The Communist Party of Thailand's education for young children in Northern Laos and Southern China

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ABSTRACT Education is typically critically important for political movements, One important Communist Party of Thailand (CPT) policy was to make education accessible to the poor and disadvantaged, including upland ethnic minorities such as the Hmong and the Lua. Apart from expanding education for young adults outside of Thailand, the CPT also organized education for young children in northern Laos and southern China, near the border between the two countries. However, a dramatic shift in political alliances – and various other internal and external factors – resulted in the CPT having to withdraw from Laos in early 1979, and falling into rapid decline in the early 1980s. This article considers the primary education that the CPT provided along the Laos–China border, and the experiences of students and teachers. The circumstances of Hmong child students trapped in China during the 1980s, and their readjustment once back in Thailand, are also discussed. The CPT’s education policies are particularly useful for understanding their ideas regarding ethnicity and language, but ultimately the approach of the CPT to ethnicity and language was not radical, and did not differ much from the approach of the government of Thailand.