Wai Khru Ritual of Thailand

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       The Wai Khru ceremony is a form of ritual as performance. This tradition of paying respect and homage to teachers through the use of music, dance, spoken words, silent words, and ephemeral substances such as incense and candles is exclusive to the Thai culture and is profoundly intertwined with Thai Buddhism. The ritual takes place every academic year, in every school in Thailand, and consists of participants ranging from children who are enrolled in pre-school up to university scholars and teachers.

           Through the Wai Khru ceremony, performers of the ritual pay homage to existing, as well as deceased and mythological, pedagogical figures. Pedagogy in Thailand is regarded not only as teaching, but also involves the recognition and acceptance of a social relational authority that governs through the transmission of knowledge. Thai performance educationalists are valued as beings that are transcendental of a mythological teacher, known as the “Old Father” (Wong, 2001).

          The Wai Khru ceremony is a ritual that reifies the social and pedagogic structure that has been familiar to the people of Thailand for many years. In Thailand, performance teachers in particular are regarded as people with esoteric knowledge of the sacred power of performing arts. The Wai Khru ceremony is performed to commend teachers of performance for imparting their profound knowledge to students all over Thailand. The Wai Khru ritual is a tradition that defies the challenges posed by modernization in a progressive culture. The ritual remains authentic in practice, and its significance formidably thrives in the Thai culture today.

Natikan
Copyright © 2001 by University of North Texas. All rights reserved.
Revised: 05 May 2004 11:27:57 -0500

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