Thai Education

[Pierrot]

Another factor is that no matter how bad 95% of the education system is, what matters most is whether whether your family is rich and powerful. That defines your face, and thus you. And if the family is really rich, you receive an overseas education. And a good job.

I know the two kids of a noodle shop owner in Korat who are studying in Australia, and the son of hot pot restaurant owner in Ubon who has a good job with a bright future in an international company. Based on my personnal satistics, not so sure about the rich and powerful, but owning a restaurant is good for your kid's future.

Actually, the most important is how the family value hard work and education.

[sylviex]

Vitoon Sila-On, father of 5, 7 and 9-year-old Thawsi students

- I am satisfied with the school's academic quality. I believe that it's as good as that of other schools, the only thing that's different is the method, because they use life as a lesson.

My kids are very happy with the school and have developed both their IQ and EQ levels. What's more important than the education itself is the eagerness to study. Thawsi stimulates kids to be ambitious learners. As a result the children always want to learn more than what we are teaching them and cleverer than we think.

Interesting changes ... ?

Read on at http://www.bangkokpost.com//120908_Realtim...008_real001.php

I can't even contemplate the notion that Thai education is the "best in Asia". I am not in a position to comment on all Asian nations, but I can say I have never, ever seen anything so profoundly, utterly and -- it would seem -- willfully woeful, and strongly doubt there could be many countries who could compete for that description.

Whatever criticisms you may have of China and its education system, it is many, many streets ahead of Thailand. The Chinese (most certainly still taught they are the children of the Middle Kingdom) do understand that they must belong to the world and that the cultivation of ignorance will ultimately weaken the whole.

[wintermute]

Wow...sooo many questions

To sum: It wasn't all that crap to me - speaking from own experience

I agree Thailand Education is probably number one in Asia. The reason most of us think it is bad because we hang around with Jerks. In England and America you will not hang around with these types. All my circle of Thais are higher educated. Just get better friends or better wife.

Thai education isn't even close to number one in Asia. The best schools in Thailand don't even rank in the top 20 within Asia.

Tokyo U., National Singapore University, Tsinghua University, Beijing university, etc.. are all fantastic schools with international reputations that easily rank up there with ivy league standards. Singapore U. even has a joint MBA program with the University of California Los Angeles.

University world rankings:

http://uniranks.unifiedself.com/2007top200.html

Edited September 17, 2008 by wintermute

[wintermute]

edit: double post

Edited September 17, 2008 by wintermute

[Pierrot]

But I heard that Thailand has great schools for expats kids (up to senior high school). Is that right ?

[dumball]

compare with malaysia, thailand was much more better then malaysia.

Is that a fact, where did you accumulate your English expertise ?

[wintermute]

But I heard that Thailand has great schools for expats kids (up to senior high school). Is that right ?

I like to call them spoiled expat children schools. To answer your question..not really. The countries I mentioned have better private high schools too. The private schools in Thailand suffer from the same problems as everywhere else here they are obsessed with maintaining the "prestigious" image but have nothing to back it up with. Poor academics and poor standards.

Edited September 17, 2008 by wintermute

[kartman]

compare with malaysia, thailand was much more better then malaysia.

Is that a fact, where did you accumulate your English expertise ?

Saw a programe on channel news asia re Malaysian education ,government official actually stated that although everybody had access to it, the standard was not any good and anybody wanting a government/private sector job of any importance has to be educated in US/UK/Europe. So presumably first question on an application is 'where were you educated' if reply Malaysia, you fail at the first hurdle!

[MrHammer]

a lot of people on tv (perhaps rightly) complain about the poor education system in thailand.

it's easy to see how a poor education system would leave people not knowing or - even worse - not wanting to know about other countries, languages, or anything that could give them better life chances.

the poor quality of schooling (alongside free media coverage) has also been cited as a reason for the ongoing political problems. thai education is crap. yes, we know.

but can anyone give us some actual examples, or perhaps some ajarn out there could recount some personal experiences. i.e. what kind of material do they teach from text books, what kinds of exercises are students asked to do, what experiences have people had teaching students new things, what do teachers say about farangs, do parents ever hassle for the principal etc, etc.

would be good to read some reports, or if someone could post a link to a website that would be cool too.

