School Syllabi: Stratification and Dependence

4The moral precepts conveyed to students in Thai schools tend to be very simplistic. Educators use Manichean distinctions to classify all actions as “black” or “white”, and all individuals as “good” or “bad”. In the category of “good”, one’s parents take precedence above all others. According to the teachings, a Thai father and mother are presumed to act always for the benefit of their children. “Undoubtedly they love their children, even though they [may] show it awkwardly at times”, cautiously adds one textbook author. One’s teachers are likewise held to be intrinsically virtuous and of a high moral order, appearing just after parents in this pantheon of goodness. After teachers come one’s elders, superiors, and all those who give financial support to the family.

5Alternatively, there exist those who create disharmony: individuals who follow nothing but their ambitions and desires, causing such disruption that neither their families nor society can enjoy peace and happiness in their presence. The “bad”, with their quarrelsome tendencies, are held up as negative examples. Children learn in school that all conflict is to be avoided. Individuals must safeguard themselves from the harmful effects of differences and disagreement. All social problems are the consequence of differences of opinion or of social change. The key to happiness lies in the willingness to accommodate oneself to any situation through acts of giving, personal sacrifice, and self-effacement.

6The image of drugs conveyed by the textbooks is also Manichean. Somewhat realistically, and at the risk of tarnishing the idyllic model of family usually depicted in the readings, one author ventures the opinion that at times boys — and only boys — may use drugs to prove their masculinity to each other. Drugs, it is said, are children’s recourse against the anxiety generated by quarrels between parents, mothers who are compulsive gamblers, or fathers who drink or come home late because they have a mistress. Among the drugs listed are cigarettes, identified as the first step leading to consumption of more serious 44Neils Mulder, Inside Thai Society: Religion, Everyday Life, Change (Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books, 2000), p. 66. drugs, a sequence that may end in eventual imprisonment or death. Eventually the Manichean classifications of the text shift into outright condemnation. Young “drug addicts” are singled out for special blame. All drug-related anti-social behaviour is supposed to reflect addicts’ own “dirty” environment. Such individuals are accused of destroying society and threatening national stability.

7One textbook reports the story of an unhappy family whose members are addicted to drugs or alcohol. After they reform themselves, their life turns happy and profitable. The readings hold that it is possible to quit drugs, but only by one’s own willpower. The moral is explicit: a person is not a victim of drugs but rather a culprit if he consumes them. He has only himself to blame. This orientation is one of the main obstacles to rehabilitation programs for drug addicts. Addicts are stigmatised, and in Thai culture such individuals are denied a second chance. In part because current economic conditions are so precarious, society’s judgements are harsh and unforgiving. It is all the more difficult for the addict to reform as he must challenge not only his addiction but also the disapproving attitudes of others.

8The Thai family is made up of a hierarchy of roles which should command respect. This requires family members to cultivate virtues of politeness, respect, honesty, magnanimity, and cooperation, declares one textbook. Children should always be grateful for parental love. Their behaviour should be irreproachable, and they should never question paternal authority. Teachers, too, should always be taken at their word because of their higher knowledge. Thus Thai children are judged by their behaviour towards generous and helpful elders (phu yai — adults).

9Once children enter school, textbooks and teaching begin to extend the model of hierarchy and mutual obligation that children first learn about in the family to society as a whole. The family model is transposed to the three “pillars” of Thai society — the nation, religion, and King — occupying the top of the hierarchy. They learn that Thai adults are subject to the same rules as those that place children in the family hierarchy. The need to display gratitude and obligation towards those to whom one is indebted is so central to the construction of society that it is presented as a mantra in every textbook.

10However, some messages are ambiguous. One textbook describes how a rich family squanders its wealth on ostentatious goods because its members follow the dictates of their desires. This family’s experience is compared to the actions of a more modest family. Because of its members’ ability to be guided by ethics, moral values, and capacity to follow norms, the modest family subsequently prospers and so attains happiness. What should children infer from this? On the one hand, wealth does not bring about happiness, but on the other hand, happiness brings wealth. The text upholds principles of hard work and perseverance, yet the worthiness of these things is still measured according to a scale of wealth

11Such ambiguities notwithstanding, textbooks continuously exhort the student to respect norms that allow one to “live in good social harmony”, even if doing so may impair students’ creative inspiration, sense of initiative, and imagination. “When many people live together (in school for example), the community should set itself rules, conventions and order. If everyone follows rules, then schools become a haven of peace, whereas if everyone is allowed to express himself and follow his own inclinations, then schools become absolutely chaotic”, cautions one textbook.3

12Students’ education is not meant to enhance their creativity, nor to encourage them to take responsibility for themselves, as that might lead them to challenge certain principles of community life. Education, in short, is the process by which students should acquire irrefutable and inevitable knowledge. Teaching more advanced students to be critically analytical may lead them into anti-social behaviour. At all levels, it appears that Thai school students are encouraged to memorise rather than understand.

