Moo Baan Dek -- Children's Village School
An Alternative Education Community
Moo Ban Dek or Children's Village School is an alternative education community for children who have been orphaned or come from very poor families, some of which were also abusive. The founders of the school believe each child can thrive and blossom when given enough love, attention, freedom, and be assured that their basic needs will be met.
Moo Baan Dek was founded on a quest to search for and demonstrate another approach to education, beyond rote learning and learning with the emphasis on imposing nationalism and violence as a means to problem-solving. The founder of the school, Mr. Pibhop Dhongchai, is currently secretary and committee member of Foundation for Children. When he founded the School, he was also editor of 'Pacarayasara' and a student activist. His publication criticized main stream education, and called for alternative education based on freedom and self-government of students. The writings of Paolo Freire, Paul Goodman, and other leaders in alternative education stimulated the interest in alternative education in Thai Society.
During that time, a book by the English educator, A.S.Neil, "The Summerhill School", was translated and became popular among student activists, including Pibhop. Based on the "school council system", a regular formal gathering in which students and staff can vote for or against topical issues, as well as amend rules by which they have to abide, Summerhill School thrives on the principle of participation. These ideas were in line with the younger generations' taste for self-expression, which had been denied as a result of a repressive political system. Children were also denied the right to govern themselves.
In order to demonstrate that education, which allows freedom for students, is possible, a site was chosen in 1978 and the construction of buildings began the following year. The first group of children who came here was from the direst poverty, the well-known slum area in Bangkok, Klongtoey. Raised within a violent prevailing environment and scarcities, many of the children had become very aggressive. At Moo Baan Dek, however, with simple facilities and enough food, they were assured that their basic needs would be seen to, and were encouraged to achieve their full potential with no use of authority.
In the beginning, it was hard to convince the general public that there were fatal flaws in the existing educational system. The rote learning, the use of authority, the dominant role of teacher, the hard and physically painful punishment, etc., were all taken for granted. In addition, since westernization has taken place in this country more than a century ago, education has been geared towards training, and equipping the population with occupational skills to serve the government, and increasingly the private sector at present. The ideal of Moo Baan Dek's founder was to create a learning community in which children and adults live on an equal basis. And the ultimate purpose was to enable the children to fully understand themselves, to uncover the meaning of their lives, through freedom and self-government. All these efforts sounded peculiar in those days.
Apart from support provided by a few individuals who understood the cause, it was very hard for Moo Baan Dek to raise funds from the public. It was difficult as well to convince the public and the government that the situation regarding the rights of children was very vulnerable. As the country grew economically, there was a huge influx of rural immigrants to the cities, and there they found their lives and that of their children more miserable. Slums sprang up in every corner of the cities, and bred the underage with all sorts of harshness, crime and violence. Therefore, in 1979, Moo Baan Dek with two other projects, namely, the Art Center for Youth and Baan Tantawan (rehabilitation center for malnourished children) have formed together an umbrella organization, the Foundation for Children, in order to facilitate fund raising efforts, and also to expand more work in the area of child rights and child education.
In the last two decades, Moo Baan Dek has been standing as the first living ideal of Thai education that seeks to truly nourish children. It has inspired many contemporary educators, and its emphasis on alternative education has led to the amendment of the present draft of the National Education Bill to allow alternative education to take place.
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