that most converted Akha 's basic reason for conversion
factually was increasing poverty.Consequently the understanding of the basics
of Christianity is absent in a high percentage of the "converted Akha",
which leads to moral devaluation and a loss of cultural resources.
4. Combining Thai and Akha Education: The origin of " Education and Culture" NGO's.
At the end of the 70's and the beginning of the 1980's an increasing number of Akha leaders and others who were expecting help for study and a safe hostel for their children from the foreign religious sectarians were disappointed. An Akha Committee of 5 headmen formed, themselves illiterate, but specialists in Akha Customary Law and Traditional Knowledge with iron memories containing many Archaic Akha texts. Their plan was to give promising young Akha access to modern education in Thai schools and institutions, and also to give them extracurricular training in Akha Customary Law and traditional knowledge. This new project for" education and culture" in other words: for the combination of Thai and Akha education was supposed to be located in a hostel in Chiang Rai . It would in fact do the opposite of the religious/sectarian groups,that is: Give scholarships to Thai schools and teach Akha customary law and traditional knowledge (zangr). In the beginning of the 1980's the "South East Asian Mountain Peoples for Culture and Development Education " (MPCDE/SEAMP) was born in Chiang Mai, emphasizing that development through education has to be based upon existing cultural resources. Out of this new idea several educational NGO's were born.
The first being the"Akha Association for Education and Culture in Thailand
" (AFECT), in Chiang Rai and the" Inter Mountain Peoples for Education
and Culture in Thailand"(IMPECT) in Chiang Mai. They originally both
emphasized access to Thai-education for elementary school and high school,
as a highest need was experienced on those levels.
Because originally chances of school-education were higher for Akha (and other mountain people's) boys and men, MPCDE/SEAMP started an ABU Akha Women Educational and Cultural Center, near Mae Sruay, in 1994. It gives scholarships for the local highschool to Akha girl/students and also trains these students and Akha village women in traditional knowledge of handicraft, traditional/modern medicine and Akha Customary Law.
MPCDE/SEAMP-Chiang Mai has been, since the beginning mainly responsible for
helping promising students into higher education and combining this with valuable
elements of traditional Akha education thus creating a new leadership for
Akha and other mountain peoples. There was and still is a high need for such
leadership in order to be able to combat increasing poverty, diseases, drug
addiction, prostitution, AIDS and create new opportunities for jobs and business
from modernized agriculture, tourism, handicraft and ecologically oriented
produce. Women as well as men are needed who can lead their peoples into modern
times with the maintenance of their precious resources.
Since 1986 MPCDE/SEAMP Chiang Mai has received support for this from the SEAMP
Foundation, Netherlands.
5. Making up the balance of 15 years SEAMP International help:
Overlooking 15 years of help from the SEAMP Foundation, Netherlands and related donors we can say that a beginning has been made by the MPCDE/SEAMP student program and related NGO's to fight poverty, diseases and prostitution by helping students from Akha and other ethnic minority groups into higher education. A few have followed an education as lawyer; several have become accountants or administrators; one works for the Chiang Mai Radio in the Akha program; some others have gone through the commercial school into business ventures; some have joined the MPCDE/SEAMP -Chiang Mai or the ABU Akha Women project Mae Sruay staffs. A few are involved in the staff of the AFECT Akha Association for Education and Culture, Chiang Rai and the IMPECT Inter Mountain People for Education and Culture in Chiang Mai. Last but not least: SEAMP helped with the education of three assistant nurses, two of them functioning as barefoot doctors for the government and one who is preparing herself to join the ABU Akha Women program Mae Sruay to help start a "Self Help Public Health Care" program there.
Some but not all of the previous students do have a BA grade after 4 or 5 years study in institutions of higher education like the University, Rajabath Institute (Teacher College) , Commercial, Technical and Agricultural Colleges, or higher vocational institutes.
Although quite a few have followed the Chiang Mai Teachers College for courses
in English and guiding nobody has, so far, become a professional school-teacher.