13A resulting paradox is that while docility is universally held in high regard, Buddhist teachings also stress the values of independence and autonomy. But looking more deeply into what these terms mean and how they are interpreted reveals a contradiction. According to the textbooks, a child is “independent” when he is capable of taking care of his body, mind, and personal belongings (as in to dress, to wash, to wash his clothes, do household jobs, and make intellectual effort) without asking others to help him solve his problems until he himself has tried to solve them.4

14Thus the concept of independence is quite different from what we might find in a country such as France, where similar values are framed within a different social environment. According to Swiss sociologists Jean Kellerhals and Cléopâtre Montandon, “Parents of the working class insist more on obedience, conformity and caution whereas those belonging to the bourgeoisie place more emphasis on autonomy, creativity and self-regulation.”5 Thai schools cultivate what would be regarded as an everyday understanding of the term “independence” in Western societies. In this respect it differs from its meaning in modern Western schools, where the objective is to give students an independence that is synonymous with emancipation.6

15In Thailand, it is often said that a young child is “king”, or as Bernard Antoine puts it, he is “too spoilt, too molly-coddled”. Evidence supports this view. As a Thai child is considered a dependent, he receives help from others no matter how trivial the task. The female senator Prateep Ungsongtham Hata echoes this observation by saying that many overprotected children are incapable of reasoning and taking their own decisions, which in fact causes them to have low self-esteem.7

16A chronic state of “being helped” does nothing to encourage young children to gain autonomy. One yaa baa user who had undergone three years of detoxification says that he continues to feel handicapped by this history of external control. “When we are children, we are over-protected.” Presumably for their own good, “parents think and do everything for their children”. But later on, “someone always has to do the needful”.8 An education limited to reproducing what is taught will not help students face life.

17This state of affairs in the Thai educational system continues all the way through university. At that level, all disciplines — including nationalism, which is considered a legitimate subject for higher academia — are taught according to a rigid framework. Thus the system teaches students how to “love the nation”, even going as far as specifying the appropriate ways to express patriotism.9 As with other ideas, the concept of nationalism is similarly not open to criticism or analysis. While venturing an independent opinion on such matters in Thai society today is no longer considered an act of rebellion, doing so is still frowned upon.

Secondary Schools: An Open Door to Yaa Baa

18The following statements by young users demonstrate how yaa baa consumption can become a positive part of their school experiences. This in turn helps explain how methamphetamine infiltrates a school environment. A former user declares that the first time he tried the drug, “it was in the toilets of the school. It was not complicated, everybody saw and knew who sold it. The toilets were the meeting places of the small-time hoodlums of the school. … you only had to ask for it, because in the beginning they offered it to you.”10 A Thai school student has access to yaa baa even if he does not really want it and can sample it “just to try” without having to pay. For a student to resist this kind of temptation would take an unusual degree of self-discipline.

19The sociologist Jirapan Tritipjaras spent three months in a Thai secondary school observing the norms of daily school life.11 The structure of the institution conformed to a well-defined hierarchy. Here, the director exercised full control. Teachers could not question or debate the school’s prescribed rules, and teachers themselves were often very strict. In the rule book, regulations for the school dress code alone covered many pages. Yet despite these institutional restrictions, teachers were given a free hand with their students and generally wielded complete authority in the classroom. Corporal punishment was common.

20A sixteen-year-old student from the school lamented, “For example, we had to put a cross in the questionnaire and if it did not fill the whole square they would beat us. They would beat us if we were late or absent or if we could not submit our homework. Even if we had valid reasons they would not listen to us.” The disapproval of some colleagues failed to deter those teachers who were very strict. “Many of them hit the students on their calf muscles. They say that they have done that year after year, even on senior-most students. Sometimes the traces are visible”, said a teacher sadly. Others slapped students or boxed their ears. Talkative students’ mouths were shut with tape and once, when some students came dressed in defiance of the rules, a teacher tore their clothes and left them in only their sarongs (pah kao mah). One teacher even punished male students by shaving their heads and “drawing a shameful symbol like a cross or wide band at the back of the head”.

21The weighty consequences of these abusive acts by teachers manifested themselves in student behaviour. As students were subject to extensive control within the school premises, once outside they tended to express rage towards school authorities and at the institution itself. Absenteeism was high during school days, and it is not difficult to see why students turned to drugs as a means of escape. From a psychological point of view, even if the relation between ragging and addiction has not been scientifically proven, it is highly probable that the relatively large number of yaa baa consumers in this school is due to the institution’s highly disciplinarian environment.

22Despite the teachers’ strict adherence to institutional rules, it was actually relatively easy for students to carry methamphetamine onto school premises for eventual use or sale to others. Tablets could be stuffed into straws whose ends are closed and folded, after which the straw was hidden in socks; they could be rolled into the neck of the socks; covered in a paper napkin and kept in shoes; hidden in secret pockets stitched into sleeves, skirts or trousers; concealed behind shirt buttons with adhesive tape; hidden in pants — in short, alternatives abounded. In addition to clothes, students’ personal belongings offered numerous hiding places as well: inside their books, pencil boxes, make-up pencils, lipsticks, tampons and sanitary napkins. The top portion of a school bag could also be ripped off and stocked with tablets.

23The ease with which students snuck yaa baa onto the grounds of what was supposed to be a highly controlled institution seem to mimic similar goings-on in the adult world between drug smugglers and customs officials. It so happens that the buildings of the school had the appearance of a fortress, but as we have seen, the fortress proved to be a badly-defended one whose severe rules belied the fact that it was very fragile. The fortress certainly lacked any ramparts against drugs.

