The question is so absurd that it could only be real. The multiple choices are so preposterous they could only be presented in germ-free, sanitised Thailand.
Question: What should you do when you have a sexual urge?
(The answer is supposed to be obvious, but let's see ...)
A. Play football with friends.
B. Talk to your family.
C. Try to go to sleep.
D. Go out with a friend of the opposite sex.
E. Go to a movie with your buddy.
It's hard to be a teenager, with the hurricane of hormones and all. But it's harder to be a Thai teenager, facing not only furious hormones but also this kind of question in an entrance exam - a question that provokes a sensation somewhere between wonder and impotence. The spirit of this O-Net question for Grade 12 test-takers is so rooted in the illiberal mindset and the attempt to codify "legitimate emotion" (an oxymoron) through academic ordinance.
I would be curious to see this as an open-end question that asks students to describe their answers in words. In its existing format, with one correct answer preset by the high priest of education, the question becomes unanswerable, and it demonstrates our system of rewarding official, prescribed behaviour and excluding, even punishing (by not giving scores) the ability to improvise, to think or to respond to the course of things and face the pains of adolescence.
What should we do when we have the sexual urge? Watch a parliamentary debate, of course! Or tape one of our portly ministers' interviews and replay it in school canteens. No Grade 12 kid would have any sex drive ever again.
It's hard being a teenager here. Recently, a TV station blurred the bare chest of a male cartoon character! Next they'll be censoring Bambi's udders.
The mind of pornographers is too deep to fathom, and our official crusade to sanitise the young saplings of society is sometimes more disturbing than pornography.
But it's hardest to be a female teenager here, not just because you don't get to see the hairless chest of a kiddie cartoon character, but because of the covert sexism that has buried itself so deeply into a system that's supposed to defend the female in the first place.
It was unpleasant enough when the men slipped in sexual inuendoes in the ballyhoo over the secret meeting between PM Yingluck Shinawatra and businessmen at the Four Seasons, but it was even more unsettling when Women Volunteers Protecting the Land, part of the multi-coloured shirt group, handed a petition to the parliamentary ombudsman in protest against the prime minister's inappropriate conduct that "undermines the image of women according to Thai tradition ... abusing the standing and dignity of the female members of the whole country".
Isn't this more idiotic than the O-Net question? Womanhood is hijacked and turned into a wager, hyperboling the idea that sex and gender are not just naturally and culturally constructed, but also politically mobilised into a public performance.
Obviously the prime minister needs to quickly answer why she sneaked away from her schedule to attend that meeting. But the mean-spiritedness of such accusations, the arrogant claim to the sole definition of what it is to be a "good woman", shows once again that ideology has triumphed over humanity, that the Women Volunteers are blithely taking hostage of feminism and risking the dignity of the female sex themselves.
This is not so far from the O-Net balderdash. In case you really don't know the correct answer to the question posed above, it's A. If you feel the urge, go play football. Answer that, and you score.
Among its many flaws, the fundamental one in this logic is that the question was asked without female students in mind at all.
Hardly any girl would think of football as a channel to divert sex drive; the question not only forces students to adopt the official mentality, it forces them to adopt the male official mentality. (Replacing "football" with "sport" might be more accommodating, but what sport would you play if the sex urge struck you at 3am?)
In many ways, this is such a subconscious form of sexism that I think all girl students should campaign to invalidate this nonsensical query, and to revamp sex education with respect to young people at the centre.
What should we do when we feel a sexual urge? Think of the Thai entrance exam - that would be the biggest turn-off for any drive, sexual or intellectual.
Kong Rithdee writes about movies and popular culture for the Bangkok Post.