Curriculum development and lessons learned from the 40th anniversary of the 1973 uprising

How did the demonstrators become |liberal, freedom and free-mind thinkers? Besides social and political influences, I wonder whether that generation was shaped by the education and curriculum system of that period, specifically the National Curriculum of 1960.

My hypothesis is that students were shaped and learned to have a freedom mindset during the popular uprising of October 14, 1973 until their roles were |completely shut down by the massacre of October 6, 1976 at Thammasat University.

To understand the history of the nation, I personally think it is worth understanding the curriculum development of basic education. Indeed, we should also examine thoroughly the history of education that framed the thought process of students from 1973-76.

Generally speaking, the aim of education is to shape the future generation and to train them for their future professions. A curriculum is a framework that transfers subject matter and various skills to the next generation via intentional and unintentional classroom knowledge and activities. This is the process that cultivates values and wisdom into our students.

It is worth exploring and comparing the curriculum systems of 1960 and 1978, whether the former was designed with contents for students to have more liberal thinking and the latter was designed to control cultural and social beliefs, in particular the political aspects. For some, students had “too much” of a “freedom mindset” during the 1973-76 demonstrations, so government officials may have wanted to reform the curriculum. The result was control of the content in the basic education curriculum of 1978.

Although the government had good intentions in shaping students to be better human beings and citizens, it still felt afraid of students’ liberal perspectives. So, we, in turn, controlled content in the subjects of local geography, society and culture in the 1978 curriculum.

According to the Basic Education curriculum of 1978, “the aim was for learners to be able to develop themselves and to know about the changes in society, able to do things beneficial to society according to their capability. … The curriculum was developed for learners to gain experience in knowledge, skills, process and attitude, and desirable values”