Thailand’s Festival of Water: Songkran. A chance for adults to behave like kids. And for some kids a last chance to misbehave... before the first day of school.

At the Songkran Festival everyone lets their hair down.

Three kids face their first day at school – but are their lives already set on different courses? Scientists suggest that how the brain develops in the first years of life may affect kids’ ability to prosper at school.

The third ‘Early Life’ programme follows three children preparing to enter primary school in Chiang Mai, Thailand.

Best's behaviour causes problems at first.

Sita is looking forward to it, Best is wary, and Tha Na Korn doesn’t even have a school to go to yet. Their dilemmas reflect those of Thailand as a whole: how should a country with its own traditions of childhood prepare their kids for the new globalized society? Thailand is now developing an education policy to meet the needs of a globalized economy.

Joseph Tobin, Educational Anthropologist at Arizona State University, says: "For a country to attempt to create a new system of early childhood education, built on ideas borrowed from abroad, it’s challenging, but it’s also exciting. Thailand wants to avoid the downside that in the process of adapting new ideas about education, they lose their cultural soul. The children end up becoming unrecognisable to their parents."

In the 80’s a team led by Joseph Tobin filmed three model pre schools from America, China and Japan. They then played all the tapes to all the other countries’ teachers. But all the teachers disliked the other countries’ models.

Tobin explains: "The American and Chinese viewers of the Japanese video were shocked by many of the things they saw in our video of a typical Japanese pre-school – People expected the children to be well-behaved and orderly, but it’s just the opposite in the video we made, and I think it’s true of many Japanese pre-schools. It looks like chaos. Unless it actually gets physically dangerous, there’s a belief by many, many Japanese teachers have that it, you should keep restrained the temptation to jump in and intervene, and instead give children an opportunity to handle their own problems and disagreements."

Sita is well prepared for school.

Sita's American mum Lamorna has sent Sita to a pre-school that’s given her a flavour of the globalized world.

Sita says: "I have friends that are from Korea you know. They can speak Korean, Thai, English. That’s so much fun."

Tha Na Korn is a member of the Lisu ethnic minority, and he is going to a boarding school several hours from his home. The plight of children like Tha Na Korn which has led many to believe in child rights. Child rights are written into the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and would certainly help Tha Na Korn. A decent pre-school only opened in his neighbourhood last year.

Tha Na Korn is a member of an ethnic minority and his school is far away from home.

Child rights might have guaranteed Tha Na Korn local schooling. But many experts who say culture should guide early child development don’t like talk of “child rights”. They say it could lead to the West imposing its own views of childhood on the world.

Prof. Tobin again: "Do we really want all the children of the world to be the same? Do we want them all to aspire to have the same thing, do we want them all to act the same way, to feel the same things, to believe in the same things – would that be the successful outcome of the spreading of the rights of the children, or of a one model of early childhood education?"

Martin Woodhead of the UK's Open University explains the importance of a human rights approach: "I'm absolutely not advocating a universal childhood. And Joseph Tobin and many other people like Joseph Tobin are right to emphasise that childhood is socially constructed and culturally variable. But you can't just say childhood is a culturally constructive period, that's not sufficient because there's not just relativity, there's adversity in children's lives. There's not just diversity, there's discrimination in children's lives. There's a politics around the culture of childhood. Some groups get more resources than others. Some get more opportunities than others, and we need to find a way of engaging with that politics of cultural diversity, not just with cultural variability, and a human rights approach achieves that in part at least."

Can Thailand achieve child rights without sacrificing its culture? Child rights will mean more kids like Tha Na Korn go to school. But Tha’s school has a different language and culture. He could become “unrecognizeable to his parents.” Child rights and respect for culture need to be combined.

Sita settles down well. Best needs help with socialialising. But probably they'll all turn out OK. Dr John Bruer, author of “The Myth of the First Three Years”, points out: "Children develop around the world in a variety of ways and in most cultures people mature into reasonable citizens and become members of their culture no matter how different the treatment from one culture or another is in the first few years of life."

Despite language difficulties and loneliness, Tha Na Korn soon adapts to his new school.

But Martin Woodhead says the importance of the early years can't be overstressed: "Governments ignore the early years at their peril. In policy terms actually, the early years have always been neglected. And failing to take that into account and look for effective ways of improving children's life prospects, and their quality of life now, which is that human rights principle, is something that governments cannot ignore."

TRANSCRIPT Read the full transcript of My First Day at School

Watch a QuickTime clip from My First Day at School.

You will need the free QuickTime plug-in.