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Prof. Dr. Apichai Puntasen
Director
Rural And Social Management Institute (RASMI)
Bangkok / Thailand

How I have known and continue to know Jürgen Zimmer

On this auspicious occasion of 65th birthday of Professor Dr. Jürgen Zimmer, I would like to record the enlighten idea propagated and further developed by him that will keep reminding me and the contemporary world of knowledge based econ­omy, the concept of »productive community school«, »education for life-long train­ing of entrepreneur for a happy and a peaceful world« and most recently »enterpris­ing community education« as an important tool to achieve such noble objective.

Here is how I have come to know Jürgen Zimmer. I return to Thailand from my own self-exile from the University of Melbourne Australia in 1984 after the bloody military coup in my country and on my own campus ground on October 6, 1976. While I was in Australia, I was invited to attend the conference organized by the »In­ternational Community Education Association« (ICEA) in 1980 without realizing that our path (Jürgen and I) would be crossed afterward. In Thailand, I was intro­duced Dr. Hans U. Luther, whose written works and his personal attempts to help many Thai intellectuals to be able to continue their intellectual interest overseas du-ring the dark age of civil war in Thailand (1976-1980), was well known and was highly admirable. I have become to be a close friend of Hans Luther right after. Later on, 1 was introduced by Hans Luther to Professor Dr. Günter Faltin from the Free University of Berlin who was an economist teaching at the Faculty of Education, Free University of Berlin.

Through Günter Faltin, I was introduced to Jürgen Zimmer on one of his trip to Thailand. Later on, Günter Faltin supported me to apply and finally received the DAAD research fellowship to work at the Faculty of Education, Free University of Berlin for three months. Since then, both Jürgen Zimmer and I had opportunity to be more acquainted to each other. I was for the first time exposed to the concept of productive community school developed jointly by Jürgen Zimmer and Günter Faltin. Jürgen Zimmer and I were attracted to each other for similar reasons. Jürgen has always been a good disciple of Paulo Freire whose widely acclaimed book of »Education for the Oppressed« was widely read and cited all over the world. As my training was Economist of Education, Paulo Freire was certainly one of my heroes. On the other hand, Jürgen Zimmer had recognized me at that time as a kind of »freedom fighter«.

While I was in Berlin, apart from recruiting me to join most functions of the ICEA of the European Zone, Jürgen Zimmer invited me to meet his lovely mother in her home town in southern Germany near Bodensee and showed me around many beautiful towns and various historical places within Germany and Austria. Without his extra ordinarily hospitality that 1 can never expect from Jürgen, I would not have any opportunity to learn more and gain as well as to enjoy myself from the trips as much as such memorable experiences. I was encouraged to be a more active member of the ICEA by Jürgen Zimmer since then. He was responsible to see me invited to attend various conferences in Berlin as well as to participate in the ICEA conference in Trinidad. Knowledge and experienced gain from having close association with Jürgen Zimmer have been quite valuable in improving my own understanding as well as to apply most of those knowledge and experiences for policy recommenda­tion to the Thai government especially in the area of educational reform in Thailand that starts to bear the fruit in our Constitution of 1997 and the subsequent National Education Acts of 1999 that will turn into actual implementation of the reform of education in Thailand from 2003 onwards.

Because of our close association, I was able to invite Jürgen Zimmer to help me with two major events. The first one was to introduce his concept and cultural sensi­tive tourism to the hill tribes in Chiang Mai, a northern province in Thailand. These people were forced to settle in the limited areas that were identified as watersheds. Without decent means to earn their living, their lives and their culture could be completely destroyed. The other project was financed by the seed money from the ICEA to start two »productive community« schools in Nakornrachasima province in the northeastern part of Thailand. Jürgen Zimmer was so kind to come to the actual sites and was quite helpful to transform his theoretical concept into actual Opera­tion.

Recently, we are working together to propose to the Thai government to trans­form from the most obsolete mode of education, namely, vocational education or­ganized by private schools into entrepreneurial schools. We anticipate that this pro­ject will result to a major educational reform in Thailand in the future, if the idea re­ceives adequate support from relevant government agencies. At least, in one of his recent speech, the Ministry of Finance implies that one of the major purpose of educational reform in Thailand is to produce more entrepreneurs for the country to enhance her competitive ability in the future. This concept is in the live with the thoughts of Jürgen Zimmer.

Apart from his personal kindness to me as always, it appears that Jürgen Zimmer also progressively interest in Thailand and the concept of Buddhist economics pro­rogated and designed by me to be applicable to Thailand's for her new direction of the national development in the future. The actual application of this concept is that of the King Bhumipol's of Thailand through his concept of »sufficiency economy«. From this resumption of the new interest in Thailand of Jürgen Zimmer, Thailand is now able to welcome him more frequently many times each year. We anticipate that in the near future, each of his visits to our country will be longer; and we hope he will make Thailand his second home.

This trend can be substantiated by the fact that his two children, Lena and David are now enrolled at Thammasat University as our students at least for one year each. I consider myself to be quite fortunate for being able to develop an increasingly closer association with Jürgen Zimmer and very much appreciate his academic con­tribution directly to my person knowledge and indirectly to my country, Thailand. For the reasons explained, I value his friendship highly. No doubt, such friendly rela­tionship only be enhanced as time goes by.