The road to Thailand 4.0 starts in schools

While reading Suthichai Yoon’s latest column, my thoughts flew back to my birthplace (Singapore-sized) and the European country I later moved to. Almost all of Estonia’s remarkable digital achievements are available in both of these small countries. Suthichai’s message, though, was “Size doesn’t matter – what matters is the will to change and adapt.”
My personal research into model projects for Thailand 4.0 unearthed the TUMO Centre for Creative Technologies in Armenia. 
The story of this successful and innovative new-tech education project can be found at http://www.redherring.com/startups/armenias-tumo-center-looks-beyond-caucasus/ and on YouTube. Last year the Thai government was reportedly planning a TUMO-like project, but I have heard nothing about its progress since.
Said TUMO’s head of communications: “We’re not competing with school, we’re completing it. What we teach is not taught at school, and we take kids starting at 12. We need school, and school needs us as well, because we motivate them, and sometimes through these unusual classes they learn physics or maths or history better, because their thinking changes.” 
The centre has reportedly become a model which countries and foundations from Sweden to South Korea are desperate to replicate. 
Dirk Sumter