In what counts as an act of high bravery for a UN bureaucrat, UNESCO Asia-Pacific Regional Bureau for Education Director Sheldon Schaeffer recently argued for the preservation of languages. Noting that language diversity is much richer that most people and governments in the region think, he argues that measures to promote the use of minority languages, such as using them in primary schools, not only helps otherwise disadvantaged individuals, but also helps the government. By demonstrating that it values all its child citizens, and not just those lucky enough to be born in households that speak the ‘national' language, the government is more likely to earn, and retain, their loyalty.

If only.

Go back a minute to the report of the National Reconciliation Commission. In case you've forgotten, this is the report that the Thaksin government, after the disasters of Krue Sae and Tak Bai and the farce of the paper cranes, was shamed into commissioning. Neither the Thaksin nor Surayud governments have taken the Commission's recommendations seriously.

(And don't hold your breath. Back then, Prime-Minister-hopeful Samak Sundaravej was co-hosting TV talk shows with fellow idealogue Dusit Siriwan, The pair relentlessly slagged off on the NRC in favour of some sort of gung-ho ‘shoot 'em up' policy. It got so bad that people started suspecting that Thaksin had to keep the NRC going, no matter how much they criticized his policies. Once it disappeared, Samak might turn his vitriol on Thaksin. Now Samak has inherited Thaksin's party, such are political allegiances in Thailand.)

One of the NRC's recommendations (6.8) includes the idea ‘The state must develop a policy of language for education beginning from kindergarten, including a policy of using the mother tongue as a medium of instruction'.

That was a proposal that died a quick death (and not for the first time). Within days of the Commission's report (published in Thai, English, Pattani Malay and Arabic), Gen Prem Tinasulanonda, ex-PM and Privy Council head, was rubbishing the idea.

‘We cannot accept that [proposal] as we are Thai. The country is Thai and the language is Thai. So we have to make efforts to learn Thai and [everyone should have a uniform] command with the rest of the Kingdom,' he was quoted in the press. Clearly, whatever his competence and connections, the good General knows nothing about the psychology of language learning.

Another example would be the recent order by the Internal Security Operations Command to ban the use of the Karen language on community radios in the north. In keeping with ISOC's semi-clandestine modus operandi, this order was first plopped out by a Second Lieutenant at a community radio meeting. No written order, no explanation about how Second Lieutenants get to order everyone else about. But the ban turned out to be genuine and although the Internal Security Act isn't law quite yet, ISOC does seem to be able to run things in this country.

Apparently ISOC's own linguistic limitations meant it couldn't follow what the radio stations were broadcasting. So, as often happens when ignorance and nationalism are combined in the one brain, ISOC got scared. Maybe these unintelligible broadcasts were informing Karen in Thailand of what was going on in Burma, where other Karen live. And, the xenophobic paranoids must have assumed, if the Karen find that out, maybe they'll get ideas.

I'm not sure what frightful ideas the Karen would get that anyone with access to the Bangkok media, the internet, or any of the Burmese information networks operating in Thailand couldn't also get. Maybe the idea that democracy is something worth fighting for. Maybe that there are some countries where military rule imposes poverty, injustice and suffering through acts of theft, enslavement, rape, torture and murder for which they enjoy impunity. Maybe that even if you belong to a minority, you still have rights to practise your own culture, believe in your own religion, speak your own language.

I'm not completely sure why such ideas, protected in the constitution, might be so dangerous in ISOC's eyes. But even if they do worry their poor selves with such fantasies, couldn't they just have used a tiny fraction of their secret budget and hired an interpreter or two, just to check first, rather than go trampling all over someone else's sense of identity with a blanket ban?

You see, languages don't normally die. They're killed off. An unknown number of the hundreds of indigenous languages of North America are now dead for the simple reason that their speakers were on the wrong end of a campaign of genocide. Slightly less extreme measures have seen aboriginal children forcibly snatched from their families in Australia, parents thrown in jail for giving their kids Kurdish names in Turkey and deaf kids, native users of sign language, having their hands tied behind their backs in US schools.

Thousands of children in Thailand turn up to their first day of primary school incapable of understanding the first word the teacher says. And the research is unequivocal. Start kids reading a language they already know and they can thrive. Force feed what for them is gobbledy-gook, and they start the educational rat race a couple of laps behind already.

Show intolerance to other's languages if you want. Just don't start complaining when they show intolerance back.