24In Thailand, schools, like monasteries, are often situated at urban crossroads where they may end up serving as thoroughfares for drug traffic as well as human traffic. This was certainly the case with the secondary school under discussion. It was encircled on the east and south by small canals that connected it to a poor locality with ramshackle houses. There were walls surrounding the grounds, but during the day open doors allowed free passage to anyone in the locality. Therefore unauthorized persons could enter without much difficulty. Such individuals could either sell the drugs directly on the premises or take the goods behind a wall situated at the back of the school near the toilets and wait for students to climb over.

While students’ toilets were located both inside and outside these buildings, most of the indoor ones were closed due to disrepair. The school’s complicated physical structure offered plenty of hidden areas for students to skip class and hang out in, away from teachers’ eyes. The crucial spot was the students’ outside toilet buildings, which were divided into many little cubicles. The buildings themselves, which stood apart from the main buildings, were rather dark and well hidden from sight by wooden partitions, trees, large water tanks and piles of construction materials. It was there that many students bought, sold and used amphetamines most freely. Students also used the roofs and basements of some classroom buildings for drug-related activities.
Jirapan Tritipjaras, cited by Wipawee Otaganonta, “A Picture of Abuse”, Bangkok Post, 13 September 2000

25It is difficult to supervise students in Thai schools because no specialised personnel have been allocated to this job. In primary and secondary schools, supervision duties fall upon the teachers. Jirapan Tritipjaras notes that teachers at the school he observed were overloaded; with a large number of students enrolled, each teacher was responsible for handling 20 to 24 classes per week, on average. This left them with very little time and energy to supervise students’ activities and assure their well-being. Teachers typically did not know their students by name and very often had to identify them by the name badge sewn onto their shirts.

26Given this, it was easy for anyone dealing or buying drugs to hide their displayed names with an adhesive strip. External suppliers, some of whom were former students, could enter the institution and pass unnoticed by wearing a uniform with a fictitious name badge.

27Arriving at the same conclusions as Jirapan Tritipjaras, the Thai Farmers Research Centre emphasizes the urgent need to increase the number of teachers in Thai schools so they can render indispensable extra-curricular supervision.12 It is obvious that school security in its present form poses no barrier to yaa baa. It could even be said that schools have become one of the main hubs of the methamphetamine trade in Thailand.

Competition and Selection: Recourse to Methamphetamine

28The study of orientations “chosen” by students after their final examinations reveals surprisingly regular patterns. Admission to university depends upon the results of the university entrance examinations, which follow school finals. If a student does well he may enrol in science courses, but if he is average he must be content with an arts concentration. Accountancy, social sciences, and humanities receive students of second and third-order placement.13 In short, one’s academic concentration is not determined by choice but by results.

29The Economic and Social Council of the United Nations observes that rapid social and technological change that cause society to become increasingly competitive tends to make children and young people place a high premium on success.14 This is clearly the case in Thailand. In the view of Mrs. Nucharat Kanchanaroj, the morals and ethics of urbanites have changed. Many young people today hope to become wealthy in as short a time as possible.15 In this vein, a Thai expression that has been translated by Bernard Antoine is particularly apt: “We [have no choice but to] grit our teeth and [elbow] our way through.”16

30Occupational positions in the country that were assured in the past must be earned today, at least in part. Well-recognised qualifications are necessary to ensure access to a good profession. Young people in Thailand perceive university-level education as a fulcrum that will help them ascend the social ladder through competition, rather than a means of intellectual development or self-discovery.

31Yaa baa plays a strategic role in two phases of this all-out race to success. First, the drug has become an indispensable ingredient for university examination preparation. As it stimulates intellectual capacities and physical endurance, yaa baa has become an essential part of the learning process. Second, if efforts to pass the exam are not ultimately successful, the drug helps the student face the consequences of his failure, and makes the humiliation of having to give up his ambitions easier to bear.

32Senator Prateep Ungsongtham Hata remarks that middle class families in particular suffer when children fail at university level.17 Having chalked out a path for children’s success, parents are tempted to exert strong pressure on offspring to fulfil the family’s ambitions. Problems emerge when the children realize that they cannot rise to the occasion. Normally, only 20 per cent of those who pass school exams gain admission to university. Therefore an inevitable 80 per cent must face what society considers failure. Disoriented and sometimes broken, these young Thais might enter professional schools or teacher training schools out of frustration. Frequently they simply withdraw and give little more thought to serious study.18

33According to Dr. Panpimol of Child Mental Health Centre, all depends upon how parents perceive their progeny.19 Many wish to overlook the fact that children have their own aspirations and preferences. Only performance counts, and as we have seen, parents tend to evaluate their children’s performance according to only one scale.

34In Thailand, the education system neglects individual development.20 Winners in the system know how to stand out, but those who are not able to adapt themselves to this competitive environment have few other options and hence often take to yaa baa. The temptation is all the more pronounced because the drug is already a known quantity, as the student would have most likely depended on yaa baa to get through the revision process in the first place. Akin to the situation of a labourer whose drug habit while working becomes a pastime when unemployed, the failed student’s own study companion can easily change into a companion of despair.

35When they suffer, students can sometimes find “solace in yaa baa”, confirms the journalist who had interviewed Nat.21 As was noted earlier, the financial crisis of Southeast Asia acted to break the ardent spirit of a promising student generation. Since that time, explains Bernard Antoine, yaa baa is no longer only a labour pill or recreation pill. It is also a solace pill for “all those who want to forget”.

