Thai education stuck in a rut

This editorial is quite earth-shaking and food for thought for education enthusiasts. Instead of learning each subject, the new Finnish approach of learning by topic could be a breakthrough for Thailand. Our approach has been more quantity than quality. Children in Finland spend 626 hours a year in primary education, while our children spend 1,200 hours. Based on that statistic, we should be twice as clever as the Finns. But that is not so. Thai education has been blamed for all our shortcomings – corruption, bad governance, inefficiency, delinquency, a weak electorate, sub-par intelligence and even a poor sense of priority. Privately, many foreigners sometimes ponder whether we are brain-dead. 

Your editorial will be a reminder of our losses over the past decades. One Finnish reporter once told me that he could not find any fault with his country except the heavy alcohol consumption. He did not attribute that weakness to cold weather but, from a survey, blamed his people’s DNA and environment. In this area of weakness, Thailand is surely catching up with white-spirit consumption and cocktail drinking among the young. Ask me if I have hope for Thai educational standards after this well-written expose? The answer is not at all, not even with Article 44 in force.

Songdej Praditsmanont