THE IMPLEMENTATION OF RELIGIOUS CULTURE FOR PRATHOM LEVEL IN BAKONG PITTAYA SCHOOL PATTANI, THAILAND

Thailandis a country that the prevalent religion is Theravada Buddhism which is an integral part of Thai identity and culture. Muslims constitute the second largest religious group in Thailand, comprising 4.6% of the population. Islam is concentrated mostly in the country's southernmost provinces: Pattani, Yala, Satun, Narathiwat, and part of SongkhlaChumphon, which are predominantly Malay, most of whom are Sunni Muslims. Thus, the Muslim society in the southern Thailand have to maintain their Islamic identity and religion in the middle of Buddhist authority and society. Thai Muslims maintain, express and symbolize their identity through some ways,one of them is through the Islamic school.The school can be the medium to reach it and internalize religious values as well. Through the religious culture in the school, it is able to influence the growth of religion sense, morals, and other aspects in order to maintain their religion and faith in the middle of Buddhist authority and society. The aim of this research is to describe the implementation of religious culture in the prathom (elementary) level. The type of research is field research, which has the descriptive qualitative method with the location is in the prathom level of Bakong Pittaya School Pattani, Thailand. The data collecting method used in this study are observation, interview, and documentation. Then, the data analysis used in this study followed these steps: the data reduction, data display, and conclusion drawing. From the result of research, the writer finds the implementation of religious culture use the instructive sequential strategy in reaching it through creating the religious atmosphere, values internalization, good example, habituation, and civilizing religious culture. Meanwhile, in civilizing religious culture, this school use the power strategy with the reward-punishment approach and persuasive strategy with the habituation and exemplary approach. Moreover, there are 14 religious culture form in prathom level of Bakong Pittaya School, Pattani, Thailand. Key words: implementation, religious culture, Pattani, Thailan