LoL, no-one seems to take school seriously here

[zeichen]

"Western kids build just as many social, physical & other skills as Thai kids, yet also manage to learn something at school as well."?

you haven't taught western kids recently have you?

No, the fact is that Western teachers complain about similar issues with students.

No, western kids aren't learning enough in school, that is why university professors have to teach basic composition and more than 40% of first year students drop out of university in the US.

As for western kids learning the same social skills, not even close. Thai students are some of the best team workers. They quickly define their team roles and work very well together. Western kids have a lot of problems with group activities in comparison.

now the failure with Thai students in group work is when they do have a problem, culturally they don't have good conflict resolution skills. So, when there is a break down it totally breaks down.

I am not saying Thai education is good. I am saying all education in the world is subpar. There is no perfect system. Most of the teachers here complaining aren't trained teachers, nor have they recently taught in their home countries, but come here and compare to what they believe their education was 20+ years ago.

The real problem is, those that complain don't realize that they are also apart of the problem. Stop passing the blame on the system, the parents, the culture and start doing something about it. Like perhaps professional development where you learn how to teach more than a basic TEFL certificate.

[Scott]

I've worked in a number of countries, but Thailand has one of the worst overall education systems I've run into. Much of my work in other countries was not teaching, but there was some direct and indirect relationship to education. One thing I have noticed is that most tropical countries have a much more laid back approach to everything including education. A lot of countries managed to speed up their game, in part due to colonization which imposed a bit more urgency into the workings of the countries and the education systems.

When you combine the more laid back attitude, which I attribute to the heat and the fact that food supplies are reasonably plentiful year around, with the deference to those above, they have ended up with a very unpalatable education system. Anybody further up the food chain can interrupt the education process for pretty much any reason.

They are certainly not laid back when it comes to indoctrinating mindless nationalism, flag waving and things we cannot mention though and it's nothing to do with the climate.

I've often said that after we finish the morning flag ceremony and national anthem, we may as well send them home because that's about as much attention as they will pay to anything all day.

[SlyAnimal]

"Western kids build just as many social, physical & other skills as Thai kids, yet also manage to learn something at school as well."?

you haven't taught western kids recently have you?

No, the fact is that Western teachers complain about similar issues with students.

No, western kids aren't learning enough in school, that is why university professors have to teach basic composition and more than 40% of first year students drop out of university in the US.

As for western kids learning the same social skills, not even close. Thai students are some of the best team workers. They quickly define their team roles and work very well together. Western kids have a lot of problems with group activities in comparison.

now the failure with Thai students in group work is when they do have a problem, culturally they don't have good conflict resolution skills. So, when there is a break down it totally breaks down.

I am not saying Thai education is good. I am saying all education in the world is subpar. There is no perfect system. Most of the teachers here complaining aren't trained teachers, nor have they recently taught in their home countries, but come here and compare to what they believe their education was 20+ years ago.

The real problem is, those that complain don't realize that they are also apart of the problem. Stop passing the blame on the system, the parents, the culture and start doing something about it. Like perhaps professional development where you learn how to teach more than a basic TEFL certificate.

We obviously teach at very very different schools, and must have attended/taught at very different schools in the west as well.

I've never taught at a school in the west, but it wasn't that long since I was at high school. If I compare the average level of maths from the students at my high school in the west, and compare it with the average level of my students, it's not even a comparison, because it's like comparing primary school kids with high school kids. The good Thai students are very good, and would definitely be on par with the good NZ students, but the average students are terrible.

A good example, is simply their M6 O-Net exams, where the median scores are consistently around 20%..... so over 50% of the entire country don't know ANY correct answers, despite all of the special classes etc that they go to to specifically study for O-Net, and instead they simply guess the entire exam. Which to be honest, still surprised me, even though I teach maths and see the level that the students are at (And I generally teach at a slightly lower level than what they learn with their Thai teachers, since I am also teaching English maths vocab, although am thinking about trying to focus on an O-Net examinable topic instead so that I can help them to improve their grades).

Failures to that magnitude definitely don't happen in NZ, and I doubt that any Western countries' education systems fail to a degree of magnitude even remotely close to that with such frequency. I simply don't know how students can study a subject for a full year, and have over 50% of the students not able to even answer a single question without guessing.......

And as for other development..... Thai students play very little sport compared to western schools (Or at least NZ schools). Comparatively in NZ, in addition to having a lot more sports fields per capita, the netball courts and rugby/soccer fields, are all busy after school and on each weekend with kids playing sport, which is awesome for their social skills too. Although Thai kids do definitely have the edge when it comes to social media.

So yeah, must have some very different schools in your home country compared to mine, or perhaps you're just teaching at a more upmarket Thai school where the students are all in the upper quartile of Thai students.