Give southerners education autonomy
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Let's support indigenous grassroots efforts to allow locals in the too-often-ignored deep South to decide what works best for them.
It’s a puzzle as to why the myopic Ministry of Education has failed to recognise and support the progressive, highly successful trilingual project “A-OK: All Our Kids Can Do, Will Do”, which was created, refined and field-tested more than two years ago by a team of resident teachers, community-school principals and supervisors under the astute leadership of Dr Somkiat Chobphol.
All the jigsaw pieces are in place, therefore, for cooperative decision-making, community involvement, decentralised control and regional autonomy to be actualised. It is hoped that flexible curriculum reform can replace standardised mindsets, and that continuity can be finally provided through increased autonomy under the administrative authority of more progressive area education professionals, with the implementation of a new “4 in 1” (Rumi, Thai, Chinese and English) package to jump-start genuine educational reform.
Charles Frederickson
Bangkok