36The sociologist Patrick Pelège observes that in the West, one must perform at school, in one’s sex life, in the driver’s seat of a car, and in society as a whole. If they fail to achieve the required results, many adolescents simply accept that they do not have a place in this world.22 A society where speed and strength are the order of the day naturally produces what David Le Breton calls “the passions of risk”. Boredom and disappointment are so intense that one is inclined to flirt with death. The failed student whose sense of frustration and shame are extreme can end up committing an irreparable act.

37Although there is insufficient evidence to establish a scientific correlation between educational failure and suicide rates in Thailand, the country has attained one of the highest suicide rates in the world, and the majority of the victims are young people excluded from the educational system.23 For David Le Breton, the act of suicide by a young person indicates the lack of a social “holding place” for him. The troubled individual has difficulty entering society and perceiving that there is a future in it for him. Such a mindset reveals a lack of answers to questions about the meaning of existence.24 More concretely, it also shows a lack of communication within the family.

A Representative Social Structure

38Family, community, and society in Thailand are all based on the same model. The family is considered a fragment of the community, and individuals are considered parts of one larger “whole”. Accordingly, a Thai child is led to believe that he is nothing but a cogwheel in a big machine. If the machine is well-oiled and if the wheels work together, then the whole works well.25 This is a functionalist26 representation in which interdependent elements are at the centre of society, while qualities of individual independence and autonomy that a person might use to his advantage are pushed toward the margins.

39In Thailand it is more common to refer to “community” than to “society” because the former is less easily divisible; it reflects the unbreakable bonds that unite those who must share the same space.27 Hence the Thai population is treated as a vast, necessarily stratified community held together above all by the mutual dependence and goodwill of its members.

40This vision easily finds its counterpart in the rural areas, where social structure is organised primarily on the basis of family relationships. Most village inhabitants are interconnected in some way or other, and individuals receive mutual aid and assistance from the village. Men and women work together in the fields and the gender division of labour is based on functional criteria.28 Rural communities where people know one another and care about their neighbour are characterised by interdependent ties that may easily disappear if individuals shift to an urban milieu. As explained by Kaija Korpi, it is not therefore by chance that drugs affect mainly city dwellers in Asia and elsewhere.29 As we have seen, if methamphetamine consumption is widespread in rural Thailand, the country’s urban sector populations are even more inclined to use it.

41As pointed out by the geographer Jean Baffie, however, to compare “rural solidarity” to “city individualism” is to over-simplify.30 In Thailand’s ethnic map, Thais of Chinese heritage form a good proportion of city dwellers — between 10 and 20 per cent, according to estimates.31 Having arrived in Thailand in successive waves from the 13^th century onwards, they have since been involved in all major events of the kingdom to such an extent that the ruling dynasty today is partly of Sino-Thai origin. The Chinese brought their hardworking culture along with them, and were duly recognised for their capacity to labour during the country’s period of rapid development in the 19^th century. Reputed for their trading skills, many Chinese immigrants became wealthy and occupied an increasing number of responsible economic, administrative and political posts. Today a significant number of the country’s leaders are of recent Sino-Thai origin.

42As the Sino-Thai value system became integrated into urban life, it compelled others, for whom work was a traditionally less important value, to adjust their behaviour. Such values helped to shape new demands upon labourers to conform to daily schedules and work discipline. Likewise, the progressive economic integration of Thailand into the world system obliged workers to conform to a capitalist work order. Thus it was that Thai labourers struggled to meet the work requirements that had been set by the most competitive sectors of the population, and from the middle of the 20^th century onwards, it was amphetamine that provided the indispensable aid for “native” workers.

43With every new generation, however, the values and social pre-conceptions associated with a particular social formation must undergo a process of levelling and re-evaluation, and this happened in Thai society as the 20^th century came to a close. The prosperity of the 1980s and early 1990s in Thailand served to open doors to new middle classes of all ethnic origins, while correspondingly the country’s privileged Sino-Thai youth, unlike their predecessors, no longer presumed an automatic link between hard work and success. The dual function of methamphetamine as both labour drug and recreational drug acted to bring together “native” youth and Sino-Thais, of both urban and rural origin, by virtue of its mass appeal.

Family Mobility: An Element in the Spread of Yaa Baa

44In Thailand the rural exodus accelerated greatly during the 1960s. Hence cities are today largely populated by recent inhabitants who spent their childhood in villages. Most urban migrants in the country continue to maintain close ties with their parents, who have remained in the villages.

45The urban-rural relationship is ambiguous, and it is typical for urbanites to show a certain disparagement of villagers, whom they refer to as baan nok (country bumpkins). Yet if Thailand was able to withstand the financial crisis of 1997 without major social clashes or revolts, this was largely due to the social cohesion generated by ties established between city migrants and the rural family home.

46During difficult times, those under duress leave the city and return to their provincial villages. There they “tighten their belts” and ride out troubles with the mainstay of family support. In Thailand there seems to be no insurmountable shame in returning to a village without having made one’s fortune in the city, as is the case for returned urban migrants in certain African countries. Even those Thais who are able to hold onto their jobs in the city during hard times remain nostalgic about their place of origin, which they conceive of as friendly and welcoming. Many urban-dwellers willingly invest in building a home for themselves in the village in case they later return, and save money so that they can send some to those who stayed behind.

47Urbanites’ attachment to their rural roots generates much to-and-fro movement between city and village. During festival season, holidays such as songkhran or loy kratong32 compel urbanites to return home. Bus, train, and air tickets are reserved months in advance, and it becomes impossible to travel as the city of Bangkok empties out.

