Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha has urged teachers to help create well-disciplined children and raise issues posted on social media for discussion in class.
He made the call at a Teachers' Day event yesterday at Khurusapha, an agency that sets and monitors professional teaching standards.
"As well as educating students, teachers must help create a peaceful society and ensure children are well disciplined," said Gen Prayut, noting that it is easier to instill values in young people than adults.
He also said that since social media often features slanderous comments, he wants teachers to raise such content and discuss it so students can weed out fake news.
"Teachers must provide guidance to students as to what information is true or not, otherwise in the future, things conflict could get worse and no one would will be able to live peacefully," Gen Prayut said.
According to him, students must be encouraged to think outside the box.
"But to be able to do this they need to have structure," said Gen Prayut.
He added that the effectiveness of informal education must be improved and said the government was ready to support this.
Meanwhile, the Democrat Party yesterday unveiled measures to support teachers. They were announced by party leader Abhisit Vejjajiva and his deputy, Korn Chatikavanij.
According to them, people should be recruited to ease the administrative and non-teaching workload currently burdening teachers so they can concentrate on providing a quality education.
Mr Abhisit said schools must have more power to manage budgets, and recruit and train teaching staff, in such a way that best serves the educational needs of districts or provinces.
He also stressed the need to raise salaries and benefits and link career advancement to merit and performance.
"It would motivate them to perform better," he said.