The week that was in Thailand news: Don't expect schools to educate your kids - in Thailand or anywhere else!

[UglyBug]

2 hours ago, Jadam said:

They SHOULD set a good example, but they are adults so up to them if they want to wear a helmet.  What really disappoints me (almost daily) is when I see the adult with a helmet on but small children, who don't have a choice whether they even get on the bike, do not have helmets. 

 

I don't make a habit of hitting children (or grownups) but I smacked my 6 year old daughter in the back of the head when I saw her on a motorbike without a helmet after I had warned her against it.  I considered smacking the driver in the head, but I decided there are too many ignorant people out there for me to smack them all and she is old enough that she can say "No, I won't go without my helmet."  Afterward I told her that I felt bad about hurting her but it will likely hurt more if she falls off the bike without a helmet. 

 

I'm far from a perfect parent, but I like to think I'm better than average.  I'm also a teacher and I realize that there's only so much a school can do in any country, let alone Thailand where most children accept everything their parents (and grandparents) tell them as gospel when they are young and swallow everything the government gives them hook, line and sinker when they grow up. 

 

I've often said it's ridiculous that you need a license to legally operate an automobile (and also to be a teacher in most countries) but they'll let anyone have kids.

 

[Bill Miller]

4 hours ago, roobaa01 said:

and what about the turkish muslim genocide on 2 million christian armenians during ww i , who is educating the kids ???

 

wbr

roobaa01

"The Armenian Genocide (Armenian: Հայոց ցեղասպանություն, Hayots tseghaspanutyun), also known as the Armenian Holocaust, was the Ottoman government's systematic extermination of 1.5 million Armenians, mostly citizens within the Ottoman Empire."
Don't know where you got " 2 million christian armenians" (sic) from, as the history is there and the numbers are 1.5 million total, and not just Christians, although most Armenians were Christian.  
Trying to make it a Muslim bashing deal?
It was primarily political in retaliation for an earlier ouster of Muslims from several areas, who resented their well off Armenian neighbors where they were resettled. A declared Jihad In November 1914 by Shaykh ul-Islamwas was a justification for the genocide.
Raphael Lemkin in fact coined the term "genocide" in direct response to the Armenian Genocide, and it is the second most studied genocide in world history.

[Liverpudlian]

Just the post title got my response, i have been in a number of rural thai schools NOT 1 had a map of the world, daily tasks are based around sweeping out rooms , scouting , soccer, and of course thai royals history ,  keep them dumb enough to carry on growing rice etc etc and survive happily on 5/9 thousand bht per month , monks are better off FFSKsakes. Rant over. L

[Jane Dough]

21 hours ago, mok199 said:

That's 6 minutes of my life I wont get back...

Don't feel so bad. Just think of it as education.

 

Rooster

[Jane Dough]

8 hours ago, mikebell said:

He used to be funny.

Who?

 

Me? If so, thanks for the compliment.

 

Rooster

[Jane Dough]

7 hours ago, wreckingcountry said:

Op needed to get something off his chest ! Stick to the day job


Sent from my iPhone using Thaivisa Connect

The tragedy is that it is my day job.

 

Rooster

[Jane Dough]

5 hours ago, ChipButty said:

What about that guy from Belgium he must be in the top 10

Who would that be?

 

Rooster

[Bill Miller]

3 hours ago, brain150 said:

That's when I stopped reading this piece of propaganda shit !

 

The "Allies" never were in Auschwitz ! The red army "liberated" Auschwitz and raped every woman they could get their hands on. That's historical fact !!!

 

If you see any photo with GIs in Auschwitz you know it's fake ... unless the photo was taken AFTER 1989 !!!

There was NEVER an Investigation about the Holocaust unless you want to talk about the Holocaust done to the German people in Dresden in 1945 - women, children and old people - no soldiers were in Dresden at that time !!!

 

Get your history straight !

 

BTW:

The swastika is a very ancient symbol - you will find it all over the world in many temples.

The brainwashing sits so deep it's unbelievable - and the teachers are the most brainwashed of all !!!

 

 

 

In point of fact the Soviets from 1942 on were considered a functional part of the Alliance, meeting and communicating regularly with Roosevelt, Churchill, etc., so your declaration that "The "Allies" never were in Auschwitz" is arguably off the mark.
Never an investigation of the Holocaust? Allied prosecutors submitted some 3,000 tons of records at the Nuremberg trial.   That's a whole lot of nothing. An additional sixty two volumes on the subject at least were published before the end of the twentieth century.
I suggest, sir, that you are the person most in need of getting their history straight.

