Planning and Implementing Patani Malay in Bilingual Education in Southern Thailand

In this article, the authors discuss a mother tongue-based bilingual education (MTB BE) program designed to use Patani Malay (PM) or Thailand Melayu, as well as Thai, in the teaching and learning process at the preprimary and primary level, which is the level of compulsory education in Thailand. Many fear that the Thai education system is being used to destroy the local language and religious identity. In response to these fears, an attempt to use PM in bilingual education in southern border provinces of Thailand was proposed as a way to improve the situation. The PM speaking children are encouraged to retain their Malay identity at the local level and to add a Thai identity at the national level, as discussed in this paper.