Nor has anybody finished a modern agricultural study, as yet . We have
encouraged three students at present , one still studying for teacher and
two for modern agriculturist, to go on with their study as far as they can;
it looks as though they are serious about studying and completing a B.A.
As far as we know all students who finished their studies have gotten jobs,
which is quite positive given increasing joblessness in Thailand and discrimination
against mountain peoples. Besides these students there have been also several
younger highschool students and elementary school students from poor families
,some of whom stopped their study at the 3rd or 6th grade high school , because
their parents wanted them to find jobs as quickly as possible.
6. Re-assesment of priorities and needs for a modern Akha educational system :
15 years of help with scholarships in higher education is just the beginning of creating important leadership for Akha and other mountain peoples in Thailand.
Besides the need for legally well educated lawyers there is at this moment even more a need for advanced medical workers, good teachers, modern agriculturists and administrative workers willing to work for NGO's related to Akha mountain villages. For such leaders it is also increasingly important to be familiar with computer and e-mail and to be able to read and write English quite well. International communication and fundraising, and also other specializations sometimes require temporary scholarships abroad as also has been increasingly the case with important leaders in the countries where Hani / Akha live, in the last 20 years. This need is also re-enforced by the ( generally acknowledged) still intrinsic weakness and backwardness of the Thai educational system. By instance when we look to Akha and minority peoples leadership in some of the key -areas mentioned, the leadership training in Thailand is quite far behind China.
MPCDE/SEAMP, for this reason has over the last few years been gradually giving priority to those older students willing to go into medical, teaching, legal and agricultural studies and education, with a firm intention to help their own people's communities in the mountains.
Of particular importance is the medical education for (female and male) nurses and the upgrading of the existing barefoot doctor situation. This has become particularly urgent in view of an absolute need to gradually start a pilot "Self Help Primary Health Care" project,in which villagers and in particular women are trained to help themselves to combine traditional with modern medical systems and medicine.See for this the appendix describing the planning of the Pilot "Self Help Primary Health Care " program.
The original intention of the Akha Founding fathers of the MPCDE/SEAMP related educational programs, to match education in Thai institutions with a modernized Akha education in traditional knowledge has until recently not been implemented. Reasons have been that no clear curriculum for such studies existed and especially no reading materials in Akha language. Teaching by the older Akha and other highlanders'older specialists, not being literate themselves, also caused some problems.
Practical possibilities and funds to document, research, and translate in modern Akha and after that publish into books or on CD-ROM many of the traditional archaic Akha texts only developed in the 1990's. They slowly took shape through a carefull documentation of herbal traditional medicine in 1994 and 1995; Writing down recorded archaic Akha texts containing treasures of traditional knowledge and translating them has been started by a specially trained Akha staff since 1996. Disseminating those texts and building them in into a practical Akha educational system with an internationally recognizable modernized Akha script also started only after 1996, and increasingly since 2001 only. Possibilities to publish archaic texts have been accompanied now by efforts to set up an "Akha Studies Curriculum" in the form of a series of practical and informative booklets in various practical sectors of life.
Since 1999 also the formation of Akha teachers in Akha language reading and writing and the teaching of Akha Customary law and traditional knowledge has also started. See for this the appendix of a three year publishing program.
MPCDE/SEAMP staffs and advisors believe that it should be required from
Akha Students in high schools and higher education to follow the newly available
Akha educational and archaic literature.
It will however still take a long time to build up a new generation of leaders
for Akha and others who can combine modern education with modernized forms
of traditional medical ,technical , handicraft , legal and agricultural knowledge
,creating a new leadership in various fields where Akha self-help is urgently
needed . For the building up of future self-sufficiency of a modern Akha society
we still need quite some time and also a constant and maybe some increasing
help from the SEAMP-Foundation and other donors worldwide.
In 2002 there are 18 students, participating in the programme and getting support.
Ms. Abya Dzoebaw; Ms. Deuleu A.von Geusau/Choopoh; Ms. Mikui Lawbie (Li Haiying).
The program is supported by SEAMP International, Netherlands.