[Jane Dough]

4 hours ago, brain150 said:

That's when I stopped reading this piece of propaganda shit !

 

The "Allies" never were in Auschwitz ! The red army "liberated" Auschwitz and raped every woman they could get their hands on. That's historical fact !!!

 

If you see any photo with GIs in Auschwitz you know it's fake ... unless the photo was taken AFTER 1989 !!!

There was NEVER an Investigation about the Holocaust unless you want to talk about the Holocaust done to the German people in Dresden in 1945 - women, children and old people - no soldiers were in Dresden at that time !!!

 

Get your history straight !

 

BTW:

The swastika is a very ancient symbol - you will find it all over the world in many temples.

The brainwashing sits so deep it's unbelievable - and the teachers are the most brainwashed of all !!!

 

 

 

Funny I could have sworn the Russians were on our side. Amazing what you learn on the internet.

 

Rooster

[Jane Dough]

3 hours ago, ozmeldo said:

This again...

 

Opinion at best, fake news at worst.

 

 

Simply not fair that TV use it's position to launch pablum.

 

Tripe

 

Many cultures value tripe. My own mother swore by it. 

 

This is opinion, for fake news try Fox. 

 

Pabulum is better - far more points at Scrabble.

 

Oh, and it's its. 

 

Rooster

[Bill Miller]

2 minutes ago, Jane Dough said:

Many cultures value tripe. My own mother swore by it. 

 

This is opinion, for fake news try Fox. 

 

Pabulum is better - far more points at Scrabble.

 

Oh, and it's its. 

 

Rooster

Some people are simply resistant to anything that smacks of intellect, facts, or education.
Those bar stools don't hold themselves down, do they? ????

[Jane Dough]

2 hours ago, PaDavid said:

Sorry Rooster but Thailand comprises more than just Bangkok and Pataya - the only places to get a mention this week again!!!

 

As you are English, as you often tell us, the correct spelling is 'gypsy' (as previously mentioned) and 'honour.' I thought that you being a Scrabble expert would know this. 

Sorry about that. I wrote this too early to include my favorite (note the spelling) story of the week....the birthday cake given to the Norwegian at Chiang Mai immigration.

 

As you can see I usually use American spellings. I have done that for decades as I notice it tends to wind more people up. It used to annoy some people at Harrow no end. I read somewhere that the American spellings are older and more traditional. 

 

But I do use both. GIPSY and HONOR are acceptable Scrabble words. GIPSY is even a verb.

 

Thanks for reading,

 

Rooster. 

Edited February 3, 2019 by Jane Dough

[Jane Dough]

1 hour ago, AlbionBob said:

An interesting read as always.  Some serious and sobering thoughts aired on the holocaust subject !  Not wishing to be flippant, but I always look for a more amusing side to life.  In this respect, the comments on the beer survey subject, reminded me to nominate two posters for The Poster of the Week award (does it still exist ?).

 

The first was the guy who solemnly stated that  he had given up drinking many years ago.  I was awaiting a pearl of wisdom for the rest of us, but no, he went on to state that it had been a long and thoroughly boring day !!  I didn't see that coming !  Haha !  Nice one !

 

The second was the guy, obviously a Brit, who stated that he would rather drink himself to death in lovely warm Thailand surrounded by beautiful girls than be back home in a pub moaning about the weather before going home to his fat mess of a wife  !!!   Very succinctly put, I thought !

 

You've got to laugh !   

 

And what a great win for England last night in the Six Nations....!!!!

Thanks for that.

 

I shall endeavor to try and include a Post of the Week next time. There are many every week on the forum that make me chuckle and pause to think. I particularly like the comments made on stories that I translate. It's good when people pick up on the vocabulary or phraseology that I use to provide a modicum of entertainment (and to check that people are paying attention!)

 

One such example was "sullying the sand" that was part of the story of the foreigners having some rumpty-tumpty on Pattaya beach.

 

Rugby leaves me cold, however. I was more pumped up by Son at Wembley. In fact I nearly decapitated myself on a ceiling fan when he scored. 

 

Rooster

[Jane Dough]

14 minutes ago, Bill Miller said:

Some people are simply resistant to anything that smacks of intellect, facts, or education.
Those bar stools don't hold themselves down, do they? ????

Indeed. I have a very thick skin, Bill. I need it after 3 years working for Thaivisa. Next week will be my 150th consecutive weekly column. 

 

Rooster

[NeoDinosaw]

5 hours ago, brain150 said:

 

The "Allies" never were in Auschwitz ! The red army "liberated" Auschwitz. That's historical fact !!!