48This marked geographical mobility has not been without consequences for the explosive increase in yaa baa use. On returning to their village, young urbanites are inclined to propagate drug habits among their rural counterparts. Yaa baa takes root there all the more easily because of rural youths’ well-known fascination for urban ways.

49In addition to holiday visits, seasonal labour migration also encourages the spread of methamphetamine in the provinces. Every year during the dry season the labouring population of Bangkok increases by about ten per cent.33 This is the period when there are fewer jobs in agriculture and correspondingly, when the urban construction sector — whose activities are generally scaled back during the rainy season, where agricultural activity is at its maximum — experiences the greatest demand for unskilled workers. It would be surprising if this seasonal migration of peasants and labourers did not contribute to the spread of methamphetamine in the rural areas.

50Yet another factor that brings yaa baa into the countryside is the weekly or monthly migrations of Thai schoolchildren. This involves students who come from villages but are educated in residential schools away from their families. This educational exile is not always mandatory, but parental logic holds that if their children are enrolled in the “best” schools, their chances of success can be optimised. Often pupils leave the village as early as the age of eleven for their secondary schooling. If students are to take up a more prestigious curriculum, they must often leave their native province altogether.

51Once the children are away from home, the family loses control over them. Having arrived in urban zones where yaa baa is in circulation, the recently-arrived student migrants are rapidly susceptible to its use. Even the country’s most prestigious schools are plagued by methamphetamine use, notes Mr. Suchaat, head of an anti-drug association.34

New Family Equilibrium in an Urban Milieu

52Families that settle in cities often become restructured into nuclear units of only parents and children, if they do not end up disintegrating altogether. The rural exodus, while offering economic hope, is also a source of instability. Thus a metropolitan zone that in theory should offer a better range of social services to its inhabitants frequently makes these services inaccessible to newly arrived, many of whom are individuals that have lost their connection to the traditional mutual aid networks of the countryside.35

53In an urban milieu, conventions that govern relations between parents and children are also subject to question. Familial norms of deference and submission are slowly giving way a Western-influenced model of dependence and independence. In the system of traditional Thai values, a child should show his gratitude towards his parents no matter what the circumstances. But as they come under the sway of presumed notions of Western values such as “emancipation” and “independence”, the young tend to leave behind gestures of gratitude and parental respect.

States a young yaa baa user, “I was born in Lopburi province. There are seven people in my family including my father and mother. I am the oldest child. I completed Primary 6 but I did not study further. Later I went to work in Bangkok for about a year, and then returned to help my parents with work at home”. On his return, his family was surprised to see how he had changed during his stay at Bangkok: “I did not help my parents work, but only went out to have fun and use drugs”.
Interview recorded by the Regional Centre of United Nations Drug Control Programme, 2001

54In rural Thailand, raising and caring for children is generally the responsibility of not just the parents, but the community as a whole. A child from an extended family residing in a close-knit community is supervised, reprimanded, and guided by those in the fields as well as the home.36 Under conditions such as these, parents are only partly responsible for the child’s upbringing. Uncles, aunts, and neighbours serve as adult authority figures as much as parents, so the child grows up learning to give his elders the respect they are due according to cultural norms.

55This model of collective upbringing may fit the structure of rural community life, but does not hold fast in the new reduced family — the nuclear family — in an urban milieu. The upbringing of youngsters in the city resembles patterns of the more traditional upbringing in the sense that mainly “others” provide it; parents continue to delegate authority. But the community no longer exists, and even if it did, its unity of place would be lost. With urban-based social relations scattered across the four corners of the city, family life takes place in a context that is more an association of individuals than a cohesive community.

56It is not only urban-dwelling families of humble means that depend on others to bring up their progeny in a “nuclear” set-up. Delegation in general is an essential characteristic of Thai modernity.

Beep, beep. Geng pulls his Tamagotchi out of his pocket. It cries with hunger, so the chubby boy feeds his virtual pet its favourite food — hamburger and ice-cream — and gives it a pat. Beep, beep. Tamagotchi is full and happy. While he is stuffing his cyberpet, Geng doesn’t realise that he himself is a Tamagotchi to his parents. Wah, wah. Geng’s parents look up from their work and see him. He wants a new computer game. So they buy him one. Wah, wah. Geng is hungry. His mother orders him a home-delivered pizza and coke. Wah, wah. Geng fails maths. His father hires a tutor for him. Geng’s story is not extraordinary. It is the lifestyle of many city kids: one of endless consumerism and parents who are always too busy. Take Ja-oh for example. Her parents make her take so many tutorial lessons each day that she never has a chance to read a good children’s book. Meanwhile, Pang’s mum and dad are chronic workaholics and she says she’s seen Sailor Moon and Doraemon more often than her parents’ faces. Like Geng, Ja-oh and Pang, many other Thai children are like their parents’ Tamagotchis: to be satiated whenever they whine.
Teerawichichainan Bussarawan, “The Tamagotchi Generation”, Bangkok Post, 10 January 1998

57The Bangkok Post journalist who authored the above “Tamagotchi Generation” associates this scenario with the Western family model, which he criticises for parents’ tendency to neglect their children. But on the contrary, what is being described here reflects longstanding practices of child-raising in Thailand. These urban parents retain the same attitude towards their children as they would have held in previous times. The only difference is that they can no longer count on the help from the larger community.

