Thai Language Seen as Vital National Symbol, Survey Shows

[kickstart]

21 hours ago, Tropicalevo said:

If you believe that education is free then you live in a different world to mine.

There are lots of 'extra' charges.

The money for school meals and uniforms from the government 'disappears'.

No uniform - no education.

Lots of articles on scammed school dinners.

In class, if the teacher is not given an 'incentive' then the child is at the back of the class and no homework. They do not pass exams.

Here the police do' helmet checks and seatbelt checks' before the start of term so that they can pay for these things.

As I said in my original post - away from the cities.......

I said about school meals in my post, school uniform as I said the government helps to the sum of 320 baht/student.

In the wife's family they Seem's to be lot of kids they all get that 320-baht never been a problem.

Here a lot of kids go to school on what we would call the school bus ,fleets of them leave the school at 4.30pm ,never herd of the police doing checks at start of term ,they sometime stop cars and motorbikes near the school for checks ,do not very often see the kids getting stopped ,the police know  they will not have any money to pay the fine.

That "incentive" is a new one on me, let us see your evidence that it has actually happened.

[Stargeezr]

I had a Thai fellow tell me go go go then turn left. What he meant was go 3 blocks then turn left.

i would say that is typical of directions given in Thailand.

My Thai relatives have all managed to get a pretty good education, and they had to pay for it as well. There are some schools in Thailand that

are better than other schools, same for univerities. Most countries in the world also have poor people who cannot afford

to get great education. Thailand is not alone with this problem. Then there are countries at war, where it is impossible to get

educated. Be happy that you live in a peaceful country. IMO

[retarius]

Simply put, of course the Thai language is a vital important symbol.  Thais are under no obligation to learn English. Forced English usage is language imperialism on behalf of the US/UK who won't learn other languages, and who gain a major competitive advantage by having the rest of the world learning their language. No different really than colonialism which was true evil in itself. 

[thesetat2013]

On 7/30/2024 at 9:16 AM, MalcolmB said:

Where did you meet your wife?

Is she educated? 
Must be hard.

Wow! attack my wife's education. So, i guess her masters degree and supervisory position in the Thai government means nothing. Must be hard for you though with the bar girl you carry around in your wallet(i mean pocket... oops...)

[Caldera]

In related news, the level of functional illiteracy is sky-high in Thailand. Maybe they aren't doing such a great job teaching their language to their people. 

[daejung]

On 7/29/2024 at 4:29 PM, MartinBangkok said:

What utter bull<deleted>. The lack of proficiency in English is one of the major problems holding this country back. Almost on par with corruption and the obsequious deference-behaviour brainwashed into 99% of Thai "children" from birth.

Kind of "colonialist" comment. Self centered foreigner whose native language is english

[rickudon]

Thete is nothing wrong with Thais speaking Thsi. The problem is the 44 or more characters, tones and other symbols. As has already been said, Reading and writing Thai is a struggle because of the script. And how do they start teaching reading and writing in Thai nursery schools? The 26 character alphabet. Also, the inability to transcribe Thai characters/words into the alphabet with any consistency causes chaos in translation, which impacts on Thais learning foreign languages.

[Kinnock]

Not only is the poor English proficiency stunting development, Thai language itself is a poor communication tool due to it's lack of precision, tenses and archaic written structure.