 

The bulldozing of bodies into pits was by the British army at Bergen Belsen.  This was the first camp liberated by the western allies at the invitation of the Germans in order to stop the spread of typhoid.

 

 

[NeoDinosaw]

1 hour ago, UglyBug said:

I find ....... ! there is a complete lack of Common-sense in Thailand many say Thais are retarded ? but I really think in My Opinion that Common-sense as a course should be taught at infant Schools and continue right through the Education System and the kids may be able to help their Educated and Un-educated parents and Grandparents It is very Sad to see and witness on a daily basis ????

They need a course in basic logic, as do most people in the UK (they still want to vote for May !!).  The French were very hot on logic and philosophy in their schools- but they carried it to extremes as we saw in 1968.

[Ajarnbrian]

Recently reported that in the UK many young people didn`t know the holocaust happened. Is this due to the failure of schools, failure of parents, the passage of time, the trivia on social media indulged in by so many young people? I suggest all are to blame in some way for the disturbing lack of knowledge of such horrific events from less than 80 years ago.

[Bill Miller]

31 minutes ago, Ajarnbrian said:

Recently reported that in the UK many young people didn`t know the holocaust happened. Is this due to the failure of schools, failure of parents, the passage of time, the trivia on social media indulged in by so many young people? I suggest all are to blame in some way for the disturbing lack of knowledge of such horrific events from less than 80 years ago.

Indeed. I am a fairly early "boomer", 1954, whose parents both enlisted to fight the Nazis. I have dated Jewish women who lost many relatives, and have spoken with veterans of ALL sides.
It is a complete mystery how any could be entirely ignorant of one of the seminal happenings of the entire twentieth century, much less deny what happened.
To quote Dr. Charley Wittemore, history prof extraordinaire, "if you have no interest and are completely ignorant of history, why you are just duller than dishwater!". I believe he meant "duller" in the sense of not very smart.????

[sawadee1947]

Thank you for filling the pages. There is not anything new. 

Except to mention the animosity to Jews in many countries, also and especially in UK. Don't forget the drama with the "Exodus" at the shores of Palestine. And don't forget to mention that Germany opened borders for more than 1.5 million refugees and migrants. And UK argues about a handful of people coming into the country, in comparison to Germany. So don't describe UK as innocent next. 

[Jadam]

3 hours ago, PaDavid said:

Sorry Rooster but Thailand comprises more than just Bangkok and Pataya - the only places to get a mention this week again!!!

True enough.  I don't go to either place if I can avoid it.  But Rooster made some good points about Thai culture and the state of the world in general nonetheless. 

[anterian]

https://blog.sami-aldeeb.com/2018/03/18/islamic-invasion-of-india-the-greatest-genocide-in-history/

[oslooskar]

12 hours ago, Bill Miller said:

In point of fact the Soviets from 1942 on were considered a functional part of the Alliance

Yeah, but that's only because their former partners in crime turned on them. Funny how those things work out; you invade Poland with your Nazi buddies and all is fine and well until they turn on you next and then you're screaming, "BLOODY MURDER!" and trying to act all virtuous. Regarding the Holocaust; the way we're bombarded with endless documentaries about it one would think that the Jews were the only people to have suffered from the horrors of concentration camps and mass murder during World War Two. So be advised that the Japanese murdered millions of people throughout Asia and inflicted atrocities on Allied prisoners of war that the Germans would never have dreamed of in their worst nightmares. And the Soviets during their first occupation of Poland stuffed tens of thousands of innocent Poles into unheated boxcars and shipped them off to gulags all over the Soviet Union where many thousands of them died from starvation, disease, and the brutal conditions of their confinement. 

[oslooskar]

9 hours ago, anterian said:

https://blog.sami-aldeeb.com/2018/03/18/islamic-invasion-of-india-the-greatest-genocide-in-history/

That's strange! I thought it might have been the 26 million Indians who starved to death in 1876/77 when the British created a famine by shipping India's wheat off to Britain. 

[oslooskar]

14 hours ago, PaDavid said:

the correct spelling is 'gypsy'

Not necessarily! Alphabetic principles dictate that symbols (letters) be placed in the chronological order in which the sounds they represent are heard. So given the fact that we do not do this in the English-Speaking world it can be argued that “gypsy” is in violation of those principles and is therefore spelled incorrectly.

[TPI]

Good for you Looster! Doesn't it get a bit boring reading comments by TV'ers upset about not being entertained! Wise words well written, they apply to every country as well, all you can do is to keep banging away on your drum, who knows, maybe someday people will listen? 