I thought the courses i took on a top Bangkok university was WELL ABOVE the same courses at my home university even when that one was ranked in the top 30's in the world.

Generally i thought thai lecturers to be very good at TEACHING, maybe not so much in critical thinking.

But there were definately a lot of copying material and the thais seemed to love doing 'high-school' style presentations - fun being the most important for the grade.

[coalminer]

Generally speaking:

Thais and Thai schools don't like to lose face.

This means that (almost) every school will offer you a degree.

No matter how wise or how dumb you are.

If one school don't want to give you a degree, there are 99 others who will (against big $$$$).

This also means that 99,99% of the students will not do any effort to study and learn.

They know with 100% guarantee that at the end they will get their degree.

Real life example:

A friend is studying at a local University for Electrical Engineer.

He need to do 1 more year before finishing the studies and get that degree.

Still, last week we went to a party at the school where the degrees were handled over.

Moral of the story:

If you have the capacities to do a work according to your degree, you will make it in life.

If you have NOT the capacities to do a work according to your degree, you will fail in life.

The school has nothing to do with the fact if you did study or not.

It's not their business.

Downside of this attitude:

Lots of people are released every year in the Thai industry and other departments (hospitals, schools, etc.) without the ability to do their job properly.

The best example of this attitude is found in supermarkets and big shops around the country where a lot of salesmen in a paricular department are waiting for a customer to jump on while knowing zilch about the product they are selling.

I have a cousin in the rice fields of Chaiyaphum who is studying now at a local "university" for engineer and will get his degree next year. He was staying with us a few years ago to study university at our place, but he failed miserably en every test and was not accepted at any university here. One university offered him a test of M3, which he failed.

But what counts at the end in Thailand is the piece of paper where it says that Mr. "X" has finished his studies with excell and a photo where that piece of paper is handed over by some "high" official.

With that piece of paper he is entitled to apply for a job as engineer and he will get at least the minimum wage from an engineer.

Just my 2 cents added to the discussion

[astral]

A few observations.

Are we talking about the whole education system or just the government run side?

My eldest step son went to a government school.

His English teacher could not even hold a sensible conversation with me, in English.

At 3:30 everyone went home, teachers as well.

The youngest went to a private school.

What a contrast. Motivated teachers, after school activities.

An "English camp" in the school holidays.

Cost 6000 baht a year, it was about 7 years ago now.

[coalminer]

Are we talking about the whole education system or just the government run side?

General.

The whole education system in Thailand.

My eldest step son went to a government school.

His English teacher could not even hold a sensible conversation with me, in English.

At 3:30 everyone went home, teachers as well.

That are the kind of places where 99% of the students are released for their job.

The students who didn't learn anything.

The youngest went to a private school.

What a contrast. Motivated teachers, after school activities.

An "English camp" in the school holidays.

Cost 6000 baht a year, it was about 7 years ago now.

That are where the other 1% get their job.

The "motivated" ones who wants to be something in their life and don't want to earn their money by go crying at their mama for extra money to make a living.

The son of my landlord (a lady) works at Tesco-Lotus and has a wife and 3 babies, bur earns 6,000 Baht/month. Almost every month, my landlord calls me from Hong-Kong to give the rent to her son because he has problems. When I ask him why he doesn't sorts his life out and starts working for his wife ad his kids the laconic answer is: "Why? I only need to say to my mother I need money and I get it."

[elkangorito]

Are we talking about the whole education system or just the government run side?

General.

The whole education system in Thailand.

My eldest step son went to a government school.

His English teacher could not even hold a sensible conversation with me, in English.

At 3:30 everyone went home, teachers as well.

That are the kind of places where 99% of the students are released for their job.

The students who didn't learn anything.

The youngest went to a private school.

What a contrast. Motivated teachers, after school activities.

An "English camp" in the school holidays.

Cost 6000 baht a year, it was about 7 years ago now.

That are where the other 1% get their job.

The "motivated" ones who wants to be something in their life and don't want to earn their money by go crying at their mama for extra money to make a living.

