Blissfully ignorant
Ref: "Moviemakers missed the point completely", Editorial, yesterday.
I enjoyed the irony of Chulalongkorn University blaming “ignorant students” for being insensitive to the use of Hitler as a pop icon. Is it not the university’s job to “dis-ignorantise” them?
I used to teach English at a Thai university, and I got the impression that Thais in general know very little about the Jews, their tragic history and their impressive contributions to civilisation.
So when one of my brightest students proposed doing a research project on Jewish history, I was quick to approve. In her paper, she noted that all Jewish males are castrated when they are eight days old.
I asked her how she supposed that the Jews could have become such a numerous and widespread people if their males were all castrated at such an early age.
She replied that she had got the word from a dictionary. If local dictionaries fail to make a distinction between castration and circumcision, it’s no wonder that students get confused.
S Tsow
Bangkok