[lucifer666]

On 2/3/2019 at 6:22 AM, Samui Bodoh said:

I don't think anyone who lives and/or spends a long time in the kingdom would ever praise the Thai education system; my personal view is that the top 100 people at the national level and the top 10 people at the provincial level of the Ministry of Education should be fired, today. And, I mean literally 'today'. Then, after the above have cleaned out their desks, the rest of the Ministry should be reformed with a chain saw and/or a blowtorch. Okay, that is a personal view and a wee bit harsh, but I have yet to meet anyone who disagrees.

 

Thailand has achieved a certain success with what I call the 1/50 method; one person is well-educated and gives orders to 50, lesser educated people as a 'brains-multiplier'. And, one has to say that they have achieved some success with this method; downtown Bangkok is not all that different from downtown Berlin or Paris or London or New York or Seoul, etc. However, things are changing and the 1/50 method simply will not work anymore; the future of countries/societies will depend on how well individuals can adapt to ever-changing circumstances, and the Thai education system isn't pumping out adaptable graduates who can meet modern challenges.

 

There is a correlation between the adaptability of a country's graduates and its future prosperity and success, and Thailand isn't going to do great on that...

 

Finally, I will tell a story that I have told several times on Thai Visa, but it is still as relevant today as it was the first time. Many years ago, I saw an interview with the late Lee Kwan Yew (spelling) where he was asked if he feared for Singapore's future in relation to her larger, resource-rich neighbours. Mr Lee simply smiled, looked directly into the camera and asked "what are their Education systems like?".

 

Says it all...

 

I quit teaching here after i was told to change certain students exam papers and give them a passing grade

On 2/3/2019 at 6:22 AM, Samui Bodoh said:

 

 

Edited February 4, 2019 by lucifer666

[LazySlipper]

On 2/2/2019 at 5:42 PM, rooster59 said:

Nitsuda Apinuntaporn said that education was not to blame. It was in the curriculum and the children just don't remember.

She's actually right... ask any kid what they ate for breakfast yesterday. Or, what they did over the weekend.

[Farang99]

If my education had been left to my parents I would be in a sorry state. From age 5 to 10 I had no contact with them as an evacuee, and no education whatsoever. from 10 to 12 I lived with my maternal grandparents, and picked up a smattering from my grandfather's books, and from 12 to 19 I was at a boarding school and got the best education there could be.

[AlQaholic]

Cambodia, Rwanda, Former Yugoslavia, The Crusades, The Albigensian slaughter, The 30-year war in Europe, Isis, Syria, The Rohingya, Belgian Kongo, Mass lynching of former black slaves in the USA, Pinochet, Stalin, The Turkish genocide of Armenians, The WWII genocide, all these occurrences are the same manifestation of the horrors humans can inflict on each other, only difference between WWII and the rest of them, is that the Third Reich could do it undisturbed for such a long time. The 30-year war in Europe only ended because the armies could not sustain themselves on the surrounding anymore, the land was so ravaged. Let's not make WWII unique just because the Nazis were so strong they had time to commit the atrocities for a longer time and in an industrious fashion.

Edited February 4, 2019 by AlQaholic

[JAG]

21 hours ago, brain150 said:

That's when I stopped reading this piece of propaganda shit !

 

The "Allies" never were in Auschwitz ! The red army "liberated" Auschwitz and raped every woman they could get their hands on. That's historical fact !!!

 

If you see any photo with GIs in Auschwitz you know it's fake ... unless the photo was taken AFTER 1989 !!!

There was NEVER an Investigation about the Holocaust unless you want to talk about the Holocaust done to the German people in Dresden in 1945 - women, children and old people - no soldiers were in Dresden at that time !!!

 

Get your history straight !

 

BTW:

The swastika is a very ancient symbol - you will find it all over the world in many temples.

The brainwashing sits so deep it's unbelievable - and the teachers are the most brainwashed of all !!!

 

 

 

It is noteworthy that whenever Swastikas, Nazism or The Holocaust is mentioned on this forum there are always posters who attempt to deflect, deny or compare ("whataboutism") it. 

 

That the Holocaust happened is beyond dispute. That it was planned, driven and committed by people from a civilized developed nation is likewise beyond dispute.

 

That the swastika has existed in many cultures is beyond dispute, it is also totally irrelevant to it's use in Nazi iconography.

 

Personally I think the ignorance of the whole business within the Thai education system (which sparked this debate) is lamentable, pathetic even, and reveals real weakness within that system. I think that attempts to excuse such ignorance by claiming that it is irrelevant, or in some way justifiable or comparable with other, equally abominable events, or that it didn't really happen in the way history records it, is an indefensible accommodation with evil. It is "a piece of shit".