The son of my landlord (a lady) works at Tesco-Lotus and has a wife and 3 babies, bur earns 6,000 Baht/month. Almost every month, my landlord calls me from Hong-Kong to give the rent to her son because he has problems. When I ask him why he doesn't sorts his life out and starts working for his wife ad his kids the laconic answer is: "Why? I only need to say to my mother I need money and I get it."

[pauleddy]

compare with malaysia, thailand was much more better then malaysia.

Is that a fact, where did you accumulate your English expertise ?

Probably at the same place as you. You used a comma splice.

Edited September 19, 2008 by pauleddy

[myauq]

compare with malaysia, thailand was much more better then malaysia.

Is that a fact, where did you accumulate your English expertise ?

Probably at the same place as you. You used a comma splice.

danmed it! i'm always hating the ways people corecting others people grammer and speling.

[jbowman1993]

This entire topic is filled with so much venom and bile that it makes me sick. Why isn't it possible to have a discussion of the merits of an issue, without the ignorant and sweeping generalizations that keep flying around? The fact is that most of you are not qualified to discuss the topic from a place of knowledge. The "I have a friend who", or "my mates' children are" examples that have been used to destroy an entire country's profession is appalling. The truth, as usual, is somewhere in the middle. Yes the Thai Education system centers on rote teaching (for the majority of schools). But talk to any teacher who has been here for more than 15 years, and they'll tell you that things are better than they were. All is not lost. At my university I work with countless talented professors, and many bright, thoughtful young people. They don't get handed a degree from my school. They have to fight for it, and earn it. My students have earned their way into top US grad programs, and have gotten scholarships. I can name many others at my university who have done the same.

I am not naive. Corruption and slack standards abound. But the acknowledgment that things are getting better (albeit very slowly in many placed, and perhaps not at all in a few) and that not every teacher can be painted as a corrupt, morally deviant who just has their hand open and their eyes and ears shut, can allow us to take a more analytical look at the system, its problems, and its potential.

Let the flaming begin.

[myauq]

This entire topic is filled with so much venom and bile that it makes me sick. Why isn't it possible to have a discussion of the merits of an issue, without the ignorant and sweeping generalizations that keep flying around? The fact is that most of you are not qualified to discuss the topic from a place of knowledge. The "I have a friend who", or "my mates' children are" examples that have been used to destroy an entire country's profession is appalling. The truth, as usual, is somewhere in the middle. Yes the Thai Education system centers on rote teaching (for the majority of schools). But talk to any teacher who has been here for more than 15 years, and they'll tell you that things are better than they were. All is not lost. At my university I work with countless talented professors, and many bright, thoughtful young people. They don't get handed a degree from my school. They have to fight for it, and earn it. My students have earned their way into top US grad programs, and have gotten scholarships. I can name many others at my university who have done the same.

I am not naive. Corruption and slack standards abound. But the acknowledgment that things are getting better (albeit very slowly in many placed, and perhaps not at all in a few) and that not every teacher can be painted as a corrupt, morally deviant who just has their hand open and their eyes and ears shut, can allow us to take a more analytical look at the system, its problems, and its potential.

Let the flaming begin.

nice one.

as the op i did specifically ask for examples, not just generalisations, in the hope that we could avoid the armchair philosophising.

i think the above quote kind of also indicates that there is a lot of apathy out there in farangland, and most people are just willing to accept things as they are, rather than think of ways of being constructive.

having said that, maybe jbowman1993 could give us a few examples of texts or curricular, changes in policies or whatever that you've seen.

[philo]

I have enjoyed reading this thread. Unlike Bjob1993 (or whatever..), I find that many of the posts here show a deep understanding of Thai upbringing, formation and social control. To the OP: Take a look at this:

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/Thai-Governm...us-t176143.html

Edited September 19, 2008 by philo

[Tyke]

a lot of people on tv (perhaps rightly) complain about the poor education system in thailand.

it's easy to see how a poor education system would leave people not knowing or - even worse - not wanting to know about other countries, languages, or anything that could give them better life chances.

the poor quality of schooling (alongside free media coverage) has also been cited as a reason for the ongoing political problems. thai education is crap. yes, we know.

but can anyone give us some actual examples, or perhaps some ajarn out there could recount some personal experiences. i.e. what kind of material do they teach from text books, what kinds of exercises are students asked to do, what experiences have people had teaching students new things, what do teachers say about farangs, do parents ever hassle for the principal etc, etc.

would be good to read some reports, or if someone could post a link to a website that would be cool too.