58Under the conditions of the isolated nuclear urban family, parents do not always realise that they are the only ones capable of filling the void in children’s lives created by contemporary societal developments. Provided they have the means, parents are content to pay to have children entertained or baby-sat, or by extension, pay for services such as home delivery or private tuition that serve similar functions. Most of these activities leave the child to learn on his own, especially through television. As a result the child is exposed to the gamut of opinions and practices offered in excessive quantity by this mass medium.

59Professor Somphong Jitradub of Chulalongkorn University confirms that such changes are taking place. “Today we no longer have the support of grandmothers, uncles, and aunts who earlier used to live under the same roof. The neighbourhood no longer has social control over children.”37 If parents are not able to set a good example, then children are forced to invent their own models. Thus they can end up with a confused understanding of moral rules and traditional values. The shortcomings of the contemporary Thai family partially explain tendencies toward drug-taking among the very young. As pointed out by the research of the Thai Farmers Research Center, the younger Thai population displays a number of problematic symptoms.38 Drugs are only one of many issues plaguing this generation, a generation that engages in much more conflict-ridden behaviour than previous ones. For instance, until a few years ago, it would have been unimaginable for children to “bunk classes”; such an act would have been considered a supreme insult to both teachers and parents.

60In the system of community upbringing, children may come and go as they please without their bad behaviour causing excessive worry. Wherever they are, there is always an adult nearby to take charge if necessary. Transposed to city life, this apparently harmless practice of leaving the child to come and go as he pleases takes a different turn. There are many youngsters between 14 or 15 years of age who are solely accountable to themselves to plan their activities. These children tend to embark on methamphetamine use earlier than others young drug-takers, observes Mr. Suchaat.39

61Other conditions besides rural-urban migration help explain the trend towards parents’ abdication of responsibility for supervising children. As Mrs. Nucharat Kanchanaroj remarks,40 in Thailand as elsewhere, life in the city compels more and more women to take up jobs outside the home. Currently almost all parents leave their houses to work and so are less available for their children. Noting that this trend results in “less family warmth than before”, Mrs. Kanchanaroj’s comment seems to echo some parental dissatisfactions of her own.

62Some adults recognise that their children can find solace and a sense of belonging among friends and peers that the parents themselves have been unable to kindle. But how realistic is it for parents to expect to create a “warm” relationship with their children home, given current conditions? Are they willing to talk with their children, and if so, might they still be apprehensive about broaching certain issues?

63“My mother knew that I was taking yaa baa,” states a young user. “Even though she knew, we never talked about it. I have never talked with my mother about yaa baa. She knew what it was but she never spoke about it.”41 Certain subjects are taboo, as confirmed by a user who refrained from talking about yaa baa with her friend, whom she knew was also taking it. She says, “I don’t know how much he is taking. It is not something that we discuss.”42

64This lack of communication is explained not only by the embarrassment caused everywhere by “painful subjects”. In Thailand a hierarchical structure obliges those in families and in society at large to show deference and submission to others in their relationships. Can this ever allow for a relationship of equals between children and parents, or between spouses or lovers, that nurtures confidence? Such an interaction appears possible only among peers.

65To avoid the ever-present threat of government censure for speaking out, Thais who wish to express criticism have long turned to tales and stories as a means of conveying their message. This custom continues today in Thai society. Stories are both readable and entertaining, features that make them accessible to the public and appealing to young people.

66Botan’s short story titled Yüa portrays a husband and wife who, unable to continue their studies, have resolved to work hard. The mother manages a shop from ten in the morning to eight at night. Her daily commute totals some four hours. The father has a three-hour bus ride to his office in the city, and is often away on business for some weeks every month as well. The couple has two teenage children who are given to gambling and motorcycle racing and who like to fight. In the parents’ absence a young woman takes care of the household work. She is also responsible for the boys. The woman, a distant cousin, comes from the village and is not well-educated.

67The parents in the story attempt to recreate the familiar extended family structure in their new urban milieu. However, the young woman who keeps house for the couple lacks control over the boys, precisely because they are from the city and she is a village woman. The boys threaten her and take the household money she has been allocated so they can use it to gamble. Rather than complain to the parents, the young woman blames herself instead and says nothing until the day the boys beat her up, at which point the parents at last come to learn of the situation.

68The author’s description of how the parents respond to the crisis is provocative. At the outset the parents are relieved to hear that their two children are not — or not yet — involved in drugs, which they view as the ultimate problem. The husband and wife mutually decide “not to reprimand the children because that would not have any effect, they would continue anyway”, but instead secretly inform the police about the existence of an illegal gambling den in the locality. The parents use the pretext of a “wicked” environment to avoid directly confronting their children.

69In the aftermath of the beating incident the parents ponder how to keep their children at home, away from danger. (The teenagers are not attending classes since their school was damaged by floods.) Underlying the parents’ formulation of the issue is a representation of home as a haven of peace and free of bad influences. However, in the absence of a community of adults who could exercise control over the boys, this attitude proves to be an error in judgement.

