Before we go to the moon...

Before we go to the moon...

On Monday, Anek Laothamatas, the minister of Higher Education, Science, Research and Innovation, revealed that, by the middle of next month, a plan to send a spacecraft into the moon's orbit in seven years from now will be announced. According to him, Thailand will be the fifth Asian country to achieve this extraterrestrial feat, following China, Japan, South Korea and India. Khun Anek added that taxpayers' money will be used to yield tangible results rather than just more research and teaching, at the launch of a project to crowdfund locally-made vaccines against Covid-19 led by Chulalongkorn University.

His words sparked online backlash as many questioned the usefulness of such an ambitious plan and whether it's the wisest decision to use taxpayers' money to either build or buy the spaceship when we could have used the resources on something more pressing. Some even joked that there's no need to go to the moon as our roads and "sidewalks" are bumpy enough and that they should put certain people in the said spacecraft on a one-way trip to the moon.

With due respect as always, I humbly think his ministry and the government already have a lot to be content with. And that, perhaps, taxpayers' money should go to address these following concerns instead.

Improve our abysmal level of English proficiency

Isn't receiving lower and lower scores on English proficiency in comparison to our neighbouring countries a cause for concern? A few weeks ago, Education First placed Thailand at No.89 out of 100 countries on their English Proficiency Index or very low proficiency. We were No.20 out of 24 countries in Asia and we have been going down for the fourth consecutive year. You don't even have to look to this EF's ranking for evidence of subpar English proficiency when some uni students (and even Thai teachers who teach English) can't conduct a conversation in casual English. Sometimes we even get the official Thai subtitle in major movies wrong. In Detective Pikachu, they mistranslated "Because if you want to find your pops..." into "If you want to be famous" in Thai at 1.23 minutes. Pops is the American informal word for father. You just have to look it up in Google, people! Also, as much as I like Tinglish as the next guy, when you use English in a professional or official capacity, you should use it properly.

Instead of spending money on a spacecraft, hire qualified teachers to teach English please.

Purge Thai education of outdated viewpoints (in textbooks first)

There are many examples of Thai textbooks and learning materials that went viral for their factual errors, outdated/discriminatory viewpoints on women and those who don't conform to the gender binary, as well as -- my favourite -- hilarious typos. C'mon, it's not every day that you open a textbook to see an explicit word for penis in Thai.

The latest miseducation incident went viral last week. A page from a textbook titled "Life And Thai Society" for high vocational level students said Thai society has been hierarchical from time immemorial and has three classes of people; upper, middle and lower. The upper class is divided into the highest upper for the royal family and the lower upper for the Cabinet, privy councillors and statesmen. Are we still living in a feudalistic society?

Just hire qualified people to review these textbooks and ideologies hidden within so we don't indoctrinate the kids with the wrong messages. Thailand has two ministries with the word education in their titles. Don't you think we should have tackled this concern immediately?

P.S. They can also use the money for this space project to buy us all N95 masks to protect against PM2.5 particles over the next seven years. g

Pornchai Sereemongkonpol

Guru section Editor

Guru section Editor

Email : pornchais@bangkokpost.co.th

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