Decades ago, farmers would trade anything to get their children out of the muddy fields and into formal education in schools.

These days, college students are being sent back to the paddy fields to work ploughs attached to water buffaloes - to learn how to be more down to earth.

Thammasat University recently started an experimental farming project entitled Thammasat Tam-na: Setthakit Por-piang (Thammasat Rice Ploughing: Sufficiency Economy), which encourages students, university staff and the general public to get down and dirty on the land - for a firsthand perspective into the real lives of the people who produce our food.

The project is situated on a six-rai (9,600 square metre) plot of land at the university's Rangsit campus.

"It's time that our students had first-hand experience," says Thammasat vice rector for student affairs Prinya Thaewanarumitkul, who started the project.

"They've been confined to the classroom for too long."

Formerly known as the University of Morals and Political Science, Thammasat has always taught its students to contribute to society in a positive way. But most students are either engrossed in their books or themselves.

As the Rangsit campus grows more like a town - with classrooms, libraries, a theatre and restaurants - its students, typical of most, are becoming cut off from the outside world.

The project is aimed at encouraging students - most of whom are from middle-class backgrounds - to look beyond their narrowly urban experience.

"In the mud and under the hot sun, at least they stop for a moment to consider the life of others," says Prinya, who regularly appears on TV to discuss his political ideas.

This extra-curricula activity has nothing to do with grades. The manual toil involves working with the water buffaloes to prepare the field and transplant rice seedlings in July, and then bringing in the harvest in November. The produce will be communally cooked and eaten by those who have been working in the project. Surplus rice will be packed and sold as souvenirs.

In business terms, the investment is not worthwhile. Instead of making money, the university has instead invested about Bt100,000 in the project. It usually takes five to seven days for just a few farmers to finish rice transplantation on one rai of paddy. But it took seven days for more than 500 volunteers to finish the university's six-rai farm.

After its launch, the farm project gained publicity in the media, but it has received a mixed reaction. Critics say it is too superficial to affect the attitudes of some of the urban middle class, who would be horrified to get their hands dirty in a paddy field, even for a few minutes, so attached are they to their urban lifestyles, fashions and cars. Others have praised the initiative for bringing those in their ivory towers crashing back down to earth.

Liberal Arts' senior Kasemnarong Nujjaya says it's not possible to change people's perception towards materialistic students. "But this is a chance to learn something different."

Kasemnarong says he always learned from his textbooks that farmers make up 70 per cent of the population and, historically, have been disadvantaged; that they work harder than everyone else but earn less.

"The [farm] just confirmed to me what has always been taught in class," says Kasemnarong, whose father is a retired soldier and his mother a property agent. He planted dozens of rice seedlings in the paddy and soon realised how hard a farmer has to work.

But it's not only students - the main target of the project - who have learned a lesson about life.

Karndee Prichanont, a Thammasat graduate and now the assistant to the rector for public relations, spent time down on the farm. She remembers her college days when she didn't look much beyond her textbooks for nearly a decade. "All I did was go to classes to get an engineering degree."

Karndee had never realised how difficult it was to produce enough rice for just one meal until the day she bent down in the field to put her seedlings in place. She didn't need the hours, days or months of a real farmer's life to appreciate their effort and hardship. Just a few moments in the hot sun and sloppy mud changed her perspective forever.

A real farmer takes months to plough, plant and harvest, but most students taking part in the project spend only a few days working on the land.

"It can't be compared to the real thing at all. Since then, I've never wasted a grain [in a meal]," says Karndee.

Prinya says education can separate people from society. The more time students spend in education, the narrower their outlook becomes.

"They look only into their own world and don't communicate with the outside world."

Computer programmer Narongchai Klinchanhom, who grew up in a farming family, says the farm is a good chance to distract students from nightclubs and computer games. "So they can learn that the real world is full of difficulties, not only easy things in a virtual world."

The farm activity will not be part of the university's curriculum, but it might be included in freshman activities next year.

"You can't expect ploughing a few rice fields to make them better people, but it's the start of a new perception," says Prinya.

Sirinya Wattanasukchai

The Nation