70To entice their children into staying home, the parents dip into their savings to buy a VCR. The boys soon tire of the cassettes bought by their parents, but become increasingly mesmerized by numerous violent and pornographic cassettes that they borrow from their friends. At the end of the story, the boys turn on their housekeeper-cousin by first raping and then killing her. Afterwards the parents again lament their misfortune and try to sort out what caused it, finally determining that videos and other products imported by foreigners were at fault. Once again, environment is blamed rather than the teenagers’ own irresponsible actions.43

71This short story illustrates the apparently implacable attitude of the individual in the face of provocation. To respond to provocation in Thai culture is unacceptable because it shows a loss of self-control, an outcome unworthy of a “good” parent. Of prime importance is to refrain from generating social troubles. A person who is capable of practising this civic attitude is respectable and respected. An individual who exercises self-control, whose behaviour is always decent, and who is never given to excess, has found the ideal path. He has reached the positive freedom eulogised by Thai culture.

72Such a fully acculturated person does not let himself be easily shaken by adversity or the judgements of others. He has succeeded in mastering the art of accepting his own problems with equanimity. The expression mai pen rai (“it’s nothing”, “it doesn’t matter”), used everyday by Thais, allows the individual to feel involved and detached at the same time.44 Thais seek peaceable relationships with others and try to avoid showing anger at all costs. This orientation explains Thai adults’ remarkable tolerance45 of children’s misbehaviour as long as it does not threaten public order — an attitude akin to the social permissiveness regarding yaa baa as long as it is taken in sufficiently moderate quantities so as not to create social problems.

73But let us return for a moment to the account of Mr. Boonsen, who sought help for his yaa baa addiction at the treatment centre of the Duang Prateep Foundation at Chomphon. His concern over how Thai children are “over-protected” has already been noted. Mr. Boonsen continues, “The Foundation taught me to think and to learn by myself. When I realised how much effort and work are necessary to earn a baht, I started crying. Yes I did realise.” He discovered that methamphetamine helped him to leave the world only by making him economically dependent on his parents, who were in fact financing his addiction habit. “At that time, a yaa baa pill used to cost 40 to 50 baht (around 1 euro) and I spent easily 1000 baht (about 25 euros) every two days.”46 Although the experience of overcoming a serious and painful situation such as this can hasten an individual’s entry into adulthood, it is surely not a solution which can be prescribed as a general social model. The gap between the need for funds to support a drug habit and the capacity to mobilise the necessary means simply grows too large.

74“Now, I am helping my boyfriend’s parents. I have an office job”, says Ms. Koong.47 “But this is not really a profession because I work when I want to. My boyfriend does not have a real profession either, he just helps his father. But it is the same thing, he sleeps throughout the day. I don’t feel I’m ready to have children. I need stability for that. We are seriously thinking of giving up (the drug). What I would like is a fixed salary, a real job. But first of all, we must stop all this.”

75In the future Ms. Koong thinks she can take on the responsibilities of an adult, but she does not yet feel ready to do so. Her yaa baa consumption stands in the way. Yet the situation is not beyond hope, and statistics are encouraging. According to an observation made by the United Nations Economic and Social Council, once youngsters who have used illegal drugs reach a certain level of maturity they often abruptly renounce their habit, and can do so without any apparent irreversible damage.48

76From the viewpoint of an “empathetic Westerner”, Jacques Vincent notes that the juvenile character of many Thai adults is reflected in their tendency to want to have fun and read Japanese manga until the age of 40.49 This puerile attitude should be considered in context: by prolonging childish candour, members of the contemporary generation of middle-class young adults have found their place in Thai society. Their immaturity confers a collective social identity upon this generation, one achieved despite the burden of a history which dissuades its members from making strong demands or taking initiative. Young Thai’s proclivity to have fun and to enjoy themselves — perhaps long after one might expect such behaviour to recede — proves to be a way out of a historical dead-end. Such an orientation is necessary for them to be able to put up with the pressures of contemporary life that are a heritage from the past.

Limitations of the Monastery

77In Thailand, Buddhism is taken as a guide to an ethical way of life that reveals the Right Path. Its rules should be disseminated to become part of each individual’s personal and incontestable qualities.50 Religious proverbs are frequently used in Buddhist teachings to stress the importance of obedience, discipline, and hierarchical relationships.

78The Buddha himself questioned ideas that were not proved or illustrated by experience. He sought to make his teachings known through his experiences, his discipline, and his path. Following upon this orientation, Buddhism gives more credence to something done well because one has deeply understood it, over something well-stated because one has given it much thought, remarks Louis Gabaude.51 Because of the domination, exclusivity, and convictions of the Theravada order of Buddhism in Thailand, even now devout Thais are rarely able to freely “think” about their religion and thus test their own ideas by comparing them with those of others.

79Debates among those in the Theravada community are discouraged, if not prohibited, because Buddha was supposed to have said everything once and for all. What is important is not giving free rein to thoughts but rather holding them on a leash, the latter by virtue of appropriate mental exercises. Hence the community of Thai Buddhist monks (the Sangha) is defined not by its ideas or its doctrines but by its rules.

80The Buddhist religion bans the use of psychotropic substances, and monastic rules are particularly strict in this respect. However, even as an exemplary society the community of monks is also exposed to contemporary social currents. To counter this, members of the monastic community must sometimes take pains to remember and reinforce the principles upon which it was founded. While Thai Buddhism today has not yet reached a full-blown crisis, its representatives are nevertheless going through a turbulent period.

