Is the Thai education responsible?

[Voice]

Jeffery wrote “Thinking? As if there is an absolute or standard for what proper thought might be?

That’s when moral come to it place. You cannot put an Amazon Indian in the big city without teaching them how to crossing the street.

[jeffrey]

Jeffery wrote “Thinking? As if there is an absolute or standard for what proper thought might be?

That’s when moral come to it place. You cannot put an Amazon Indian in the big city without teaching them how to crossing the street.

Depends on the teacher.

[Voice]

Yes Jeffery it depends on the teacher like you said but we are now living in a globalization now so we must keep up with international standard so what you said is wrong Jeffery!

[charubutr]

Is thai education responsible ? Answer is yes, as with any educational system is responsible for its students. I went to Thai school until grade 6, since then I went to 2 British International School , one US University (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign -1 year Physics) and two British Universities (University College London and Imperial College London with Physics then Theoretical Physics masters degree) so I believe I have some credentials to comment on the differences of the systems between Thailand, United Kingdom and United States as someone who have had first hand experience.
Since my experience in Thai school was brief and elementary, I can only make a few remarks with my limited exposure. People usually have the image of Thai school teaching dates and facts , like in a History class you would have to memorize dates of some guy being born at certain age etc. This certainly is true in certain extent in those history classes and English classes but the same can not be said for science class in which rote learning is ineffective, neither in maths classes. I would say that someone who did well in science and maths in highschool in Thailand can very well and have very well coped well within schools and colleges within United States and United Kingdom. In fact , for my personal experience I found a drop of mathematical standard when I went to International School. For Physics, which is my proclaimed area of expertise, from my observation on the University Entrance Exams in Thailand, which is the only Physics they ever care about, seems to only concern boring calculations of mechanics of increasing complexity like putting more balls on complicated trolleys etc which seems to totally miss the point of Physics as a scientific education as in UK and US
Hold on, but am I being fair here ? During my first years of highschool physics and in fact, science courses taught to me were like that - pointless calculations and memorization, one of my physics teacher actually make us rote learn equations before the exam! But later I had a teacher who was absolutely passionate with the subject which then caught my attention on again. What does it tell us then ? it is the people, not the system . Even within "the west" there is a huge difference between the US and the UK, with the US having more continuous assessments and UK usually just one final exam but in both systems, in order for the students to succeed well would only need a criteria ; having teachers who know and love their subject and care about their students most of the people do not do well as a result of having instructors who only half-hearted teach the subjects. Having been through 3 countries and 3 Universities I can tell you that those are true most of the time.
Perhaps we should switch the debate, from a national level to individuals if there is going to be any change for a better future, we need to care about having individual instructors who care about individual students who will in the future as a collective group make individual differences to the world. There are institutions which already see this as the a priority , most noteworthy is MIT with Opencourseware which allows any individuals to independently learn any subjects With the internet, assuming you have it and know a bit of English, you are not disadvantaged as much by geographical reasons.

[Torkythai]

When I was taking my TESOL course in Ban Phe, prior to beginning my teaching career in Thailand, I was taught that if the lesson was not going well, if the students were not responsive, then it was the teacher's fault, and not the student's fault. That was a great lesson to me -- thank you, Dave Hopkins!
I think if teachers took more responsibility for their lesson plans and classroom management their students would take their studies more seriouslly, behave better, and retain a love of learning into their adult lives. There's no need for Thai students to flee abroad in order to get a decent education. I have met many Thais who never set foot out of the country and yet are subtle thinkers and gregarious scholars. It is my hope that Thai students will yet find the self confidence in themselves to become great in whatever career path they may choose; and I think a large part of that success comes from understanding and using the English language -- that is the keystone to any successful education nowadays.

