4 - Schools for Nation and Progress: Border Patrol Police School in Thailand

The Border Patrol Police of Thailand (BPP), founded in the early 1950s under the auspices of the Thai and U.S. governments, began building schools for highland minorities and people in remote areas of Thailand in 1956. The schools were built for two reasons. One is to teach the Thai language and culture to the ethnic minority children in the remote border areas. The other is to set the state surveillance system in the areas where most government officials could not reach. As such, the Border Patrol Police School has served as a site for education and surveillance. A key turning point for the development of the BPP School came in the early 1960s when the grandmother of the current king, Princess Mother Sinakharinthra came to support the school project. After her passing, Crown Princess Sirindhorn took over the mission and began launching her royal projects from 1980 to the present.
This presentation tackles the nature and impacts of the royal projects undertaken in the BPP schools based on the interviews with the students and teachers in fifty-four BPP schools in northern Thailand in 2010. It attempts to repudiate that the BPP School project has contributed to enhancing the level of education, modernization, and unity between Thai and highland minorities in northern Thailand. Furthermore, it elaborates how the Thai state’s efforts at containing and surveilling the non-Thai subjects have contributed to widening the gap between state and nation, thereby decreasing the possibility of promoting national unity and progress as well.