81In accordance with the fifth precept of Buddhism, monks are in principle forbidden from using spirits and all intoxicating substances. This ban extends also to smoking cigarettes and chewing fermented tea leaves.52 However, Bernard Antoine observes that quite a number of monks smoke. More worrying is the fact that in the last few years, a sufficient number of drug addiction cases have been noted in monasteries to warrant changes in the law. Since 1998, monks may be subjected to urine tests, and in accordance with a law proposed by the former Education Minister, Akhom Engchuan, candidates aspiring to the status of monk may also be required to undergo drug detection measures.

82There is no doubt that serious drug abuse exists within the Thai monastic community. According to Bernard Antoine, some Thai monks have longstanding addiction to drugs. “Fifteen or twenty years ago, the monks — who could not be searched — used to smuggle in Burmese heroin and opium. Under their robes, they could hide large amounts of drugs.”53

83The Department of Religious Affairs recently acknowledged that out of 30,000 Buddhist monks in Thailand, some ten per cent were thought to be using yaa baa.54 Mr. Suchaat, head of an anti-drug abuse association, suggests that such figures can be explained by the fact that the police do not have jurisdiction over the monasteries.55 A more plausible explanation would hold that the monks were taking yaa baa even before entering the monastery. “A number of novices are very young. And even if they wear monks’ robes, they behave like ordinary people, so yaa baa enters easily”, says Mr. Suchaat.

84The Buddhist temple in Thailand is not an entity closed-off from society; far from it. A great number of young Thai males circulate in and out of the temple community. Thais consider it good for a young man to spend sometime “away from the world” as a monk, though he may never take his final vows. Even if very temporary, the ordination of a son allows his parents to enjoy social esteem, particularly in the villages.56

85However, the influence of religious orientations and worldly ones is not a one-way street. Upon “leaving the world”, young people entering the monastery also cause “a world to enter” the religious community. Though separated from their roots, Buddhist novices do not necessarily give up all their existing habits. Were they accustomed to using yaa baa before entering, they are naturally inclined to continue, once inside. They might even encourage their new friends to try it, should the occasion arise. Just as migrants’ geographical mobility during the economic crisis of 1997 served to bring new kinds of recreational drug use to rural areas, “religious mobility” thus constitutes another social vector for the spread of yaa baa.

86There is much talk in Thailand about the erosion of religious sentiments. Shifts in religious attitudes are presumed to have happened in association with changes brought about by the economic and social revolution of the last half-century. Yet it is not certain that these ostensibly new mindsets necessarily account for why more and different kinds of people in Thai society are turning to yaa baa.

87For example, the fatalistic attitude attributed to Thais is assumed to stem from the notion of karma.57 By this reasoning, young Thais’ relative lack of interest in the cycles of birth and rebirth would thus help explain what we have termed as “the increase in a sense of meaninglessness” and the associated phenomenon of addiction among members of this generation. Apparently, because a person is less worried about his karma (a factor relatively difficult to control, no doubt, since it is based on all his previous births), he is correspondingly less concerned about the quality of his socialisation. And since he does not feel obliged to prepare for his future, he is therefore interested only in making the most of the present.

88All this is undoubtedly true, to a certain extent, but it must be remembered that in Thai religious practices the acquisition of “merit” is due less to everyday ethics and more to ritualised practices such as one’s donations to temples or participation in particular ceremonies. Here as elsewhere, it is indeed the case that larger economic and social contexts determine the salvation strategies of individuals.

What Cultural Identity?

89The presumed loss of religious bearings among young people and adults in contemporary Thailand is exacerbated by what is seen to be Thais’ ambiguous grasp of their own culture. Historically and at present, Thai culture is considered to be somehow inferior to the Western cultural model. For instance, the Thai Kings Mongkut (r. 1851–68), Chulalongkorn (r. 1868–1910), Vajiravudh (r. 1910–25) and subsequently the Thai strongman of the 1930s, Plaek Phibunsongkhram, all partially subscribed to the concept of modernisation as conceived in the West. They not only helped their country develop but also introduced, explicitly or otherwise, the idea that traditional practices were outmoded, primitive, barbaric, and not in keeping with modern times. At the time of European colonisation, when the presence of foreigners at the doors of the Thai kingdom posed a threat, these rulers had no choice but to introduce the germ of a collective inferiority complex in order to preserve national independence.

90The above succession of leaders obliged people to change their clothing styles58 and personal hygiene practices to prove their country could achieve a degree of civilisation equal to that of the West, without an imperialist power coming to “civilise” them. The ambivalent nature of what this statement implies is perfectly clear. On the one hand, Thais were encouraged to be proud of their country for having resisted foreign invaders; on the other, they were asked to sacrifice an indigenous identity deemed contemptible and outmoded.

91Even now, Thais seem to forget how rich in culture they actually are. They worry over how their country can find its own models, and they critically analyse their self-construction as a society. They speak of Buddhist wisdom and of lost values, and find it difficult to adapt these things to contemporary conditions.59 The crisis of 1997 brought members of Thai society some way out of their tendency to ruminate, however, by partially invalidating the idea that a blind imitation of Western models would unquestionably lead to social prosperity and even to collective happiness.

92An often-heard refrain in this discourse is that Thailand could find a way to follow its own history of development if members of Thai society thought more about their roots and used more knowledge derived from ancient traditions. However, this common view is more of a nostalgia-induced moral opinion than an actual alternative model for the country. Folklore and the pseudo-authentic cultural shows that go with it may be entertaining for tourists, but what future can they offer the Thai people?60 In Thai society at present, no serious alternative to consumerism seems to be in the offing.