[Voice]

Yes Torkythai! Education should be something that children should enjoy while they in the classroom. If the teacher can project themselves without over powering themselves over the children I think it would make children more active in the class. I remember once as a child one of my history teacher would came in to the class and started to tell us story in history without open a book story went on when it comes to a point that we need to memories the important bid he would tell us to write it down like names & palces or years the we needs to remember. We all enjoy it and remember it well when comes to our exam. The downside of our education was that we never did learn anything from the real history because most of our history lesson came from fiction written by novel writer rather than real history. I learn much more about our history from outside our country it sad but true. So does the Thai education is responsible for what we are today the answer is YES sure! Thailand has always being a country that have deep culture which like many countries that have fanaticism in religion or deep culture believe. So everything we do would have been microscopically watch so it tent to overly control by those who try to keep thing as they were so speak. Technologies and fast life maybe good for some as we advance ourselves in today of fast living but it will always go against the rhetoric of the old culture. Therefore some one would want to control what we need to hear & see. So most of the media would under control or some kind of propaganda would be at work to brainwash us into believe in what they has told us. As most still believe that we never been colonies by anyone but many century ago we were under Burmese control and was under control of the Japanese in the WWII. But the history was written as fiction rather than real history that our country has experienced. I did wonder whether or not if anyone has ever written some kind of real record of our country and why it never has been published. Yes! It’s definitely true that our education is responsible for what happen in our country today.

[Jason McDonald]

Very good post Voice. It is amazing what you can learn about your country from outside your country. This doesn't just apply to Thailand. All countries manipulate history for their own purposes. But some countries like Thailand perhaps do it more than others.

jason

[charubutr]

Hi torky, jason, voice
 Quite an interesting democratic forum we are having so far. As one of those who have had to flee abroad, i see many opportunities which the country should take advantage of as obstacles. As someone trained in the scientific discipline, I have a one sided view that Thailand needs a big improvement in scientific education, which is a long term investment which takes a long time to be fruitful in the future and we have seen many successful examples from many neighbouring countries. Most notably are Japan and Korea, both countries were developing countries (i dont quite like the term as all countries should be continuously developing, not going backward) and trying to catch up with Europe in the scientific discipline. Japan had a policy to send Japanese students abroad to the center of knowledge in Europe and attract in engineers and scientists from Europe to modernize its education system. It took nearly a century since the start of modernization of Japan in 1858 for a homegrown Japanese scientist to make "Noble prize worthy" contribution awarded in 1949 in theoretical physics for Hideki Yukawa. After the modernisation in the wrong direction of its military and consequential disaster, Japan recovered quickly and became a world leader in technological and scientific fields as we see now. A similar story is for Korea which now have one of the most modern civil and digital infrastructure and industry. 
 And obvious question is, what about Thailand ? How do you want to see it in 50 years time ? The future of the next 50 years time really depends on the current 10s and 20s to make a difference. Given that we make it through this political crisis without too much fractures, i am optimistic about the future. A lot of nationalistic, political tensions are spearheaded by the middle and older age people of pre-google generation which i hope the same prejudice will not be passed onto the new google generation who have and will have much mode access to global knowledge than their parents. The most important task for older generation is to  support endeuvers of the young ones (i have been questioned countless time since science is considered useless non-profit making for older chinese merchant generation) rather than go against it. 
    

[Voice]

Hi charubutr, you have a valid point there. The difficulty about Thailand progressing has to do with how government investment to its people and country future. We are lacking in that sense when it come to investment the future. They rather make themselves rich first through corruption as for country & people isn’t there real concern. It’s true like you said charubutr! Government should have plans some policies that will bring our country to advance ourselves for the future. I think we need it now rather wait another century to make it happen.

[Ponyboy]

RogerR,

I didn't read through all the posts but still want to add my opinion to the matter. In the past I was fortunate to meet some of the top Thai students who made it here to the States to study at their dreams schools like Harvard, Stanford, etc. I am not impressed at all at the caliber of these students as far as independent thinking and being leaders. Most of these students are or were poor and came from the country side as oppose to Bangkok dwellers. They studied hard, yes, a lot of it being rote memory. I think their inspiration was to get out of their situations and be like their peers that live affluent life in Bangkok. That's all. Well, maybe not, but to be independent thinkers or civic minded is not part of this equation.
They can imitate really well. When they are here, they can particapate and form strong ideas just like American students, but only in academic settings. Once they graduated and received their phd's, they go back to Thailand to pay their dues and that's it. Oh and they complained that things are not the same as the States. They continue into that cycle.