2.2. The Roles on Education

It should be noted that there is a great difference as regards the social background of the monks in the traditional Thai society in the past and that of the monks in the modern times. In the past, the monkhood was recruited from men of all classes of the society and from all parts of the country regardless of their status. As members of the monkhood, the monks formed an independent society exercising spiritual and intellectual influences on the secular society. Roughly speaking, they played the roles of the intellectuals. But in the modern times, since the monks were retired from educational responsibility on the adoption of the modern system of public education and since the traditional system of education was retained only in the monasteries, the monkshood has been recruited from underprivileged, nearly entirely from the peasants’ children.

To distinguish them from those trained in the newly adopted modern system of education, the monks of modern times may be called the “traditional intellectuals.^[1] ” But, with an undeveloped educational system of education, they have lost the position of the intellectuals and fallen to the class of the common uninformed people or even the uneducated. In contrast to these outdated intellectuals recruited from the villagers are modern intellectuals who get educated through the modern educational system These modern intellectuals are now represented by university students who are mostly (about 75%-80%) recruited from the privileged classed in towns and cities, the children of government officials and merchants. It thus only natural that much of the part that was played by the monks in the past has been taken up these modern intellectuals who have come to play it for the Thai society of today.

However, as these modern intellectuals have been, to a large extent, alienated from the Thai culture through the modern Western system of education they cannot well accommodate themselves to the traditional rural communities, which form the major part of about 75-80% of the Thai society^[2]. They, therefore, usually confine their services to the minor modernized urban sector of the society, leaving the major rural sector under the backward uninformed leadership for the monks.

As noted earlier, most students in the modern secular system of education are recruited from the privileged classes. Sons of the poor peasants in remote areas find their resort in the monasteries where they stayed as monks and novices. Thus, in spite of the loss of intellectual leadership, the monkshood still they play an important educational role for modern society. Amidst the unequal opportunities in education, the monkshood provides a channel through which the less-priviledged people who get no access to the modern educational system of the state may continue their intellectual pursuits.

In the meantime, however, strict traditionalism on the part of the Sangha and Thai society as a whole has both directly and indirectly caused reactions, conflicts and new developments in private sectors. A number of Elders, in an effort to respond to the long-felt but ignored need to produce Buddhist monks equipped with modern knowledge relevant to the contemporary world, revived the plan for Buddhist higher education. Then Mahamakut and Mahachulalongkorn came back to life as the two Buddhist universities of Thailand.

The two universities have attempted to produce educated monks to restore them to their proper place as leaders in modern society. For example, the Buddhist Sunday school movement begun by Mahachulalongkorn Buddhist University in 1958 (B.E.2501) represents an attempt to revive Buddhist education for the younger generation and to achieve welfare and happiness both for the modernized society and for the society under the process of modernization.

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

Phra Thepsohon (Prayoon Mererk), A Buddhist Worldview, p.30.

[2]:

Rachanubhap, Damrong, Prince., History of Teaching Pariyatti tham, p.35.