The best examples of poor education I have ever seen have come from appalling answers to simple questions posed on Thai visa.

[mark lamai]

interesting differences,

i see students laden down with kilograms of books going into Melbourne University,

I don't think I have ever seen any of uni student in bkk carrying a book.

In Burma i see people on the street reading books (not comic books).

General impression of the Populace General Intelligence Level (a new measure i just invented),

Burmese are generally a lot smarter than Thais, Cambodians are pretty smart too,

Lao and Thai PGIL are about the same.

Young Thai kids are pretty smart, then they are bored into submission in high school.

lack of creative thinking, logic and problem solving in high school teaching is the main cause.

The teachers can't do it so they can't teach it to the students.

It won't change unless it comes from the top.

As an english teacher before I found that eventually , to keep your sanity, you give up trying to teach and just go through the motions and pass everyone, oh! and have fun!

That said, rote learning is perfect for producing fodder for the assembly line factories.

[myauq]

I have enjoyed reading this thread. Unlike Bjob1993 (or whatever..), I find that many of the posts here show a deep understanding of Thai upbringing, formation and social control. To the OP: Take a look at this:

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/Thai-Governm...us-t176143.html

that's awesome, exactly the kind of thing i was looking for. thanks.

#12 is a bit weird - 'on what side of the house should the bedroom be? the east' perhaps a cultural thing.

these are all useful things to learn, but only really as life skills that parents should also teach, and not things that should be set in stone, on a list that can be rote learnt, and tested verbatim.

it's a bit depressing. but now i can understand why it's sometimes difficult to get the street vendors to put less sugar in my drinks ... it's a departure from the list of things needed to make the beverage 'properly'.

[jbowman1993]

I have enjoyed reading this thread. Unlike Bjob1993 (or whatever..), I find that many of the posts here show a deep understanding of Thai upbringing, formation and social control. To the OP: Take a look at this:

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/Thai-Governm...us-t176143.html

Lol, that was really funny, How you took my username and changed it around slightly...so that it looks like something rather insulting and derogatory. That was really quite amusing. I better write that one down to tell my friends at parties. Bjob1993....you are so funny! Nice how you managed to take my sincere posting and turned it into a little funny. Im gonna be laughing about that one all day. :D Nice job Dhildo. Oh, you see? I did it too. Bwhahahahahahaha.

Edited September 20, 2008 by jbowman1993

[jbowman1993]

This entire topic is filled with so much venom and bile that it makes me sick. Why isn't it possible to have a discussion of the merits of an issue, without the ignorant and sweeping generalizations that keep flying around? The fact is that most of you are not qualified to discuss the topic from a place of knowledge. The "I have a friend who", or "my mates' children are" examples that have been used to destroy an entire country's profession is appalling. The truth, as usual, is somewhere in the middle. Yes the Thai Education system centers on rote teaching (for the majority of schools). But talk to any teacher who has been here for more than 15 years, and they'll tell you that things are better than they were. All is not lost. At my university I work with countless talented professors, and many bright, thoughtful young people. They don't get handed a degree from my school. They have to fight for it, and earn it. My students have earned their way into top US grad programs, and have gotten scholarships. I can name many others at my university who have done the same.

I am not naive. Corruption and slack standards abound. But the acknowledgment that things are getting better (albeit very slowly in many placed, and perhaps not at all in a few) and that not every teacher can be painted as a corrupt, morally deviant who just has their hand open and their eyes and ears shut, can allow us to take a more analytical look at the system, its problems, and its potential.

Let the flaming begin.

nice one.

as the op i did specifically ask for examples, not just generalisations, in the hope that we could avoid the armchair philosophising.

i think the above quote kind of also indicates that there is a lot of apathy out there in farangland, and most people are just willing to accept things as they are, rather than think of ways of being constructive.

having said that, maybe jbowman1993 could give us a few examples of texts or curricular, changes in policies or whatever that you've seen.

