Research, as reported in this book, addresses how does the language a person speaks, reads & writes affect one’s opportunity to hold what types of job, and be economically successful or unsuccessful in the context of Thailand, continental Southeast Asia/ASEAN? This book is interested in how foreign/second language education helps the marginalized groups (e.g., orphans with disabilities, asylum seekers, urban refugees) achieve Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as defined by the United Nations.
This book stresses the need to let the marginalized groups (e.g., asylum seekers, urban refugees, orphans with and without disabilities, street workers, bargirls/love entrepreneurs) learn foreign/second languages (whether English, Chinese, Japanese and Thai). Foreign/second language skills are important for the socially excluded minority groups and individuals to better their situations, reduce poverty and further their pursuit of the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
AS I AM writing and revising preface, the 74th session of United Nations, Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (held from 11 - 16 May 2018 at the United Nations Conference Center, Bangkok), is now in full swing to address the issue of inequality (Theme Topic: Inequality in the era of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development). Discussions about information and communication technology, environment, economics, financing, trade, investment, transport, energy are held among United Nations senior officials and ministerial representatives during the 74th Commission.
Nonetheless, inequality of opportunity to access basic education rights, services and resources such as suitable learning materials, pedagogy and teaching methods required for individuals and groups to communicate with foreign customers and trade partners from other countries is not addressed by the United Nations. The cost of ignoring inequality of opportunity to learn globally dominant, foreign and second languages is significant.
The book finds that inequality is on the rise in Thailand and unequal access to opportunities such as foreign and second language learning (particularly dominant-language learning opportunities) has left enormous marginalized individuals and groups behind, resulting in widen inequalities of outcomes, particularly in income.
The book also finds that to converse in a foreign/second language is closely associated with opportunity and power to increase income. This is particularly true for the urban poor and those who work in the service industry.
There is a growing recognition that strategic bi-/multilingualism in individual and group levels is good to boost economic growth. Research (as reported in the book) demonstrate that marginalized individuals and groups with high access rates to dominant, foreign, second language learning opportunities have lower poverty rates.
In other words, minority peoples who actively foster foreign/second language learning gain more rewards in their workforce.
Access to humanitarian-based language-support programs and informal foreign/second language learning resources is crucial for achieving sustainable development goals (SDGs) for different groups of minority peoples by helping reduce and combat poverty, increase employment opportunity and advance formal and informal education. In the last decade, language solutions to social problems have not yet become a central focus of research, development planning and implementation of plans by the United Nations and civil society leaders.
However, language solutions to social problems are essential to help realize United Nations’ SDGs. Micro language planning, precision language education, informal language learning, competent and strategic bi-/multilingualism, for instance, help reduce poverty (SDG1) and reduce inequality (SDG10), support the development of education (SDG4) and industry (SDG9), and ultimately boost economic growth (SDG8).
本書目的 Purposes of This Book
This Book Calls for Minority peoples (in developing countries) are encouraged to use the power of dominant languages (particularly, English) as tools to build their futures
Language and Minority in the Making of Modern Thailand: Towards Development and Social Change is intended to provide a recent review of the past decade and a recent understanding about strategic bi-/multilingual language use among marginalized populations, labelled as minority peoples (e.g., orphans with disabilities, bargirls, asylum seekers and urban refugees), in Thailand’s capital, Bangkok City. The book aims to reveal inequality in access to acquire English and inequality in educational resources to obtain fluency of other dominant (foreign/second) languages, particularly with an emphasis on Chinese and Japanese, all of which are unequally distributed to the poor, marginalized and vulnerable groups (compared to the elite class who has almost exclusive access to English and other dominant languages to legitimize their status in the social hierarchy).
This book is also used as a databank on descriptions of language and poverty, language and minority peoples, language and economic growth, and language and development complied for the past decade (2010-2018) in Thailand.
Chronic low-income and long-term poverty in individual, family and national levels remain a constant issue to overcome. This book helps understand the mechanisms through which foreign/second (bi-/multilingual) language competence in the individual level affect one’s economic, social and sustainable developments. Understanding these above-mentioned mechanisms might have policy, research and practical implications for educational and social policy in national, regional and international levels.
Mainstream English and other dominant languages (e.g., Chinese) to overcome poverty and attain development for the marginalized and vulnerable groups in developing countries
This book invites readers to join an important debate in which economists, linguists and development agents are often at odds to the relationships between language, inequality, poverty, education, economy and development.
CHAPTER 1
Language-Support Programs To Help Achieve Sufficiency Economy & Sustainable Development in The Margins
第一章
自給自足經濟、可持續發展、社會基層的非營利組織管理與雙語、多語之學習和使用的關聯性
A KEY CHALLENGE to nonprofit organizations and non-governmental groups (NGOs)today is to develop the economies and societies for minority peoples.Traditionally, nonprofits and NGOs have relied on humanitarian-based programs (for instance, medical services),but recently many of them have turned to foreign/second language-support programs and explored the possibility of offering the English language courses. In this light, the view that sufficiency economy is one of the prospects for change adopted by nonprofits and NGOs toward today’s minority peoples has long been uncontroversial.Yet, research into nonprofit management has historically and consistently failed to adopt a sufficiency economy perspective to fully understand the extent to which informal and private foreign/second language-support programs (provided by nonprofits and NGOs) play a crucial role in helping minority peoples achieve the sufficient economy goals. The present study (as reported in the chapter), which draws on data from the fieldwork of nonprofits and NGOs in Thailand, examines a form of private education – informal foreign/second language-support programs – that adopt the sufficiency economy approach.
GLOBALLY, MARGINALIZED GROUPS have not equally benefited from the mainstream (formal) foreign/second language education programs. Increasingly, inappropriate formal foreign/second language education is regarded as one of the key factors in the persistence of marginalization of minority peoples. Notwithstanding the documented progress in the mainstream applied linguistics of formal foreign language education over the past decades, there is little understanding of the extent to which a lack of appropriate informal foreign/second language learning affects minority people’s lives to achieve the sufficiency economy goals. Despite these aforementioned challenges and knowledge gaps, the study found that there have been a number of promising practices of sufficiency economy philosophy by nonprofit organizations and NGOs. Informal foreign/second language-support programs are adopted as a tool, thereby some programs have gone out of their way to help realizing sufficiency economy of minority peoples.
Hugo Yu-Hsiu Lee has been an award-winning researcher at the Indiana University Bloomington (USA) and the National Institute of Development Administration (Thailand), and Harvard University's member of e-courses (Harvard Kennedy School). He currently serves as one of the United Nations Consultants, United Nations Organizational Development & Staffing Unit (United Nations Headquarters, Asia / Bangkok duty station).