EDITORIAL
We should be asking how the entire school system can be revamped to get the most out of the average student.
Congratulations are due to a diverse group of Thai students, as well as their teachers and advisers, for their show of academic excellence in the sciences and mathematics at several international competitions.
The most impressive showing perhaps was made by a team from Chulalongkorn University's Faculty of Engineering, which designed and built the winning rescue robot, out of a field of 18 entered by top scholars from Japan, Germany, China and five other countries, in a competition held from July 16 to 20 in Suzhou, China. It was the third win in a row for Thailand, the two previous winners being from the Prachin Buri campus of the King Mongkut University of Technology.
The team developed software that uses a camera and laser-range finder to locate the victim, and built impressive mobility into the robot.
Their success was emulated by a group of pre-university Thai teens who shone in several academic Olympiads. A four-student team brought back three gold medals and one silver from the International Biology Olympiad in Mumbai, India, in which students from 55 countries took part.
At the 12-day 49th International Mathematical Olympiad from July 10-22 in Madrid, Spain, a team of six Thai students won a total of two golds, three silvers and one bronze medal to take sixth place overall out of 97 participating countries.
At the just-completed 40th International Chemistry Olympiad in Budapest, the four Thai students who took part came away with one gold and three silvers.
These awards are particularly gratifying because they come at a time when it seems no one has anything good to say about the Thai educational system, which clearly does need to be revamped to promote students' independent thinking and ability to present ideas. The chief criticism is that Thai students are, in most cases, taught to learn by rote, or from memory, without thinking about the meaning of the facts and the relationships between them.
The Ministry of Education has for nearly a decade endorsed a policy to adopt a more student-centred approach and it was written into the National Education Act of 1999. For the most part, however, the policy has not been successfully implemented in the Thai public school system, outside of a few top schools which attract gifted students from Bangkok and beyond, like Mahidol Wittayanusorn School and Triam Udom Suksa. Getting a place in these schools is highly competitive and many excellent students are turned away.
It is no coincidence that nearly all of the winners in the high school Olympiads came from these special schools for top students, which are staffed with superb teachers who know how to get the best out of them.
Quite simply, these schools are the model for the Thai educational system, and more should be set up, not only in the sciences but also in the liberal arts. At the same time we should be asking how the entire school system can be revamped to get the most out of the average student, who may excel if given the chance.
But for now, let nothing take away from a well-deserved tribute to these young scholars, who represented their country so well on the international stage.
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