While I could talk to you about texts in my field specifically, that wouldn't really serve to further the discussion. Instead, here is an UNESCO report, that serves to highlight the state of education in Thailand, highlighting areas that are weak and need to be addressed. Those areas were - ]

- overcentralization;

- lack of unity in educational administration;

- lack of efficiency in quality assurance and desirable standards;

- lack of public participation;

- lack of systematic and continuous policy development; and

- lack of coordination among the ministries with major responsibilities for education (Ministry of Education, Ministry of University Affairs, and the Office of the National Educatio Commission).

These areas are certainly areas that continue to need addressing. Whether the current or future political leaders have the good sense to tackle these problems in a real and effective way remains to be seen. Without that kind of direct intervention. we'll see progress on a very slow level, enacted by the Ministry civil servants.

[jbowman1993]

Also, (while I am loath to recommend it as "first source material") the wikipedia article on "Education in Thailand provides a thoughtful and detailed look at the Thai system, highlighting the weaknesses -

Students, even those in primary schools, are becoming aware of the shortfalls in the quality of their state education, but their own culture prevents them from challenging the system. In total contrast to Chinese philosophy, students are not encouraged to develop analytical and critical thinking skills, which is clearly demonstrated by their inability to grasp the fundamentals of chess, grasp a notion through context, do a crossword puzzle, or follow the plot of a complex thriller or motion picture; indeed, to do so would be to expose their teachers to the embarrassment of losing face. Likewise, the teachers will avoid introducing dialogue into the classroom or eliciting response from the students - in spite of demonstrating enthusiasm, to give a wrong answer would be to lose face in the presence of one’s peers. Dr. Adith Cheosokul, Professor, Chulalongkorn University, September 1, 2002: “Thai kids have no courage to question their teachers… foreign students are very eager to communicate with their teachers. The Thais are usually silent in class. I think it’s the culture. Our students tend to uphold teachers as demi-gods.” As teaching by rote is also easy and requires little pedagogic skill, once qualified, - apart from weekend seminars which, being more fun than form, are considered to be part of the reward system - teachers tend to resist attempts to encourage them to engage in any forms of further training to improve their subject knowledge and to adopt new methodologies which will require them to use more initiative and to be more creative. Some teachers in secondary schools, particularly those in their 40's, consider the essential form of an English language lesson to be the delivery of a straight lecture, in Thai, on some obscure element of higher linguistics to a class of teenagers. Prime Minister Taksin Shinwatra, August 18, 2002: “Teachers must radically change their way of thinking - I’m not sure they can do this.” The essence of education therefore still hinges first and foremost on the traditional values of Buddhism, respect for the king, the monkhood, and the family, (in that order) through the rote method, and whilst indisputably very noble, these features are the main hurdle to the implementation of modern educational methodology and the development of a Western cultural approach to communication in order to strengthen the country’s credibility in the world’s cultural and political theatres, and to reinforce its position in the global market.

But also small improvements that have come recently. -

The years from 2001 to 2006 showed some of the greatest improvements in education, such as computers in the schools and an increase in the number of qualified native speaker teachers for foreign languages. Experiments had also been tried with restructuring the administrative regions for education or partly decentralising the responsibility of education to the provinces. By 2008, however, little real change had been felt, and many experiments to establish a clear form of university entrance qualification had also failed due to combinations of political interference, attempts to confer independence (or to remove it) on the universities, huge administrative errors, and inappropriate or mismatched syllabuses in the schools. The debate over the setting of new requirements, subjects, exams and standards for university entrance has been raging since 2003 and by late 2007 had shown no signs of being resolved. On return to democracy in early 2008, after the December election, the newly formed coalition led by the People's Power Party (a party formed by the remnants of deposed Taksin Shinwatra’s Thai Rak Tai party) announced new allocations of funds for education, an increase in the number of teachers, and more changes to the national curriculum and university entrance system.

