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THE SIAMESE
MINISTER OF EDUCATION, THE PROFESSOR AND THE JOURNALIST
A TRIOLOGUE
by Gareth Jones
May, 1935, Bangkok, Siam
They were a curious collection, the three men who sat beneath the vast
picture of King Chulalongkorn in a room in the Siamese Ministry of
Education at Bangkok. The first was a Siamese with a forceful
personality who considered that he had the mission of forming the Siam
of the future, namely Pra Sarasastra Prabhand, the Minister of
Education. He was clad in the old Siamese dress, wearing a purple cloth
with one end tucked between the legs so as to form a garb between a
shirt and bulging trousers; an unusual dress for one who is a barrister
of the Inner Temple. The second was a learned, religious British
professor at Bangkok University and the third a critical Journalist.
They had met to discuss the effects of the revolution on the education
of Siam.
“In the year 2777” began the Minister of Education, but noticing that
the Journalist was bewildered, he corrected himself and said: “I beg
your pardon, I am reckoning the years in the Siamese way. I meant 1934
we made a vigorous campaign through Siam to drive all children into the
schools, with the result that in 2778, I mean 1935, we will have over a
million children in schools. This stress upon education is one of the
main pillars of our revolution.
“What will the million children learn?’ asked Journalist
“Our task is to put the school back into society. By that I mean that
we are not fostering the ‘clerks disease’ and turning every schoolboy
into a white-collar worker who is ashamed to soil his hands. That was a
defect of the old regime, when the scholars could not go back to their
old society. We teach the children about nature, about their work. I
have started schools to teach mixed farming. Our youth must learn how
to live in their environment. Thus we uphold vocational training.”
The Professor referred to a talk he had had with a leading man in
British Borneo who had said of education in Sarawak. “I do not even
want the natives to learn English for it is no noble ideal for them to
go the towns as pen-pushers. I believe in teaching them about
forestry.”
The Ministry of Education agreed entirely. “Educators throughout the
world have tended to put the town on a pedestal and to throw acorn on
the country. We hope to reverse that. I send Siamese teachers who have
been to Europe to the provinces of the North in order that they may
learn and respect the country. I want to abolish that snobbishness by
which the children who have been trained in Bangkok refuse to go back to
the countryside. I send a number of teachers front the towns into
distant villages. We owe almost all to the country.”
The Journalist was reminded of a ta1k he had had in Moscow with Lenin’s
widow, Krupskaya, one of the Soviet Union’s leading educationalists.
“Krupskaya was a great advocate of sending the townsfolk into the
villages to build up a link between town and. country between
proletarian and peasant;” he said: “She has plans for building up the
New Man in Russia, much as you have the ideal of creating a. finer
Siamese population. I wonder how her Soviet educational plans would
compare with the educational plans in Siam. She believed that loyalty
to society should take the place of loyalty to the family and that too
much stress had been laid upon the fami1y.
The Minister of Education threw up his arms in energetic
disagreement. “The family is the foundation of our education,”
he proclaimed.
“Lenin’s widow declared the need of basing education upon atheism,” said
the journalist.
Again the Minister was alarmed by this view. “A must have faith in
religion’ or he can have no faith in himself,” he declared. “Our
Wats (temples and monasteries) are a fine moral training and are good as
Eton or Harrow. Buddhism is at the basis of our education.
The Professor spoke: “Just as Christianity builds up good character in
the schools of the West, so you believe that Buddhism, will be
the foundation of good character in Siam.”
The Minister replied: “Yes the two religions are similarly good in their
effect on character. The man influenced by Buddhism will think of
others as he thinks of himself.”
Here the journalist intervened: “May I quote a view which I have often
heard expressed in the East and ask your opinion? It is this, that
Buddhism, by its doctrine that desire and life are evil and. that
happiness lies in the absence of desire, has a bad effect on national
character, leads to a laissez faire attitude and creates a character
which does not strive toward progress. The belief in reincarnation, I
hear causes priests not to help beggars and diseased people for they
regard poverty and illness as punishment for misdeeds in former lives.
I told also that women have no souls in some Buddhist beliefs and for
that reason women do the hard work here.”
The Minister pondered: “The Buddhism which we teach. in the
schools is an ideal Buddhism and not superstition. We take the best of
Buddhist doctrines, not the whole. We cannot make: everybody into a
Buddha.”
The Professor suggested: “You try to conservate rather than
abolish desire. But how,” he added: “Can you reconcile the Buddhist
teachings with the military training which you are driving forward in
the schools of Siam? You have sent native guns and aeroplanes to visit
even remote schools and you teach the youth to worship the soldier.”
“Military training helps us in our Buddhist teaching.” answered the
Minister: “It completes a side untouched by Buddhism. It gives the
child discipline and builds up character”
“A test character of children is the type of hero they admire,” said
the Journalist. “Whom do the young Siamese admire?”
The Minister of Education said: “First King Chulalongkorn, the giver of
Siamese civilisation. All comes from him. But let the Professor as a
neutral give his list.”
“Outside Siam my students admire the following most,” stated the
Professor. “First, Louis Pasteur whom they regard as greater than
Napoleon; Secondly Lister as a great pioneer of science; thirdly,
Florence Nightingale, and fourth, Dr. Reed, the American doctor who
discovered how to cure yellow fever.”
“Above all the children to cling to Siamese traditions and to Siamese
dress, to revere the past of Siam, and to study the culture of Siam.
That is the rope which binds our nation.”
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