Omsin Jatuporn on multiculturalism, Thailand’s ethnic minorities, and challenges for teachers
Continuing our discussions of education and the challenges of ethnocultural diversity in Thailand, in this episode we talk to Omsin Jatuporn, who is an Assistant Professor in the Division of Social Science Education, at Chiang Mai University.
Chiang Mai, in northern Thailand, is central to a region that is culturally, linguistically and ethnically highly diverse. Whereas, in the previous episode, we discussed educational issues relating to cross-border migrants settling in Thailand, in this episode we focus on challenges relating to communities that are ‘indigenous’ or long-settled in the hill country of Thailand’s north.
Omsin speaks both as a researcher and on the basis of his experience as a former schoolteacher. That grounding in classroom experience marks him out from many of his colleagues in teacher training. Omsin discusses the difficulty of introducing ‘critical’ theoretical perspectives into teacher training programmes in Thailand. He relates this partly to the political and professional context in which teacher educators must work, but also raises the issue of the ‘commodification’ of cultural diversity.
This ‘commodification’ of culture is especially apparent in northern Thailand, where the visible or material cultures of ‘tribal’ communities have been exploited for the promotion of tourism. However, the marketisation or exoticisation of ‘minority’ cultures often implies a rather shallow engagement with the experience of these communities themselves and the meanings attached to their cultural practices.
Omsin also discusses the way in which schooling for the minorities of northern Thailand relates to efforts to promote a discourse of shared ‘Thai-ness’. This is also an issue for education in southern Thailand (discussed in Episode 3), but whereas amongst Muslims in the south, the treatment of cultural diversity is often viewed through the lens of ‘conflict resolution’, in the north the potential for commodification and commercialisation of culture for tourism promotion tends to predominate.
In his scholarship, Omsin has drawn upon ideas of ‘coloniality’ and ‘decolonisation’. But in the case of Thailand, what does it mean to talk about ‘colonialism’? If it makes sense to see forces of ‘colonialism’ at work in Thai education, who are the colonisers? Omsin, Gairan and Ed also discuss problems arising from sweeping generalisations about ‘the global South’. They reflect on how certain trends or slogans in education policymaking surface in various national contexts, and what this means for questions of power or agency.
Since Omsin has also written comparatively about ‘multicultural education’ in South Korea and Singapore, we ask him why a comparison with these societies seemed interesting or relevant from a Thai perspective.
Finally, Omsin discusses how the internationalisation of higher education has progressed in the Chiang Mai region, and how the region’s ethnic character is related to its attractiveness to certain groups of international students.
Related readings:
Omsin Jatuporn. 2023. ‘The Critical Analysis of the Construction of Teacher-ness Identities in Contemporary Thai Films’, Asia Social Issues. DOI: 10.48048/asi.2023.258892
Omisin Jatuporn. 2022. ‘Repositioning the field of socio-cultural foundations under the efficiency-driven reform in teacher education’. International Journal on Social and Education Sciences, 164-177. DOI: 10.46328/ijonses.279