[myauq]

While I could talk to you about texts in my field specifically, that wouldn't really serve to further the discussion. Instead, here is an UNESCO report, that serves to highlight the state of education in Thailand, highlighting areas that are weak and need to be addressed. Those areas were - ]

- overcentralization;

- lack of unity in educational administration;

- lack of efficiency in quality assurance and desirable standards;

- lack of public participation;

- lack of systematic and continuous policy development; and

- lack of coordination among the ministries with major responsibilities for education (Ministry of Education, Ministry of University Affairs, and the Office of the National Educatio Commission).

These areas are certainly areas that continue to need addressing. Whether the current or future political leaders have the good sense to tackle these problems in a real and effective way remains to be seen. Without that kind of direct intervention. we'll see progress on a very slow level, enacted by the Ministry civil servants.

very interesting. thanks for that. would love to read the unesco report, but the link didn't work for me.

some examples from your textbooks would be good too btw the discussion has drifted a bit off topic, that was exactly the kind of thing i actually asked for

[jbowman1993]

I teach trumpet, and use trumpet textbooks. Not exactly scintillating reading for most, regardless of the country or forum. I assume there are many academic teachers who could shed more light in the academic textbook area than I.

[PeaceBlondie]

This quote from Dr. Adith at Chula is on the mark: "Some teachers in secondary schools, particularly those in their 40's, consider the essential form of an English language lesson to be the delivery of a straight lecture, in Thai, on some obscure element of higher linguistics to a class of teenagers." I worked with teachers of English, in their 40's, for two years, and that is how 85% of them taught 85% of the time. I doubt that prathom schools do such a great job of developing intellectual curiosity, because they arrive in Matayom 1 as Thai robots. The foreign teachers from European descent are being replaced by Filipinas who teach much the same way as the Thais do. They are nice, polite ladies who work hard and wear beautiful dresses on Fridays, and enjoy sticky rice and spicy soup.

The system has come a long way, but it started the 1970's in the dark ages. A century more might do the trick. It surely has not advanced much since the reform act of 1999. If they have computers, hardly any staff can operate them.

///Added: matayom students are marked not only on their subject knowledge, but behavior, patriotism, Thainess, respect, etc. The average teacher has maybe 350 students, and is required to give each of them a judgment on each of these ten factors. Impossible. The English teachers were given CD's to record the students' marks, but the Excel spreadsheets were misprogrammed. No Thai English teacher knew how to fix a broken Excel algebraic formula, so I - also a math teacher and accountant - fixed it.

[myauq]

This quote from Dr. Adith at Chula is on the mark: "Some teachers in secondary schools, particularly those in their 40's, consider the essential form of an English language lesson to be the delivery of a straight lecture, in Thai, on some obscure element of higher linguistics to a class of teenagers." I worked with teachers of English, in their 40's, for two years, and that is how 85% of them taught 85% of the time. I doubt that prathom schools do such a great job of developing intellectual curiosity, because they arrive in Matayom 1 as Thai robots. The foreign teachers from European descent are being replaced by Filipinas who teach much the same way as the Thais do. They are nice, polite ladies who work hard and wear beautiful dresses on Fridays, and enjoy sticky rice and spicy soup.

that is a scary way of teaching. perhaps a way the teacher uses to hide their own insecurities, i don't know. maybe it's that, but also not being strong enough to challenge the status quo, presenting itself as too much of a face-loosing situation.

great to hear about the filipinos you worked with. from the institutions i've worked at in farangland i've had the pleasure to teach with some wonderful teachers who tend to wear either boring earthy colors for the chaps, and heaps of one-size floral dresses and oversized hats for the ladies. if only they could do an exchange with their teaching philosophy and the filipino's dress sense

[kmart]

The Thai education system seems geared up to making (pre-school) bright, energetic, curious, active kids into morons.

Go to school and learn how to be thick.

[myauq]

The Thai education system seems geared up to making (pre-school) bright, energetic, curious, active kids into morons.

Go to school and learn how to be thick.

it would be good to do an experiment, comparing the iq levels of thai kids/adults who have been through the education system and those who haven't. it seems totally paradoxical, but plausible from what i've been reading and what i've seen, that the education system actually makes thai students stupid. truely bizzare.

for example, working with refugees from myanmar who have had no formal education whatsoever, i have found that many pick-up skills and knowledge far quicker than average thais i encounter and work with every day, many having 12yrs+ of formal education.