Charly

I think the real problem might not be the standard of teachers and the gendered society, but the difficult wring system, which makes it very difficult to learn to read and write. This could be very easy reformed. I am living for 5 years in Thailand, and I try to learn reading and writing in Thai, but is is so difficult for me. I think it is also difficult for Thai kids, to learn it, that they just give up. There are many different letters with the same sound at the beginning of a syllable, but at the end of a syllable they have a different sound. How do children know, where the syllable start and end. I think the writing system was only once reformed and double pronounced consonant were eliminated, because they did not fit onto the typewriter keyboard.

The tonal language makes the Thai writing system so difficult, but there must be experts who think about a reform of the writing system, and who surely have better ideas than I have. But here is my reform idea in 2 steps.

Here is the first step:

1. Insert spaces between syllables
2. Eliminate double pronounced consonants, regardless whether they are high, medium or low class consonants and regardless whether they are located at the beginning or at the end of a syllable. This should reduce the number of letters to almost halve of the currently used letters in the Thai alphabet.
3. The gained space on the keyboards could be used, for 3 signs to mark medium, falling or rising syllables.

After a short learning curve, everyone, who already can read and write, can continue to read and write. The brain capacity in the pupils/students needed for learning to read and write will be reduced by (in my opinion) more than 80%. This brain capacity can be used for learning also important thing, and when reading is suddenly easy, even the boy will be more interested to learn reading.

I am German, and that I am not a native English speaker, you surely have noticed on my bad English. I have raised 2 children in Germany, a girl and a boy. The boy, he is 11 month younger than the girl, learned reading and writing by him, just be watching TV, before he started going to school. That was almost 40 years ago. Beside the main program we could receive 2 regional programs, which both broadcasted as far as I remember, several times per week a television program, which was called “Seamestraße” (Sesame Street). With the current Thai writing system, I think, this would not be possible.

If the first writing system reform is realized, pupils have spare learning capacity, to learn e.g. a second language, maybe English, and with that, they learn roman letters. So 25 years after the introduction of the first Thai Writing Reform, the second step could be realized.

The second step:

1. Romanization of the letters by just using lowercase letters, to make the writing easy

Real consequences would be blackballing the person for a 3 or 5 year (or maybe longer) period of time from returning to Thailand. Does not make sense to prevent an overstay from leaving but from returning - get rid of the deadwood. Now if you catch them way overstaying as a result of on interaction with law enforcement and this is discovered (not by immigration sweeps to pocket baht) then this is the grey area where LE and immigration have to figure out and standardized (good luck with this in Thailand) a relatively equal and fair consequences.

Bottom line for me is play by the rules = no worries.

Yes you are right, law is law, and one has to follow the laws, especially, if one is only a guest in a country.

I am not talking about the immigration laws now. Every law has a purpose, and I was wondering, why sometimes a foreigner has to leave Thailand for 24 hours, and then she or he can come back, to get a new 30 days tourist visa. I think I have an idea, but maybe the members know the correct answer for the purpose for this in my opinion unnecessary difficulty.

The reason for not blackballing/baring the persons which have overstayed longer than 42 day for 3 or 5 years might be that they do not want to abandon the option of them for returning and bringing foreign currency into Thailand.

I live with my Thai wife and her nice (5 years old) in Udon Thani, She started to go to school 3 or 4 month ago. I noticed, that the school is closed 1 to 3 times every month during the normal school time (no vacation).

This month it was closed already on Friday the 17/09/2010, and this week the school is closed for 3 days on 22-23-24/09/2010. That is 25% no school. It is a small school with only 2 or 3 classes, but 7 teachers are employed. I wonder, why it is necessary, to closed the school so often. Maybe it is only an extended weekend for the teachers.

Some time ago I read in the Thailand Forum, that the average IQ of children in Isan is only 90%, and the reason for the low IQ is blamed on the lack of iodine in the water in Issan, and to correct the IQ, Iodized salt should be used.

I do not know, whether missing school days can influenced the IQ of a child, but it surely will reduced knowledge, which they could learn, when they have school every day, except of course during the vacations. I went into German Schools, and as far as I can remember, the school was only closed one day because of an emergency.