"But, really, what do you expect when you've spent the last 300 years carefully training your people to be semi-educated, semi-literate, compliant, docile and utterly unable to assert themselves or take any kind of initiative? It now needs a complete readjustment of your national self-image, and all the new attitudes and policies that go with it"

It took something as destructive and all-pervasive as the 'black-death' to uproot and dislodge the stronghold of Feudalism in Western Europe during the Middle-Ages....in comparison,don't expect the Thai-feudal empire to give up its self-centered hierarchal power structures willingly for something as trite as education of the masses.

From the flip-side,if the whole world was suddenly to go to hell in a hand-basket it would be Thailand that could be better able to cope and survive since the majority of population have such a short distance to fall.

Unlike the majority of Western society with its robust investments in over-complexity and external dependance will simply just perish.....but of course that won't happen because 'technology' will save us.

PaullyW@ Such exalted thoughts about furthering mankind shows to me you are very young. It's all about happiness,well being, not discovering more laws about quantum physics or sending man to Mars, lofty ideals though these may be. As the great diary keeper Samuel Pepys once wrote, ''In general one can say a man is happier with a wife who can cook well than with a wife who can read ancient Greek''

Do the test yourself. Show the picture below to a Thai student and ask him/her what they think about it.

Try turning one of those wheels.

PaullyW@ Such exalted thoughts about furthering mankind shows to me you are very young. It's all about happiness,well being, not discovering more laws about quantum physics or sending man to Mars, lofty ideals though these may be. As the great diary keeper Samuel Pepys once wrote, ''In general one can say a man is happier with a wife who can cook well than with a wife who can read ancient Greek''

Not sure what be your definition of young. I sure as heck don't feel young. But, I do understand that people can generally become far more selfish as they age, so you do have a point.